🚀 go-pugleaf

Sorry to disappoint you, but it's the result of a temporary fault. My understanding is that there is no immediate plan to revise the forum layout, following the intense debate some months ago.

It's turning out to be a corrupted file in the forums templates apparently, Claudio. John got shook out of bed (gently I hope) by hosts that were a mite bit shocked by the unexpected change. He'll get it set to rights soon. The capabilities have always been there, just as text links insead of image buttons.

You mean you don't want to go through that agony all over, Peter? LOL At least it wouldn't be blamed on "those Syntrillium people" this time.

Just as a side note--as far as forum hosts go, you're one of the greatest assets Adobe acquired when they bought CEP. Thanks for your steady influence in the Photoshop Lounge and elsewhere!

I much prefer the text links instead of image links. faster loading, especially if there's a problem with the image server.

jumping on scott's bandwagon in congatulating ozpeter as a great forum host! we really appreciate you man. next time you need a loan...












scott will be glad to hook you up... XD

      The capabilities have always been there, just as text links insead of
      image buttons.




There isn't a 'delete; though, unless I am mistaken (*while I originally liked the idea, on further thought I feel it would lead to confusion as person #1 might make a post, person #2 might respond, then, person #1 might decide to delete & person #2's post would seem to make no sense.

One thing I did like was the fact that the screwed up layout took up a lot less space.

yes, I think your concerns were basically the reason why it was decided to not allow people to entirely delete posts.... and have a 30 minute window to edit. The few bad apples that can spoil things. Today it was noted that someone posted a new topic, and then decided to delete it... while someone else was posting a reply. So, lots of confusing things can happen. John has found a nice balance overall.

What I've decided on is taking the time zone out of the "edited" notice. This will not affect previously edited notices, but will change going forward.

John

O.K. Thanx for informing us.

John, the first line in your last message is broken.

Claudio,

What do you mean by "broken" For me, the first line in John's message wraps after the words "previously edited". What are you seeing?

Dave

What I'm getting (and John was trying to avoid) affects the very first line of messages, the one with the time zone:

      John Cornicello - 10:45am Aug 16, 04 PST (#61 of





      64)




(had to add a blank line or the break would not show).

As I understand it, this line has a space problem because room has to be left for notices regarding editions of the messages. The first line of the opening message of a thread does not seem to have this problem, that's why I propossed to remove any mention of times zones except there, replacing today's PST by (all times US Pacific).

Wow, that only takes about half of my screen. On your message 65, I have your name and all the way through to the end of the "Edited" announcement on one line with a big gap in between.

Are you running with a small screen or large font? or is the break not one that should have happened in your assessment?

Dave

It mus be an external font size setting. Here is what the message (and Claudio's response with the edit notification) look like to me:

In my message #65, the name+time/date "line" is broken after the "of" (same as in John's -and yours by the way), then I have a roughly 29 mm gap, and the full Edited message, all in one line, with the "66)" in a second line. In other words, there is more than plenty room to accomodate the few characters going to the second line.

I am using a 17 inch monitor, with all setting to default except by the maximum number of characters and of messages per page, which I incresed to 64000 and 45. My screen resolution is 1024 x 758, but increasing this doesn't solve the problem; decreasing the font size does, buy I am quite comfortable with the one shown and don't want to decresase it.

Changing the width of the window has no effect on the width of its contents, and if I make it the with of the screen, I have a more than 80 mm blank space to the right of the end of the gray boxes (such as the one in the opening message). Curiously, the left and right margins are the same in the 15 inch monitor of my PC, where everything is in one line with about the same gap before the Edited... info. To my naked eye, the font size is slightly larger on the PC, where I don't have the problem.

John, you posted your message while I was writing mine.

In my message #65, on my Mac I get

      What I'm getting (and John was trying to avoid) affects the very first
      line of messages,





      the one with the time zone:




and in my PC:

      What I'm getting (and John was trying to avoid) affects the very first
      line of messages, the one with





      the time zone:




while you get all this in one line (with some room to spare). I have just checked, and I have all my Font Preferences set to "Use site default".

Edit: I cannot find easily how to show what I see. In both my examples, all the first text is in one line, and the second in the next line.

I'm not referring to forum font settings, but to the font settings in your browser.

For example, right now I'm using Internet Explorer on a PC. Under View > Text Size I have five options (smallest to largest). Setting this to medium, smaller, or Smallest seems to keep the size of the date within the table cell without wrapping. But if I set it to Larger or Largest it will make the text wider than the cell and wrap it to two lines. My "normal" setting on this page is "smallest".

What if the date wasn't bold? Does it fit better now?

John

In my Mac, Mozilla has a default size of 16 pixels for proportional fonts. If I change this to 15, the problem disappears, but everything becomes harder to read. The wrapping of the first line also disappears if I choose a smaller type size in the forum font settings, but everything is even harder to read.

In my PC, Explored is set for a Medium font size, which is equally comfortable for me than the defaults in my Mac. But the problem does not arise hera, in spite of a smaller monitor.

I think that the wrapping problem could easily be solved while preserving a comfortable type size if I could reduce the excessive right margin of the page in my Mac, but haven�t found how to achieve this.

I have just checked in my Mac, and the first line also wraps in Safari, but not in Explorer, although the text I get on screen in the latter is noticeablky larger.

Brilliant, John. No wrapping if the date isn't in bold.

Correction: this is true only from message #64 onwards. ?????

Not sure what you mean about "message #64 onwards"?

John

Now that you made me check, I found that the issue is more complicated. I haven't checked the full list, but I get first line wrapping in:

my messages #13, 14 and 38, but not in 16, 24 or 29;

Pierre's message #15, but not in 9.

Ram�n's messages 28 and 31.

And I see no wrapping after message #63; i.e, all messages starting with #64 show no first line wrapping.

I'm stumped. Browser cache? The sizes should be the same in all messages in all forums, there isn't a way for me to be so granular to affect only some messages (especially within one discussion).

John

Some names are longer than others. Some message numbers have two digits instead of one. The two periods every day from 10:00 to 12:59 have longer times.

Dave

It almost appears that this is a "macintosh" issue as much as browser. Do the Mac browsers add additional table spacing or padding?

John

No. I'm seeing essentially what you're seeing. But then, I have always worked with relatively small type on screen. I couldn't possibly work with text as large as Claudio seems to prefer (or need -- I don't know anything about Claudio's eyesight, but obviously there are people who have no choice but to work with large sized type).

Dave

FWIW, Currently I see no wrapping of any of the top lines of the posts in this thread (and I have before, so here at least the problem seems solved at this point).

Dave, I think you are right: all messages at present showing first line wrap in this thread were posted between 10:00 and 12:59 (all of them also have two digit numbers, and their posters have long names). And as for the text size, while I can read smaller type on screen, it rapidly becomes tiring, so it's a combination of preferences and needs.

If you want me to spend in the forums so much time as I have spent in this thread, please allow me to ask to do it comfortably... 8:)

John, it's only a few charcters going to the second line, perhaps not more that 4 (don't ask me to check again!), and the blank before the Edit info is much wider than that. Also, in the cases in this thread, the wrapping is induced by the addition of just one digit in the time. No way of using part of that blank space to avoid this?

Now I'm confused some more. Are you saying that the only ones that wrap are the ones that were edited?

Dave

      It almost appears that this is a "macintosh" issue as much as browser.
      Do the Mac browsers add additional table spacing or padding?




It's related to font size. I use larger fonts, and these table cells wrap quite often. The "Edited:" field almost always causes the top of messages to wrap.

There are three table cells in the first row. The one in the middle isn't necessary if the update time has a leading space, or if you don't mind it very occasionally running into the right parentheses.

You could say "Edit:" instead of "Edited:" and drop the "at" between the time and date (the other time and date field doesn't have "at" in it), or use the same time format as the other field.

Ah, I finally understand. I was overlooking that it is a table. Now I can see how the first cell could wrap without the text being anything like as enormous as I was picturing based on Claudio's description.

Dave

Dave, I didn't know either that it is a table. I was assuming that there were two (not three; I don't see or understand the center one) fields of fixed lengths, with a wide gap in between, and could/can see no reason for not lengthening the first/left one in a few characters to avoid its wrapping. And I agree that getting rid of the bold date/time decreased considerably the occurrence of this wrapping; thanks to JC for that.

Finally, I have always assumed that if you choose the defaults settings in your browser and in the forums, you should have no serious problems. Now I stand corrected, and know I am using an exaggeratedly large type size -which also happens to be the default in both my browser and in the forums, and very comfortable for me. And I still do not understand the very wide right margin I get, or how it could be avoided, getting rid of any first line wrapping in the process.

What a can of worms have I opened... but thanks again, John for looking so hard to fix the problem!

I don't think you're talking about the same issue I'm seeing here in the posts mentioned above and in r_harvey's post 83. I'm seeing garbled lines of text just since today on Safari OSX.3.3.

Never mind found out my Courier is wacked out, changed to Courier New in Preferences and it's fine now. What caused that?

Hello Dee,

It was Pierre, in his message #9 above, the first to mention the ugly wrapping in the first part of the first line of some messages and, unless I am wrong, we have all been talking about this issue ever since in this thread. This is certainly no the same issue you are reporting now.

I have just checked in Safari 1.1, and I saw no garbled text except for accented vowels. This was solved by changing my language encodings to Western (Latin ISO 1).

Couldn't your hosed Courier font be the cause of your problem?

Yes, it was Claudio. I think you miss understood me. I saw the wierd text and posted, thinking it was maybe the same thing, but then I checked my Safari preferences. Saw that Courier pretty much looked like garbled text too, so I changed it. And all was back to normal, so I edited with "Never mind".

Just was wondering why all of a sudden today that would do that. Do you think the whole font went bad? Do I have to delete it from my system? I hadn't had a problem with Courier, but was it the possible change to Western (Latin ISO1) that I did yesterday the cause?

I couldn't delete the post, so I figured, why not make the most of it.

That was a wise move, Dee, considering we don't have delete privileges (for very understandable reasons, as I learned in this same thread). Unfortunately, some of us are not native English speakers and tend to misunderstand messages that are not crystal clear. But variety is the spice of life, isn't it?

I came in to ask if the first line wrapping problem had been forgotten. Fortunately, I checked before posting: none of the messages in this thread presents the problem now. Just out of curiosity, how did you do it, JC? And thanks regardless...

It looks like he did narrow that superfluous table cell, but all of the "Edited:" fields still wrap for me.

I haven't made any changes since Monday morning.

R_, can you post a screen shot of the wrapping? Thanks!

Don't make me search back, r_. What browser and OS?

John, another idea. I do like the large type size I get by using all the defaults; it makes for easier reading of the messages. However, I wouldn't mind at all if the first part of the first line of the messages was a bit smaller. Like in the first line of the opening message but not in bold; surely that would help?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "the first part of the first line of the message".

John

Here is a screen shot of what I see...

John

I mean the

John Cornicello - 3:56pm Aug 19, 04 PST (#96 of 96)

part. As this doesn't need very careful reading, and it is less than one line long, its type size can be harmlessly reduced. The corresponding part of the opening message is smaller on my screen, and I can read it without trouble if I need to. This could reduce the problem reported by r_harvey, which I don't recall having got.

It is odd that Web page designers keep making text smaller and smaller, just because CSS lets them do it so easily. They use absolute values, instead of the settings the user has determined correct for their viewing conditions, or percentages of those settings. At the very least, they should be using point sizes, which would ensure compatibility if the user has configured the GUI for large fonts. Specifying font size in pixels is, frankly, rude.

In Mozilla 1.7, regardless of the platform you can set a minimum font size. Many use this to work-around sites that insist on using tiny body text. It also means that nothing gets that tiny--even if it's text that doesn't matter. You can try to make it 6 pixels tall on the HTML page, and it'll still be readable.

Keep making that "Edited:" field smaller, and it will stay the same size--it needs to be simplified, not have the text shrunk. Shorten "Edited:" and use the same numbering format as the original date stamp, and it shouldn't wrap in most browsers. It will probably still wrap if somebody has used OS accessibility features.

Here is where I differ from most here. In Mozilla Preferences, I have these font settings:

18 pixel standard body text (for font size=3)
15 pixel monospace
15 pixel minimum font size

The final setting cannot be overridden by Web pages.

In addition, at the bottom of the page I have:

[x] Allow documents to use other fonts
Display resolution: 96 dpi