Subject:
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Re: 2 Things...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Tue, 22 Jun 1999 21:22:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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411 times
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In lugnet.admin.general, Steve Bliss writes:
> General idea for the summary pages: There should be four links, not three.
> All, Brief, and Compact should change the way the current list-o-messages
> is shown, not go on to the next set of messages. Then there should be More
> (or Next and Previous) links to advance through the list-pages.
> It was frustrating to not be able to modify the view of the current data,
> without going to different data, and then back.
Great idea!
> The new view is somewhat busy for my taste. But I typically use a
> newsreader, not the web interface.
Could you be more specific about the word "busy"? (Don't worry, I can take
any/all criticism, constructive or not.) Do you mean that there is too much
stuff visually going on, or some of the elements are too "loud," or . . . ?
> - The 'brief' display format is somewhat confusing. I think I would have
> swapped the location of the newsgroup and the author.
That would be kind of nice, except the newsgroup list can be arbitrarily
lengthy, while names generally only run about 10-20 characters.
> Also, I find myself
> clicking the newsgroup link (when I'm trying to access the message),
> because it's the only visible (ie, underlined) link.
I had that same problem the first couple of days. I'd forgotten that,
thanks.
> I like the fact that it is consistent from page to page.
(that what is consistent?)
> - On the message pages, having options at both the top and bottom of the
> page is confusing. They should be all in one place, or maybe repeated
> (that would not be my preference).
I'm not sure I know what you mean. What options are at the top? Do you
mean the search box and the post-new icon? Would it help if the post-reply
icon were back up at the top?
> - The actual message should go from margin to margin, instead of having a
> limited width. The limited width is both irritating (more scrolling) and
> inconsistent (other elements on the page go from margin to margin).
It's not actually limiting the width; it's not not expanding it. That is
to say, the brief-mode view takes the article body and munges it up into a
single long string for quick context scanning. That can't really be done on
the full-article display because of the infinite variety of columnar ASCII
text that can be written.
> - Using the 'brief' format for the "message is in reply to" information is
> consistent, but it is also distracting, because it looks like a divider
> bar. Actually, the "message is in reply to" part isn't really necessary --
> that info is available through the thread-tree.
I don't disagree 100%, but what if the thread tree has 200 messages and
the little blinking star is three screens down? What if a new user has
absolutely no idea about what a thread is but understands the concept of
"message is in reply to"? That's really why it's there, plus a bit of
text-context to help out when some ignoramus posts a reply without quoting
any of the content from the previous article.
> - On the message page, one way to display more info about other messages
> in the thread would be to stuff the desired info in the ALT attribute for
> the node IMG tags.
Ahh, COOL! You normally can't stuff things into an ALT tag for normal
text links, but those are <IMG> tags, after all. And the LABEL attribute
of the <A> tag is hardly supported yet.
Unfortunately, although the thread display is very fast to generate because
it only accesses a single spot on the disk (the thread DB), it would have
to go access many more spots on the disk to fetch things like the article's
subject or author. It sure would be nice, though. Maybe someday if/when the
news articles are pulled out of the newsserver and stuffed in a fast general
DB, it could work that way. Or maybe in practice, even loading stuff off of
the disk files on the fly, maybe it isn't really that slow. Let me think
about it.
> Or use DHTML to display message summary info when the mouse
> flies over the message's node in the thread-tree.
Maybe someday when DHTML stabilizes and is widely supported...
> - On the thread-view page, my preference is a lines-and-nodes look (like
> the tree on the message page), not the bars-and-nodes look.
I really would've liked a thin-line display for that too, but it wouldn't
be possible without doubling or tripling the size of the HTML page generated.
So the bars-and-nodes look is the next best thing.
(Which thread-view page do you mean, BTW? There are three indented versions,
and the larger the content, less funny the bars feel, I think.)
> - Where's the link to the power-search page? ;) Seriously, throw up (errr,
> place) two links next to the search box: one for the Pause-search, one for
> the newsgroup-search.
You mean, give a link to
http://www.lugnet.com/pause/search/
or
http://www.lugnet.com/pause/
at the top of the homepage in the blue band?
> - It would be appropriate to have a link to the Traffic page on the
> navbar.
Hmm, what might be the icon/graphic for such a link?
--Todd
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: 2 Things...
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| (...) (URL) jam warning, actually) (URL) "slippery when road is wet") This site is great (if you know German) to find out what the meaning of Lego traffic signs is (weren't there "missile" and "fence" signs in previous Auczillas?) (25 years ago, 22-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: 2 Things...
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| (...) Basically, it's the brown headings *after* the message (they make me feel like I missed something *before* the message, because there weren't any headers up there). And the "Message was in Reply To", and "This Message has X Replies" sections. (...) (25 years ago, 23-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: 2 Things...
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| (...) General idea for the summary pages: There should be four links, not three. All, Brief, and Compact should change the way the current list-o-messages is shown, not go on to the next set of messages. Then there should be More (or Next and (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jun-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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