viewing issues

[Praetorian]

I am sure you may be well aware of some of these issues, but I felt I should point them out anyway just in case.

I have 800x600 res screen, & Mozilla Firefox as my primary browser. But if I plan on viewing sections of this website other than the message boards, I have to resort to IE to view pages somewhat closer to the way I think they are meant to be viewed.

And before everyone starts telling me to buy a membership and all my problems will be solved, it must be understood that it can't be expected of every person who visits to pay up, or for them to be savvy enough to get into their browser controls and make the necessary adjustments.

Continuing on, here are a few examples of what I mean:



1. On the home page, some of the test & links in the top center of the page (overlapping the GTPlanet car picture) run off the picture and disappear under the search box. As the body text here is white, everything that falls below the image becomes invisible except for the rather awkward looking links. Perhaps a 90-100px taller image would solve this?

In IE6 a small dark colored section of background is under the picture, making the rest of the overhanging text properly visible.




2. On the guides page, the right vertical banner does not float properly to the right. It stays locked in place, obscuring almost completely the image links that are on the right side of the page.

In IE6, this banner politely shoves over allowing me to see all the images presented. A bottom scrollbar is now present, letting me scroll right to admire the lovely banner.



3. on the leader boards main page, the search box wanders up towards the top navbar, partially hiding what may have been another beautiful ad! Now I cant decide whether to click the ad, as I cannot clearly see everything it is trying to tell me.

In IE6, the searchbox behaves only slightly better, allowing the top banner to overlap it. but now the long banner underneath the searchbox continues to try and hide the some of the main body text.

I will now click a link on the page in mozilla...



Ooh you naughty side banner! Why cant you just move over and behave?! What is in the box after horsepower? W... whirligig? Wrangler? Wonderbread? Wasps? (I hate wasps!) who knows, it could be anything under there.

IE6 Hmm, the side banner used to move over here, now it's behaving just as it did in mozilla?
Goes back to game guides... Odd, layout on IE6 is working fine on this page.

moving on, back to mozilla. I have more info I want to add to the NA Cars list.



Stupid banner. Now what did I just type in the edit box? I can't see it! I do hope it was nothing wicked! (or at least I hope it's spelled correctly.)

Back to IE6. Thank heavens, that banner agrees to stay out of the textbox on the editing page here.


There were some odd linking issues as well, but I cant recall them to describe exactly what was happening. But I seem to recall trying to click the message boards link on the left navbar while viewing an individual car page, and not always getting the results I expected.

 

[Jedi2016]

I'll tell you exactly what your problem is... 800x600. There's no excuse for running your monitor at so low a resolution. 95% of the internet these days is optimized for 1024x768 or higher. You can't expect all the websites you visit to be so accomodating for folks running such a tiny screen.

 

[Praetorian]

then buy me a new monitor a flat-screen one please.

while it is true most sites are optimized for larger screens, 95% of them also take every measure they can to make sure their sites are easily viewed by a broad range of users, regardless of screen size or whichever browser or operating system they are running on.

I thought the whole point of the FEEDBACK thread was so users could point out issues such as I have put forth, in order that the owner/webmaster Jordan could take these things into account.

 

[Jedi2016]

How big is your monitor? If it's 15" or bigger, it'll run 1024x768 just fine. If not... well, they really ain't that expensive. Chances are it's one of the cheapest components of your entire computer, unless you go for a 21" widescreen LCD or something. I've got a 17" Samsung here that I bought about five or six years ago for a hundred bucks. And they're probably a damn sight cheaper now.

You've got internet, a computer, a TV, at least one game console... you can afford a frikkin' monitor.

 

[Der Alta]

Praetorian,

With as many visitors as GTP sees, it is very tough to plan for everyone. Jordan has planned for the majority of the users, and has met those goals on nearly everything.

With as large as GTP is, he can please everyone most of the time, most of the people everytime, but not everyone, everytime.

So if we figure that you are in the minority (800x600, w/ mozilla) what might you have for suggestions that Jordan would/could undertake to help your situation? I know Jordan has a lot on his plate, but might there be a few thoughts in your mind for what he can accomplish?

Jedi, I'll not be polite in my suggestion to you. If you can't provide polite information, please don't feel pressured to add any information. hint

 

[DuckRacer]

I'll tell you exactly what your problem is... 800x600. There's no excuse for running your monitor at so low a resolution. 95% of the internet these days is optimized for 1024x768 or higher. You can't expect all the websites you visit to be so accomodating for folks running such a tiny screen.

+1 for you.

Also, FYI, premium membership doesn't apply to the main page. So, to cure your problem, get a bigger screen or *gasp* Firefox with Adblock (I know I'm going on Jordan's blacklist ).

 

[Praetorian]

well thanks for some less critical input on the matter

Jedi's caption does claim him to be a bitter old man, so I suppose he is merely keeping up with expectations, therefore I won't hold that against him.

I did suggest a slightly larger picture in the first part, but as for how to get the right banner to not mess up the layout I would have to actually get into the CSS and all that, and quite frankly I'm not very good at it. so therefore the only idea I can come up with is to add javascript drop-down menus to the top navbar buttons (CSS dropdowns don't work in IE yet), scrap the left side nav, and put the searchbox & banner over to the left instead where it may be more inclined to behave.

 

[Jordan]

Oh, boy, this is a real kick in the pants after taking great care to ensure the main site's template looked great in 800x600. I suppose I should have double checked everything after the other layout problems cropped up when applying the style to Subdreamer. Thanks for the heads-up, Praetorian. 12.5% of our visitors actually use 800x600 resolution and I do go to great lenghts to accomodate them, but as usual, something always seems to break.

I'll get to work on it as soon as I can, but I wasn't expecting such a serious issue to get in the way of my work on the Leaderboards and Magazine so I can't make any guarantees. In the mean time, just don't let anyone tell you that CSS is God's gift to web designers. I'm learning to hate it more and more every day.

Also, FYI, premium membership doesn't apply to the main page.

Actually, it does. I'm also working on applying it to the Wiki, but it's proving to be a bit more difficult.

 

[Praetorian]

12.5% of our visitors actually use 800x600 resolution

I'm a minority

In the mean time, just don't let anyone tell you that CSS is God's gift to web designers. I'm learning to hate it more and more every day.

I can't tell you how much I hated to even bring it up, as I've done a fair amount of stuff with CSS, and while a lot of it is pretty easy, getting some parts to behave cross-platform can be extremely tricky. who knows, you might get lucky and find a simple solution with a box hack? I have gotten a bit rusty (a rusty amateur... now there's somone to get advice from lol) but I suppose I could try and find something to help that won't require a major overhaul. But really for a person of my level of experience, it would take me probably anywhere from a week to 3 weeks to get things to float & nest properly.

sorry to bring bad news aside from those few layout quirks though, I love the site, and have been having more fun than I expected working on the car list trying to get as much in there as I can. So far have added prize car info on relevent pages & have been slowly collecting sim data as well, along with a ton of other stuff to make it more useful. I hope to also add a lot of the info that Tornado has collected on the used cars in as well.

again, sorry, sorry sorry!

 

[Jordan]

No, no, no, don't take my post the wrong way. I'm not mad at you, I'm just dissapointed with how SD has treated my layout, and I can't blame anyone but myself for that. It's good that you posted this because it is something that really needs to be fixed! 12.5% may be a minority, but when you extrapolate that to our traffic data, that's more than 750 people a day that are using a quirky site - and I don't want that! I appreciate the help in the post with the specific comments and screenshots, as that will help me move along alot faster.

Excellent work in the Wiki, by the way. 👍

 

[DuckRacer]

Actually, it does. I'm also working on applying it to the Wiki, but it's proving to be a bit more difficult.

*Turns off Adblock* Oh, I guess it does. 💡 I was thinking it was the old homepage.

 

[Jordan]

Praetorian, aside from the Leaderboards pages, how are things looking for you now?

 

[Praetorian]

Wow, you did that fast! You rock!

Everything flows much smoother now... the searchbox doesn't quite align with the left nav box on some pages (it goes a tad lower) but that is really unimportant. The main thing is that it (and it's trailing banner) aren't hiding things anymore.

The text in the home pic now looks normal.

The searchbox is still inside the wiki editing textbox, although to a much less radical degree. I think changing the width of the textbox here would be much easier than trying to adjust the positioning, but thats just me.

Let me know if you want more thumbnails for a clearer picture.

 

[X5.]

OT - But part of viewing issues you could say. That tribal fusion ad keeps popping up when i login into GTPlanet. This happened even when i was premium, but my main concern is that installs spyware of some sort on my laptop as anytime i scan my laptop it comes up in the list of 'negativities' shall we say. Does anyone else experience this?

 

[UberDude]

I have been looking at GTP with Firefox and i noticed (or couldn't notice) that the "hot" thread icons don't show up.
I don't know if it is just me or not, so somebody please post and let me know.

 

[DuckRacer]

I have been looking at GTP with Firefox and i noticed (or couldn't notice) that the "hot" thread icons don't show up.
I don't know if it is just me or not, so somebody please post and let me know.

It works for me. Try clearing your cache.

 

[Jordan]

OT - But part of viewing issues you could say. That tribal fusion ad keeps popping up when i login into GTPlanet. This happened even when i was premium, but my main concern is that installs spyware of some sort on my laptop as anytime i scan my laptop it comes up in the list of 'negativities' shall we say. Does anyone else experience this?

Sorry it took me so long to address your problem, but posting it down in another thread like this makes it nearly impossible for me to find. If you are still experiencing a problem please post it in the Premium forum and I will address it there.