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CS News Feed

Started by Jerry, 2005-08-24T19:47:51-05:00 (Wednesday)

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Jerry

One of the things we're trying to do is to keep the CS Dept. News fresh and relevant.

Question: Could we re-position the CS News Feed so that it is above the fold?

There is some expensive real estate on either side of the CAOS logo. Any chance it could be utilized?
"Make a Little Bird House in Your Soul" - TMBG...

Ross Mead

I agree that there is a lot of unused space on both sides of the logo, but might the CS News Feed make it a bit cluttered up there?  I'm open to the idea of modifying that top bar to better utilize the space we have, and I'd even be up for putting the feed up there, but we'd have to do it in a way where it is uncluttered and the information is easy to find, without distracting forum users.  Heck, this type of interface issue could simply be solved by proper alignment of the displayed information.  For example, if the feed was right aligned on the bar, then it's not as distracting and yet is still readily visible.  Of course, by right aligning the feed, you run into some balance issues, which could be solved by realigning the CAOS logo or finding other content to help balance it out.  I dunno'... I'm looking at a few more hours of stuff to do tonight... and thus,... I am babbling to stall... I should stop talking and get back to work... yeah... **blink blink**

EvilAndrew

With a 1280x1024pixel display the CS News did appear "above the fold" before the new CAOS logo was added.  Perhaps there is an extra BR or something up there that could be removed to move everything up.
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Jerry

One slight change could be to put "Computer Association of SIUE" on the side of the logo instead under it.
"Make a Little Bird House in Your Soul" - TMBG...

William Grim

I had tried moving the text to the side of the logo, but the text kept showing up below-and-to-the-right of the logo.  I'll mess with it some more, and if I have to do it, I'll just append the text right into the logo itself.

Jon Birch has sent us some new logos, but I haven't had a chance to look at them yet.  I'll get around to doing that this evening and seeing what I can do with them.

As for putting the news sections along the sides, I'll work with that this evening too.  So, if you guys see the page moving around a little bit, don't worry, that's just me breaking things again.
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

William Grim

Well, I played around with the website for a while, and I tried to fit everything neatly onto the front page.  Not sure about utilizing anything around the banner, since it is a hard-coded block.  Everything else was dynamic though.

So anyway, let me know what you think.  Any input would be good, because I still think it needs work.  I just don't know what people would exactly like.
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

bill corcoran

dookie!  we lost the last post date/time info for topics.  the four column crowd only further contrasts with the abundant whitespace in the header.  i bet it looks even worse at lower resolutions than 1280x1024.  but, what can you expect?  sometimes you simply can't fit everything.
-bill

Jerry

Quotebill wrote:
 we lost the last post date/time info for topics.

Yeah, I agree with Bill - losing the last post date/time/poster takes away an important cue that let's you know someone has posted to the thread. This is particular trouble some if we have multiple active threads.
"Make a Little Bird House in Your Soul" - TMBG...

Jerry

"Make a Little Bird House in Your Soul" - TMBG...

Jerry

Hey, with this message I'm only one away from 400!
"Make a Little Bird House in Your Soul" - TMBG...

Jerry

Hey, this is my 400th post  :-P
"Make a Little Bird House in Your Soul" - TMBG...

Ross Mead

I'm kinda' leanin' back and forth with the new design...

It seems slightly crammed, and it can be hard to find exactly what you're lookin' for.

Also, because the size of the Headlines section is sized dynamically based on the feeds received from selected websites (at least, I assume it's dynamically sized... ), the size of the Recent Topics section may not necessary be the same.  I'd at least like it to go down to where the Administration Menu button is.  This is a nit-picky problem that I have with interfaces, and others may think differently.  I also understand that this may be more difficult to fix than is worth putting time into, but it's just a thought.

One aspect we neglected was the idea of the blank space next to the CAOS logo above.  Now that it's been brought up, I can't stop looking at it!  Any ideas on how we can utilize that space if it is not occupied by the feed?

At lower resolutions, the page really suffers, but thta may have even existed with the old page and is almost unaviodable with some websites...

All that aside, I still feel like I am able to navigate efficiently (though as I said, new users may not... ).  It seems that we got rid of a lot of wasted space in the Recent Topics section, which is a definite plus.

It definitely looks tighter than before, and I'm admit that I don't have really any better ideas.  I so we roll with it and see how we feel a bit down the road. :-)

Two thumbs up!  Nice job! :-)

QuoteHey, this is my 400th post

Congrats on the 400th post Dr. Weinberg!  Woohoo! :-D

Matthew Thomas

w00t! Love it because this looks awesome in widescreeeeeeeeeen.
Left side wooooooooaaaaaaah
right side woooooooaaaaaaaah


Now, would it be possible to look into google's adsense program to raise a little money for CAOS?

Just put it right below the notification options on the front page...?
Superman wears Jack Bauer pajamas

EvilAndrew

I don't think the school would like us using their bandwidth and server space to generate advertising revenue.    :-P
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EvilAndrew

There are a few things I don't like about the layout, but I think they could be fixed.  

1. The center pane does not list what forum each message belongs to.  I think this is helpful information that should really be there.  Perhaps there is a setting.

2. The news story titles all blend together because there no dividing lines just bullet points.  It might be possible to apply a change to the RSS module that makes the stories list in a table instead of a bulleted list.  If the cell backgrounds were alternated or of the cells had boarders then the title delimitations would be much more clear.
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