RR 4.0 is Live...

[txzeke]

Awesome!!

Great version of RR. Style and all works great on my Vista Laptop with a screen resolution of 1280 X 800.

I would think anybody having centering probs might be from a screen resolution less than 1024 X 768. Play with your display settings and see if that helps your web pages center. With a setting of 1280 X 800 on mine, all my web pages center just fine.

Great job on this new version Linds. AWESOME work.

Tim

 

[blantonl]

I take offense to your comments Lindsay. I happen to run a vBulletin forum which is exactly what you run here, so I guess my forum is equally complex. Since you find it appropriate to serve 6% of your customers by having a width specifically designed for them only, I will no longer continue to support your site or operations after my subscription expires. Apparently a paid customer has no right to complain about an annoying "feature" that serves 6% of your customers.

I always thought of you as an intelligent man, Lindsay but apparently I was mistaken.

So you've dropped a little Vbulletin installation on the net, you think you are the pro now.

Listen man, I respect and work actively with folks who give good feedback and objective criticism. If you think I made the design decisions of this site to serve myself, and actually saying that in the thread (wtf?), then you are only attempting to serve yourself and stroke your illusions of granduer because you were technically astute enough to install Vbulletin... and of course, that's all this site is anyway is the forums.... right? Sheesh.

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

 

[tonsoffun]

It can be changed to any color - but I'm thinking green looks ok... any other ideas?

After surfing around a bit, I like light blue you choose as it matches the other colours on the site.

The more I am in the database the more I love it!

Ron

 

[blantonl]

Since you find it appropriate to serve 6% of your customers by having a width specifically designed for them only,

And that's the funniest thing I've read today.

You know, there is this Web site out there that has over 100 million customers, and it's designed for browsers with 1024x768. It's called Facebook.

Let me guess, they don't know what they are doing either, do they?

 

[AtomicTaco]

Let me offer my two cents on resolutions. I know this is not a hard and fast rule, but a majority of devices manufactured have these specifications:

14.1" and 15" widescreen laptops sold in the past 3+ years have a native resolution of 1280x800 or higher.
17" standard desktop LCDs have a native resolution of 1024x768 or higher, with widescreen versions having an equal or higher width and possibly smaller height.
19" standard desktop LCDs have a native resolution of 1280x1024 or higher, with widescreen versions having an equal or higher width and possibly smaller height.

Any CRT made in the past 5 or so years can run almost any resoultion your video card can throw at it.

A look at the resolutions of my machines:
Laptop: 1280x800 or 2560x1024 when docked.
Secondary PC: 1280x1024.
Lab PCs I use often at school: 1900x1200
Mobile device: 240x320 or 320x240 depending on which orientation I use


As a web designer, I stick with 1024x768 as the base resolution. Technology has come a long way since the days of VGA, and a vast majority of the people have upgraded. I don't remember where I saw it, but one designer offered tips that I read once. One of his tips was "Design for X resolution, even though you know there might be people with lower resoultions browsing your site. They'll be used to scrolling anyways."

New monitors are cheap, and video cards are even cheaper. Upgrade. Seriously.

 

[K8TEK]

I never said I was a pro, I was just stating I am not a little script kiddie that uses frontpage. If you think the width is not an issue, set your resolution to something like 800x600 and see how annoying it gets having to scroll every time you want to read a response to a thread. It doesn't work and it is annoying. Apparently the width does serve you because you didn't think about others that actually use something less then what you set the width for. It is annoying and time consuming to access the site now. If you want to take what I said out of context and ***** about it, so be it... I could care less. Your site is an excellent source of information and it worked. The fixed width is an issue for some besides me too! That aspect of the update was a step in the wrong direction.

 

[K8TEK]

And that's the funniest thing I've read today.

You know, there is this Web site out there that has over 100 million customers, and it's designed for browsers with 1024x768. It's called Facebook.

Let me guess, they don't know what they are doing either, do they?

Facebook works for me at 800x600. The only scrolling I have to do is if I want to use the search feature. I don't have to scroll to read every single response to a topic.

 

[K8TEK]

Let me offer my two cents on resolutions. I know this is not a hard and fast rule, but a majority of devices manufactured have these specifications:

14.1" and 15" widescreen laptops sold in the past 3+ years have a native resolution of 1280x800 or higher.
17" standard desktop LCDs have a native resolution of 1024x768 or higher, with widescreen versions having an equal or higher width and possibly smaller height.
19" standard desktop LCDs have a native resolution of 1280x1024 or higher, with widescreen versions having an equal or higher width and possibly smaller height.

Any CRT made in the past 5 or so years can run almost any resoultion your video card can throw at it.

A look at the resolutions of my machines:
Laptop: 1280x800 or 2560x1024 when docked.
Secondary PC: 1280x1024.
Lab PCs I use often at school: 1900x1200
Mobile device: 240x320 or 320x240 depending on which orientation I use


As a web designer, I stick with 1024x768 as the base resolution. Technology has come a long way since the days of VGA, and a vast majority of the people have upgraded. I don't remember where I saw it, but one designer offered tips that I read once. One of his tips was "Design for X resolution, even though you know there might be people with lower resoultions browsing your site. They'll be used to scrolling anyways."

New monitors are cheap, and video cards are even cheaper. Upgrade. Seriously.

Easier said then done. This laptop cost me $3,000 new 5 years ago. It works for what I need it for and I refuse to buy a Dell or Gateway/Acer laptop. Lenovo would be the only consumer brand I would buy, but none of them come with a backlit rubber keyboard, a serial port or a touchscreen.

 

[crcarter]

There is just one problem, or glitch on my end. I am using Firefox 3.0.6 and I have to scroll left to right to see all the content of each page. Is it just me or is anyone else having the same problem?

I'm using the same version of Firefox and it displays fine. Might want to check your screen settings.

 

[blantonl]

I do like the nice clean look. I'm not a huge fan of fixed width designs, but it is what it is.

The only thing that bugs me is that it's now two clicks to get to the database. Could the menus be made to drop down on hover? And second, why the drop down boxes for each state, but normal in each county?

Takes 3 clicks to get to State Patrol or other statewide agencies but only one click to get to agencies in the county. I prefer the 1 click method, and it keeps the user experience uniform across the database.

I'm still tweaking some of the styles and user interface components, however the primary driving factor for design was to remove clutter and make the site easier to navigate.

There is a significant balance between satisfying the power users and the casual users.

Hundreds of clickable text links on a page was just poor Web design best practice on our part.

Over the next few months we'll probably roll out customization features for premium subscribers, such as display defaults (freq inputs, talkgroup types etc)

We're evolving folks....

Some of us that are still running 800x600 aren't though..

 

[n2hbx]

Love The New Look!

Great aesthetics! New version looks terrific! Keep up the good work.

Larry

 

[K8TEK]

heh, lindsay made a funny!

I hate 800x600 as much as you, but it is either that or 640x480.

 

[brandon]

Lindsay: As I said before the site looks outstanding. The fixed width is the way to go in my opinion and looks sexy on my 24 inch monitor Keep up the great work and don't let those complainers running 1995 technology detour you.

 

[blantonl]

Ok folks,

some of the new features:

1. Input Frequencies are now no longer displayed by default. There is an option on the left hand part of a county/agency page that allows you to toggle inputs on and off. We found these have caused significant confusion for new and casual users.

2. FCC County Listings now "remember" your last settings for each county...

...more to follow....

 

[Highpockets]

Lindsay,

I know your busy, when you have time (not real important), can you try to get the time of the posts on the Home page (Active Forum Threads) to match the time in the forums and posts, it's an hour off, it helps if you refresh the home page after you away from the computer for a while to see when the message was posted.

 

[blantonl]

For the technical folks, some of the changes we made to increase performance include:

1. Installed APC (Alternative PHP Cache) on the Web head to cache php compiles.

2. Lots of apache performance tuning

3. Lots of MySQL database tuning

4. Rewrote and optimized a bunch of legacy queries frankly which I can't believe I wrote in the first place.

You should see the site perform much better with these changes. The APC installation alone probably saved the day since we're seeing record traffic today.

 

[SCPD]

heh, lindsay made a funny!

I hate 800x600 as much as you, but it is either that or 640x480.

Dude, I'm not a fan of fixed-width, either... but you need need to let it go now. You have de-railed, and are coming off a tad bit odd.

 

[AlmostHandy]

Since you find it appropriate to serve 6% of your customers by having a width specifically designed for them only...

Rofl! Seriously?

What he said was...

6% of the users on the site run their computers under 1024x768 per Google Analytics - and that includes all the iPhone and Mobile Browsers.

That means that 94% of users are using 1022x768 and above! The 6% are the people using a resolution under 1024x768 (that's you).





And besides that, I'll also add; WOW, way to be supremely ungrateful for such a wonderful resource, just because it's annoying to scroll. How very petty.

 

[Tom_G]

A+

Lindsay,
The site looks great.
Well Done !!!

 

[poltergeisty]

Blue and white, skinny and tight. **pucks** Reminds me of some people in San Fran... :lol:

Just make it camouflage and be done with it. ROFL! Any chance of a red design? HEHE


Not a fan of the Mycrap or Facebroker approach either. LOL!


The only problem I have is that the buttons on top are not clickable. [Home Database Forums Wiki Classifieds Submit Info About] No Script is off. Will try in some different portable verssion of FF and SongBird.

The code looks flawless!


EDIT- Never mind... LOL! I had Radio reference in the untrusted section of No Script.
Now I hate the uss of JS in forums. Especially when this fancy text box pops up.