Site Topics - Part II

Way too much in ads. Looks horrible. Uncomfortable to read threads now.

J of Fok,

is this sidebar a glitch or is this the way the new site will be? give it to me straight.

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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Way too much in ads. Looks horrible. Uncomfortable to read threads now.

I'd like to add that 300 px is just under a third of my netbook's screen width, and there are plenty of narrower devices out there.

Originally Posted by Redwoood

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I'd like to add that 300 px is a third of my netbook's screen width, and there are plenty of narrower devices out there.

Originally Posted by in stitches

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J of Fok,

is this sidebar a glitch or is this the way the new site will be? give it to me straight.

+1

The sidebar is not a glitch, though it is not in its final form right now. I know it looks ridiculous currently.

In the future the sidebar will also be used to deliver useful content such as tags, reviews, etc. I think you guys will like it, actually. I didn't at first, but it grew on me.

If it is really too much, we may adjust it later on as well.

Edit: also, it will only be alongside the first couple of posts on a page - not as intrusive as currently.

Originally Posted by Redwoood

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I'd like to add that 300 px is just under a third of my netbook's screen width, and there are plenty of narrower devices out there.

Ditto. I just measured it with a ruler, and the usable text space for thread content is now 4.5".

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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Way too much in ads. Looks horrible. Uncomfortable to read threads now.

+1

I'm on a 25" screen and it's uncomfortable for me to read...!

Originally Posted by j

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The sidebar is not a glitch, though it is not in its final form right now. I know it looks ridiculous currently. In the future the sidebar will also be used to deliver useful content such as tags, reviews, etc. I think you guys will like it, actually. I didn't at first, but it grew on me. If it is really too much, we may adjust it later on as well. Edit: also, it will only be alongside the first couple of posts on a page - not as intrusive as currently.
There is no such thing as a sidebar that is not intrusive. The current sidebar takes up hundreds of pixels of horizontal space in a block at the top-right of a page. It leaves a huge gap at the right side of any thread with enough posts that they extend downward below the bottom of the block. (Even if it were a float:right block and the lower posts had full 100% width again, it would be annoying to say the least.) You can insert as much space adspace as you want at the bottom of every page. You can revert to a thin row at the top of every page -- that was fine. But this enormous, garish, retina-****** eyesore of a giant billboard intruding upon every single page site-wide is nearly unforgivable from a user POV. If you are intent on preserving this format despite its hideousness and enormous potential for driving away visitors/pageviews, at the very least consider that having two columns of advertisers is unnecessary. The only thing that is the full width of the sidebar is the completely useless "StyleForum frontpage" graphic. Delete that completely and have one single column of 120px-wide affiliate graphics going down the side and it would be a huge improvement over what I'm looking at as I type this.

Boys-

There's going to be a lot of cheese moved around over the next couple of days. You'll get used to it. Keep your heads and your manners and give reasonable feedback. Even gawker fixed itself eventually.

On a more serious note, the frontpage graphic is going to have to go. We are not about pink coats and astrakhan collars. Not primarily, at least.

alliswell, and SF is much greater than you think it is.

For starters, there's tons of unnecessary padding, especially in the sidebar keeping the advertisers from accidentally brushing against one another's typographical unmentionables. There's almost 100 pixels of empty space hardcoded into any given horizontal thread cross-section:

This guy has 3 posts and his third post/first thread smells like viral marketing http://www.styleforum.net/showthread...92#post4668292

Like Jeremy said, the side bar will actually be used for other things as well. The sidebar there right now is a simplified version - mainly because VB can't support everything we are going to have there.

For example, the sidebar, in the new B&S system, will list all of the same seller's items (like an Ebay store, but right there on the page). On the front page, the sidebar, for logged in users, will see their messages.

People in the sandbox system can see this. In stitches, I will send you the test site info, so you can see what there is there. You can log in as yourself once you are there. Please take a look.

Honestly I will gladly take sidebar ads if it means the performance (lag) of SF dramatically improves.