New 'Community' side bar on news articles
Printed From: Yachts and Yachting Online
Category: Your ideas for this website
Forum Name: Your thoughts for YachtsandYachting.com
Forum Discription: What do you think we should be featuring on YachtsandYachting.com
URL: http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7754
Printed Date: 25 Jun 25 at 9:23am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.665y - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: New 'Community' side bar on news articles
Posted By: Mark Jardine
Subject: New 'Community' side bar on news articles
Date Posted: 18 Apr 11 at 4:13pm
|
Hi all You've probably noticed some changes on the right hand side of news articles in the last couple of weeks. This has been a bit of an evolution to make the news articles more connected with Facebook, Twitter, the forum and the new calendar system. http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/?article=156549 - Click here for an example of this with most of the features enabled (GP14 Venetian Trophy). There are a couple more things I need to finish developing, such as making the results thinner when screen/browser resolutions are less, but it would be great to hear your feedback on what we've done so far. Right now I'd hope that anyone who isn't in an office though is out on the water sailing in this weather! It would also be great to hear if this is causing any problems on the browser / device that you're using. While I can test on all the major browsers and 'emulate' iphones and ipads using Safari, it isn't the same as testing on one! I'll try keep you posted here as the rest of the features are enabled. Cheers, Mark ------------- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't. |
Replies:
Posted By: ASok
Date Posted: 18 Apr 11 at 5:21pm
 Looks good. I'm running IE on the work laptop and Safari on the iphone and Mac. Even on the small screen of the iphone it seems to look ok. I had expected it to be a bit crowded.------------- |
Posted By: Mark Jardine
Date Posted: 18 Apr 11 at 8:05pm
That's great news - I'm test at the moment a piece of javascript that works out the screen width client-side and then can adjust what is displayed on screen depending on that. I think I'm going to try and leave the mobile browsers to it as they seem to do a very good job of scaling pages - the iphone and android phones are very good indeed at this. It's standard computers with screen resolutions between 800 pixels and 1024 pixels that I think I'm aiming to give a different view. I have two options for low resolutions:
|
Posted By: maxibuddah
Date Posted: 18 Apr 11 at 10:20pm
|
works ok on Chrome, android browser & opera mini6 on android. I think though it might be worth slimming it down width wise a little as the page wraps for the zooming in it over-powers the site and takes up too much real estate. I would have thought you could cut it down by a third. Also is it possible to change the font so that it fits in better with the overall site look & feel. At the moment I think that the font makes it look like a bit of an after thought rather than an integrated feed. Other than that its good and a welcome addition. ------------- Everything I say is my opinion, honest |
Posted By: Mark Jardine
Date Posted: 19 Apr 11 at 7:56am
I really like the idea of making a thinner version of the community side bar for smaller screens - we store photos at 800, 350 and 120 pixel widths so we could make a bar that is around 140 pixels wide. I'll have to see what I can do with the Twitter / Facebook feeds at that width. I really liked the font change for the side bar, as did those people I got feedback from when developing it. But I'd welcome more opinions on this. Maybe we should have a 'switch font' button! |
Posted By: furtive
Date Posted: 19 Apr 11 at 2:44pm
|
Rather than a side bar I get all the community "noise" first (across the whole width of the main page), then have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the actual article.
Mark - clicking your GP14 example link, below the Article header and a Speed Sails ad banner I can see in order:
An option to Like in Facebook
Photos from the event
Latest posts from the forum
Facebook comments
Future GP14 events
Twitter updates
Event report and results
Related news articles
On the basis that if I click on a report link I probably want to read the report, this isn't a very user-friendly development! I'm using Internet Explorer on Windows 7 Enterprise.
|
Posted By: Mark Jardine
Date Posted: 19 Apr 11 at 2:59pm
|
Hi Furtive, I'm guessing that you're using quite a browser / screen at around 1024 pixels for this to happen - could you try this link and see what it does? http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/?article=156549&width=180 - http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/?article=156549&width=180 This is why I'm detecting screen resolution and display a different community bar / thinner results table depending on the resolution. Cheers, Mark |
Posted By: furtive
Date Posted: 19 Apr 11 at 3:06pm
|
Hi Mark
Same outcome except the photo and the Twitter box are smaller...
|
Posted By: Mark Jardine
Date Posted: 19 Apr 11 at 4:15pm
Any chance of emailing a screen grab to mark@yachtsandyachting.com ? Also, which version of IE are you using? |