CS News Feed

[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?

[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.

[Jerry]

One slight change could be to put "Computer Association of SIUE" on the side of the logo instead under it.

[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]

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.

[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.

[Jerry]

bill 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.

[Jerry]

I like it.

[Jerry]

Hey, with this message I'm only one away from 400!

[Jerry]

Hey, this is my 400th post  :-P

[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! :-)

Hey, 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...?

[EvilAndrew]

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

[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.

[Ross Mead]

Yeah, I hate to say it, but I'm not a big fan of the new layout either.  It just looks really cluttered, the polls are hidden, and I agree with a lot of Andrew's statements as well.

Brad and I are throwing around ideas regarding a site redesign.  We'll probably be requesting that the officers get together soon to discuss this more in depth.  Until then, keep up the work on the site.  We appreciate what you've done thus far! :-) Thanx! :-)

[William Grim]

Yeah, polls are hidden.  I don't think it's very possible to have the news feeds display on the first page without compromising something else.

I don't particularly care if the news items are on the front page or not; I like viewing the forum and polls more.

I'll keep playing around with it and see what I can do.

[Jerry]

Well, I didn't want to cause a bunch of problems, but I must say it has been interesting to see the different designs.

Here's an idea, what about a nav bar at the top with links to specific headlines down below.

That way, it has a presence above the fold without taking up the real estate.

[Bryan]

Dr. J is right.  Speaking from experience (it's so strange to say that) the proper thing to do in this case is have a top nav.  I'm looking at it on my 2nd monitor at work running 1024x768 and it's the most god awful sight I've ever seen.  By using the space on the left for a news feed and or polls we can reclaim some space for the forum which is very badly in need of it.

[William Grim]

Not sure a nav bar is the best thing to do.

Placing the polls next to the forums seems to be working well on all resolutions except 800x600 (in which case the headlines are to the right).  If the forums are put back at 3 columns, everything shows up well in 800x600.

I'm looking at it on my 2nd monitor at work running 1024x768 and it's the most god awful sight I've ever seen.

COOL!  I love your constructive words of criticism...

[Bryan]

http://www.hciunderground.com/fold.JPG

That's a link to a scrolled image snapshot of what I see on my desktop at work.  Above the red line is what shows up, below the line is what doesn't.  The concept of "the fold" is to have everything of importance ABOVE IT.  Here, we fail miserably.  Not to mention that but the clutered nature, and and multiple horizontal alignment points is hard to focus on any one area.  Looking at the menu items they could easily be itemized and turned into a dynamic drop down navigation.  Hell, even a static top nav would work.  The "Sections" link doesn't even go anywhere!  If we find a way to get everything above the fold then "Contact us" and the like can go on the bottom which is a defacto way of doing things nad one of hte prime principles behind above the fold design.

Not to mention that if our point was to get News Feeds above the fold then we still have 3 of the 4 feeds down yonder.

[Ross Mead]

Brad and I both previously discussed this design consideration.  If we put the used Main Menu items across the top as a navigation bar, then we could clear up a LOT of real estate on the side bar.  This may, of course, require us to go through and determine which of the menu items may need to be removed due to space.  The Downloads section is totally out of date and I'm hearing that the Gallery section has some problem where we can't post new pictures (I've been told this, but I have not verified... ).  Those are just a few suggested sections to consider, but there may be more.  Maybe we could determine sections to remove if we decide that they are no longer of use to us, or that they are becoming too hard to maintain.

Brad and I have both been tossing around the idea of a real site overhaul, but we understand that that's easier said than done.  However, a lot of these ideas we've all been tossing out are leaning more towards some of the considerations we've discussed.  Maybe this could be a major topic of discussion in the near future...

Again, we appreciate your work Mike.  Thanx! :-)

And to think, this all started because of a little CS News Feed comment.  Dr. Weinberg, you opened an evil can of worms! :-P

[Bryan]

I'm not sure of any free or open source logging programs.  But a common means of figuring out what is overhead on your website is a program that will review all of your logs and figure out who's using what and how often.  We use it for some of our client redesigns to figure out "is that neat little toy really worth all the effort?"  If my brain weren't so polluted iwth linear algebra at the moment I'd be able to come up with the name of it.  Anyway if there is some software out there we could use, it might automate the "should we get rid of this" debate ;-)

[Peter Motyka]

Webalizer is a decent FOSS web log parser.  It produces pretty graphs and such.

http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/

[William Grim]

Yeah, webalizer could be used if I actually do it.  I'm getting sort of busy now.

I don't care how the website is setup.  I've just been trying people's various suggestions on this forum and seeing how they work out based on feedback I receive.  However, I think we all have a pretty clear idea of what we want now, and there are some more thought-out ideas coming from people now.  So, I think I'll just leave the site how it is until a more formal decision is made about what to do.

[Jerry]

I like the logo off to the side.

What about removing "views" column?

[Tyler]

I think it's a little too crowded having so many columns of information.  It's cluttered on 1280 x 1024, I bet it's even more crazy on an 800x600.

Just my opinion.

[Jerry]

Well to balance out the page - the headlines could be put under the recent topics and recent topics reduced to 15 rather than 20. This should put the top of the headlines above the fold.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

I think that this is agood idea.  I understand that it will look a lot like it did before, but now that there is extra space provided by moving the logo I think that the site will look nice.  

If noone objects I can make the move.