Improvement thoughts on ADCPortal

[Crise]

today, everything that is written here http://adcportal.sourceforge.net/forums ... hp?f=2&t=3, will be ontop of the news posts on the front page,
so just write it there and it will show.
isnt that the designated place for that generic information?

Yep, it is as I said earlier as well.

about the news posts i kind of agree, if it were possible to only show a limited number of chars on the portal and then link to the original post in the forum would make it more compact.

(lol, its easy to come up with ideas when one doesnt have to implement them )

Yes, but counting "words" is harder than it may sound... and you can't just limit by chars either, basically any automated limit on the news contents has these problems because the risk of splitting tags etc. in half is always there.

[Toast]

Looks like you all are brainstorming without me

a small status update from my side ill be back online in july with a new 100/100 mbit connection it seems so i hope ill see you all then until then have a nice start of the summer and take care ppl

[Pietry]

Good luck , Toast.
And it seems to me that the front page has changed a bit, not showing the full news.
Perhaps there should be a link on those dots to see he full news? Would be more suggestive for new comers.

[Crise]

Good luck , Toast.
And it seems to me that the front page has changed a bit, not showing the full news.
Perhaps there should be a link on those dots to see he full news? Would be more suggestive for new comers.

It's not finished yet, as I said limiting the news length is trickier than it may sound, I left the code 4am last night as it is now and so it is still not properly finished.

Edit: Now I think the text truncation is something acceptable (~90 lines of code for simple string truncation is way too much though).

Edit: There, now you got "Read More" links. Also it is possible to manually specify the cut off point instead if by wrapping the desired section from the beginning of the post in tags (dummy name I know) which is in fact much desired compared to letting it auto-limit as the automatic limiting is bit costly.

[Toast]

i liked poys recommendation for the front with the boxes, i understand Crise concern with boxed layout since IE is a "pain in the ass"

I still got a question about the design thou how far apart is standards between IE 7 and FF 2 - 3 and Opera since these are the browsers that matter fuck the older versions out there since we can put up a recommended browser list or something later on.

We dont need to support every browser out there but this part i let you guys to discuss what to support and dont support

a small personal update i got a new apartment from 1 july with a 100/100mbit connection (happy me) so everything that was taken offline will be back online as soon as i settle in, hell i even put some photos up for laughs its a simple 1 room apartment but it will do in the economic crisis but i dont mind cause its only temporary.

Ill drop in and out during june and i hope too hear from you all // Regards Toast

btw does anyone know how CyB is doing on the phishing filter for DCWatch ?

[Crise]

I still got a question about the design thou how far apart is standards between IE 7 and FF 2 - 3 and Opera since these are the browsers that matter fuck the older versions out there since we can put up a recommended browser list or something later on.

We dont need to support every browser out there but this part i let you guys to discuss what to support and dont support

Well they are about this far apart. IE8 can render the site quite nicely without that fix file included but IE8 is no means any kind of salvation because the layout for the main page is basic, so if we were to do something fancy at some point even IE8 would goof it.

I seriously have not had a look at this site on any other browser besides Firefox 3 in ages. I have simply exhausted my desire for design these days I don't even bother to think how the site would look good because I know that even if I did the brainstorming part and concepts I'd never actually do the layout.

At some point in time I used to enjoy designing websites a lot, though, I always stuck with the same basics. As of right now and probably for days to come when I look at this site, or any other site for that matter, I rather think of the functionality of the site and how could that functionality be best enhanced than the sites visual design.

In other words you could say that I have found my place as a web developer rather than a designer or a hybrid of the two (which is what I used to be), because even though I know how to create website layouts it just isn't for me because when I do it I feel like I get nothing but frustration (towards certain browser mainly) out of it.

Also just so for the record the present style on ADCPortal main site is not "deployment ready" in my book. In other words it is not up to my own standards. Basically I dislike how it looks but I can't force myself to make a completely new one because it would never be finished as things are now.

One obvious example of why the present style is "incomplete" or broken is the way how the tabs with their sharp corners clash with the rounded corners of the main container the tabs emerge from. Which is why poy's suggestion about them was spot on.

Now it looks like I have written a book, once again swaying from one thing to next and next. But I suppose one thing I want to say here is that if you really want ADCPortal to look good separating the web design aspect from the rest of the developement might be something to consider at this point in time.

People may think that doing such a thing is impossible but it isn't and that has been proven. phpBB's MVC, and the whole phpBB framework (yes there is one), is first rate which is what the site uses as well.

[poy]

to see how sites look in other browsers try <http://browsershots.org/> it's a nice new initiative i use it more and more.

about news cropping a div with a static size could have done the trick, though it's even neater if you've got it to cut between paragraphs. now how about the first news is shown in full, the 3 afterwards are cropped and for the rest there's only the title, nothing more. and to get fancy it could even be optional, like on <http://thedailywtf.com/>...

[Crise]

to see how sites look in other browsers try <http://browsershots.org/> it's a nice new initiative i use it more and more.

about news cropping a div with a static size could have done the trick, though it's even neater if you've got it to cut between paragraphs. now how about the first news is shown in full, the 3 afterwards are cropped and for the rest there's only the title, nothing more. and to get fancy it could even be optional, like on <http://thedailywtf.com/>...

Nice site but not exactly useful when testing, CSS hacks

About news cropping, a static div would have done it visually, but not for "real" (ie. we might want the same cropping in RSS, in which case that won't do). Paragraphs would have been nice but phpBB does not use those tags in it's output since they are bit tricky in regards to bbcode f.ex.

I'll look at that site in more detail

[Crise]

I hope you guys like the new menu and the dynamic width that comes as a bonus. For those who don't know this means that the site resizes according to your window/screen size, unfortunately though I had to set the minimum width to as high as 780px any smaller that that and the danger of collision between menu and login form is very real.

Unfortunately the old logo was way too big for this "new look" and I had to come up with something temporary. Also we really need something else on the front page it is little too wide for just news now.

[Pietry]

It doesn't look too well yet but I think it's a start. The logo needs refitting and perhaps some more elements on the top header.