Dec 08 2012
We had a sniny new theme applied to all of freethoughtblogs last night…what do you think?
I already leapt in and overrode some of the default font choices, and a few other things (the change killed Mr Gumby! And Comic Sans! Don’t worry, I resurrected them.) If you have suggestions, I can make some tweaks by modifying the CSS, but I can’t do major rearrangements — so let me know.
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223 comments
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New England Bob
8 December 2012 at 9:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Since I see the posts on the RSS reader, I rarely go to an actual blog page.
tfkreference
8 December 2012 at 9:14 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thanks for the serifs! Much easier to read, since the text is is displayed smaller now on an iPhone.
bobbyearle
8 December 2012 at 9:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Looks decent, but something seems…off. I figured it out: there is no timestamp. Probably don’t really care about that too much, but I always notice these details. Still, I nice change.
Sili
8 December 2012 at 9:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The dates look messy. They’re left-aligned in their little box rather than centred.
Kristjan Wager
8 December 2012 at 9:21 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Looks like the changes made the killfile script stop working though. Hopefully the script will be updated.
Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it!
8 December 2012 at 9:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Killfile seems to be dead.
Also, it is different now! (Warning, TVTropes)
On the whole, I like it!
Ads are less obtrusive, loads faster. Less clutter.
chigau (無)
8 December 2012 at 9:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’d like a serif font in the comments, too.
opposablethumbs
8 December 2012 at 9:27 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Have to admit I really hate the new logo – makes us look like a steel manufacturer. Or maybe a builder, or a plumber. All of which are perfectly fine things to be, but don’t particularly suggest freethought or discussion or any of the great things people do around here.
.
Aaaand text in the compose-comment box is very small, quite a bit smaller than the OP or posted comments. And hush aka killfile is gone (for the time being – I heard it will be back at some point).
.
Otherwise … I like the main page colours (except for the red in the logo), and I like the colour contrast of comments and blockquoted passages.
I think maybe our avatars are easier to see now.
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And of course I still love it here; this just makes for another opportunity to say thank you!!!!!! for building this house.
chigau (無)
8 December 2012 at 9:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Alternating colours on the comments would be good.
otranreg
8 December 2012 at 9:29 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The view has gone much for the worse. Two things in particular make my eyes bleed on Firefox:
1) Why are the ‘Latest posts’ texts centred on the main FTB page?
2) Why is the space for the post so wide? It’s extremely inconvenient to read. Whoever’s made this change, check out a paper (non-pulp) book, and how they do things there and why.
Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it!
8 December 2012 at 9:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, a thing I have noticed: the FTB logo no longer appears in the title bar. Now it is just a little sheet of paper.
Or maybe that is just my computer.
PZ Myers
8 December 2012 at 9:31 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s not just killfile that broke…my old custom css doesn’t cope with the new classes defined here. I’ll be tweaking it over the next week…and getting the comment font consistent with the post font is kind of a good idea.
hyperdeath
8 December 2012 at 9:32 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Was the logo taken from a textbook about menstruation?
chigau (無)
8 December 2012 at 9:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I like the ‘Link to this comment’ feature.
Maureen Brian
8 December 2012 at 9:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Larger font is good. Preview doesn’t let me see whether I have my paragraph breaks in the right place before I press submit. Otherwise all is well for me.
Naked Bunny with a Whip
8 December 2012 at 9:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I like how the comment text now takes up nearly 2/3 of my screen width instead of 1/3, although it’ll take a bit to get used to it not being centered anymore. Not a problem.
The sans-serif font is very clean and readable.
I’m not seeing a problem with tiny text in the compose box, so maybe it’s a browser/OS-specific thing? I’m using Chrome on Ubuntu Linux.
latsot
8 December 2012 at 9:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Don’t you realise that change is bad?
jehk
8 December 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Shiny.
blogofmyself
8 December 2012 at 9:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
opposablethumbs:
No, see, it’s a metaphor for how PZ controls everything here. It looks like a machine because we are all robots executing his will. Though it at first appears that they’ve just updated the site, it’s really a way for them to admit that we are the borg-like robot servants of PZ, atheist pope. (Sorry Chris, we’re still working on your title.)
—
But in all seriousness, the new look is fine. It will take some getting used to, but there is nothing egregiously awful about it. It’s all very…shiny.
Pteryxx
8 December 2012 at 9:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
nitpick… the page doesn’t resize anymore. The sidebar doesn’t fit in my browser window and I have to scroll sideways to scan new posts, recent comments and the like. (Yeah I have a smallish laptop screen, but still.)
Scientismist
8 December 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not too shabby — but that huge ad that s l o w l y… crawls up the right hand side and obscures everything is harder to get rid of than ever. The dismiss button on it has always been hard to see, and the last thing to appear, but now it (the little gray-on-gray “X”) ends up 75% off the bottom of my screen (maybe browser-specific? Firefox on a laptop). Once I managed to click on that little bugger, the rest of the changes seem OK.
movablebooklady
8 December 2012 at 10:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The first thing I noticed on the Home page is that the post lead-ins aren’t centered under their banners. I’m not a fan of centering text, but if you’re going to do it, do it. I think the blue dot before the post title is superfluous. Why not flush left everything in the left column and flush right everything in the right column? That would give some nice negative space in the center. Also, readers are trained to work like typewriter platens, zipping back to the start from the end of a line — hard to do when the start moves (as in centered text).
Also, is “sniny” a new word? You’ve used it above, and Dana Hunter used it in her comment on the Steve Austin post. Or is it as I thought first, it’s just today’s typo?
I always vote for serifs for text; there’s good reason why they’re easier to read. You can do sans-serif for headlines, if you like.
Otherwise, I think the look is a little industrial and a little busy, but overall, not too bad.
otrame
8 December 2012 at 10:02 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
In general I think its fine, and I kinda like the new FTB logo, but can you put back the links to “last post” and “next post”? I use those a lot and makes getting to them one click instead of two.
Naked Bunny with a Whip
8 December 2012 at 10:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I was kind of hoping for a “Reply” button like they have at the Comics Curmudgeon, but that’s most likely a scripting change outside the scope of a style sheet update.
Thanks for keeping the colors neutral.
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie
8 December 2012 at 10:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Everything looks uncomfortably tiny to me and I’ve got Firefox. I’ve just zoomed in and it’s fine, though.
Also: I like how blockquotes look now.
chigau (無)
8 December 2012 at 10:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pteryxx #20
I can resize in FireFox and Explorer.
Might be your browser.
Naked Bunny with a Whip
8 December 2012 at 10:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@otrame #23: Aren’t those the links just above the article title?
Scientismist
8 December 2012 at 10:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Unlike Pteryxx @20, I was able to resize, as I always do, with control + scroll wheel — if I couldn’t, I wouldn’t / couldn’t be reading it at all. The new format woke up, for me, with that new “machine-like” FTB logo almost completely filling the screen, and I had to resize before I could even see the banner, and confirm that it was indeed Pharyngula.
Naked Bunny with a Whip
8 December 2012 at 10:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Mellow Monkey: I default zoom everything to 150%. I have, however, come across sites where the comment compose box text is still tiny compared to the rest of the page and absolutely refuses to zoom at all.
otrame
8 December 2012 at 10:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sniny is a word here (scroll down the alphabetical list).
otrame
8 December 2012 at 10:13 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ the Naked Bunny
Oh, yeah. They are small and I didn’t notice. That is find, then. Thanks.
opposablethumbs
8 December 2012 at 10:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ohhh, I see. That’s all right then.
It started off as a typo (by PZ, iirc), ages ago, and got adopted as a local meme. The Horde still like to keep their fangs sharp and their coats sniny by snacking on trolls, for example.
Audley Z. Darkheart (liar, scoundrel, college dropout)
8 December 2012 at 10:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The FtB logo burns my retinas!
Pteryxx
8 December 2012 at 10:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I didn’t mean resize *the text*, I can zoom it smaller and be unable to read it, sure. The 2/3 of the page with the comments in it doesn’t get narrower to fit the WINDOW width; instead it just pushes the sidebar out of the screen. (And yes it’s Firefox.)
montanto
8 December 2012 at 10:29 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m having resizing problems as well. But only with Firefox. It seems to be working all right with Safari and Chrome. Funny thing, While it still isn’t resizing it went down to a manageable size when I signed in.
Lou Jost
8 December 2012 at 10:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
On the FtB home page, the centering of the text in each line makes the post summaries much more difficult to read quickly (and those MUST be read quickly, since there are a lot of them and most don’t change from day to day). Please consider using ordinary alignment to the left margin, as in the blog posts themselves. The new centering looks like “change for the sake of change” rather than a consciously-thought-out improvement.
Beatrice
8 December 2012 at 10:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Font sizes changed or I just started getting used to this. Either way, good.
efiokmfeokpwe
8 December 2012 at 10:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I seriously don’t like the metallic look (hard on the eyes). Nor do I like the white “shadows” on the headlines. Nor do I like the boxes in boxes in boxes design, it just makes everything look cluttered and annoying when reading. Plus the site feels more sluggish/jerky than usual when scrolling.
I’d rather there was only one single colored background, white preferably or almost white. This is a blog, and blogs are mostly text, so stuff to keep it look less cluttered as possible should be a rule. I mean, imagine reading a book with a bunch of boxes around the text and you’d get frustrated reading very soon.
And the FTB-logo should be smaller, since it doesn’t really provide anything but taking up space.
uncleadam
8 December 2012 at 10:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I came over to see the news, but I read this on Google Reader, so the custom formats don’t matter to me.
By the way, please join our community on Google+:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/111179822253566656576
Martin Wagner
8 December 2012 at 10:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Fugly shit. I switched ours back.
Beatrice
8 December 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yay!
PZ, you know you want to do this too.
anbheal
8 December 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not seeing any apostrophes on the FTB main page.
chigau (無)
8 December 2012 at 11:20 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Would it be possible to change “Skip to comment form” to
“Read the all comments before you comment”
eigenperson
8 December 2012 at 11:23 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s mostly okay.
Some particular suggestions:
1. Get rid of the sans-serif font (used here only for comments, but on other blogs, sadly, used for everything). A serif font is easier to read, at least at this size.
2. Reduce the hugely jarring color contrast between the dark gray background and the white rectangle that contains all the content.
3. Fix unnecessarily wide spacing and inconsistent vertical alignment of items in the right sidebar.
4. Make the “preview” button actually look like a button (and give the “click this!” cursor on mouseover) so that people will actually click it.
Pteryxx
8 December 2012 at 11:23 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Comparing the AXP page with this page, side by side, *with the same zoom factor* and same window size – the columns in the old setup fit in my browser window, but the new setup pushes the sidebar halfway off. And I can tell, because ctrl-zooming changes both pages simultaneously. The old setup doesn’t push the sidebar off until two zoom factors larger than what I use for the old setup. Not to mention, the old serif font is easier to read at the same size, so I could click it down a size and still read it – but I can’t reduce the new one any further. The text I’m typing in this comment box is even smaller, but if I raise the zoom even one click I lose more than half the sidebar.
Also, the more I have to look at those comment dropshadow lines the more I hate them.
And what’s with the random serif- sans-serif fonts? Typing here is sans but my previewed post has serifs AND a larger font size? (Can I please publish the PREVIEW version’s font instead of having it de-serifed when I hit Submit Comment?)
Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden
8 December 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I would prefer the default to be FtB Recent in the “FtB Active/Recent” box.
Also, there’s no cursor in the comment box – what’s up with that?
unclefrogy
8 December 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
this change caught me by surprised me I had been reading at the time and refreshed and it changed I was momentarily disoriented but remembered a warning earlier so OK.
the change does highlight something about reactions though.
I want things to improve generally and am not nostalgic in the least and have been longing for “The Future” all my life but my first reaction “OH NO Its different!”
I guess that old guy in the mirror who stole my body’s is me after all.
“Fahword!”
uncle frogy
Nepenthe
8 December 2012 at 11:39 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Serif good. Sans-serif bad.
Pteryxx
8 December 2012 at 11:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Screenshots for comparison, same zoom, with images enabled:
New logo versus blog banners: http://imgur.com/CIBcz&c95Rv#0
New column width versus sidebar: http://imgur.com/CIBcz&c95Rv#1
freethinkercro
8 December 2012 at 11:49 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Using Chrome on a Windows box – There is an ad that pops up on the right hand side. But the “close” button is on the bottom and it goes below the bottom of the visible page. So I can’t close it easily.
islandstrust
8 December 2012 at 11:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I can handle the faux metallic stuff, but the logo is freaking me out. I keep seeing a tampon (same shape!), and the B looks like buttcheeks. Anatomical mayhem. Can’t unsee it. Like the iPad, was there a woman in the room when the logo was designed/approved?
Andrew T.
8 December 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Would it have been too much to tweak the variables by a few pixels so that the layout didn’t run off the right edge of the screen at a normal 1024×768 resolution?
fullyladenswallow
8 December 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I rather like the new banner area and logo design. The rest can stay the same, however. The San-serif looks to be too “wirey” for the amount of given white space and the column width seems a bit excessive- not quite as efficient to read.
I recall that PZ had put out a call for logo design submissions (more than a year ago?) Can’t remember if it was supposed to be a contest or not. Would be interested in learning the “winning” submitters name.
sadunlap
8 December 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
On the whole good. I like how the names of the authors are much bigger. On the old one they were tiny and I often did not know whether Chris or PZ wrote a given post.
Other, more cosmetic stuff I did not even notice until I read the comments. I guess my brain filters out unimportant visual information.
jaketoadie
8 December 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
About the only thing that I think I have an issue with on the new site design is the previous/next article links being only at the top of the article. If you can make it so that they are either at both the top and bottom of the article, or just move them back to the bottom that would make me as happy as can be.
hastur
8 December 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
On the whole I think the new design is nice but the go-to-mobile-view link at the bottom of the page is borken.
Rodney Nelson
8 December 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I for one welcome our new San-Serif
overlordstypeface.Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
8 December 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
For a minute there PZ i thought you took away the arrows on the scroll bar. Turns out it was an OS update *shakes fist at Apple*.
ah58
8 December 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The new look seems to be a bit more “in your face” than the old one, which seemed less obtrusive to me. I’m not sure how much of that is just that I’m not habituated yet. It’s certainly still usable for the, admittedly vanilla, things I do on FTB.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
8 December 2012 at 1:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It was a typo in a title of a post. People immediately loved it. So much so later in the day when PZ corrected his mistake, people protested and PZ changed the title back.
We are a strange bunch here.
But sniny. Very, very sniny.
consciousness razor
8 December 2012 at 1:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
-Putting everything in a giant white box isn’t a great way to start out. Try light gray, like the one around the comment box (maybe less blue-green) or another neutral color which isn’t so hard on the eyes. Everything else will pop out a bit less and won’t look so haphazardly thrown together.
-Move the list of FTB blogs down the page, below all the other stuff showing recent activity (comments and articles), which people look for all of the time. Better yet, use a drop-down list for that and put it wherever you want. It would make for less scrolling, things would look less cluttered, and they would be easier to find.
-The preview button could be spaced a little farther from the submit comment button. Right now it also blends into the background way too much. It doesn’t look like a button that people should use all the time to correct their whining about your blog, their incessant chattering and other useless drivel. (Also, this isn’t css and maybe it’s just me, but the preview button seems to be acting up more than usual.)
outeast
8 December 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Like it mostly (but then I really disliked the old look).
IMPORTANT BUT!
‘Earlier posts’ links are borked (at least for me; Firefox). Found the problem on Butterflies and Wheels, tried here and it’s the same. Pretty please fix? It’s an important functionality for those of us who don’t visit every day…
Jebus Is My Dog
8 December 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
outeast you beat me to it.
Clicking the older posts link at the bottom of the main page results in a 404 error.
A. Noyd
8 December 2012 at 1:55 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Like Crip Dyke, I want “FtB Recent” to be the default in the sidebar.
Also, I really don’t like the “link to this comment” deal. It’s more practical to keep the time and date as the hotlink to the comment like in the old setup. I use those links to keep my place when reading comment threads on my iPad so when I reload the page (or Safari crashes) I don’t have to scroll around finding my place again. I mean, it’s not a huge deal, but with the new theme, there’s the extra step of clicking the comment box itself just to get the hotlink to show up.
One thing I love is that I can once again search comments by number. Also, I like the positioning in the comments of the icons, names and times/dates, but it would be easier on the eyes if those elements were given a different and slightly stronger font than whatever you end up using for the comments themselves.
And if it’s possible to finally change the allowed HTML tags and attributes notice to something that people new to HTML could figure out without too much effort, that would be lovely. The best would be if the area below the comment box was reserved the basics for quoting, bold, italic, underline and strikethrough with a link to a page for more detailed explanations of what stuff does, the more advanced tags, and instructions on how to get symbols like < and > to show up in a comment.
A. Noyd
8 December 2012 at 1:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Errrm…. testing? (My last comment got eaten somehow.)
A. Noyd
8 December 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Just seeing if I can post from IE.
A. Noyd
8 December 2012 at 2:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Testing to see if I can post from the iPad…
gillyc
8 December 2012 at 2:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pterryx, I’ve got firefox and and a very small screen but zooming out fixed it once i’d unticked ‘zoom text only’.
Still don’t like it, though; much prefer how it was before. And count me in with the votes for a serif font.
strange gods before me ॐ
8 December 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It looks like we still lack Horde-accessible Comic Sans and Gumby. The old CSS is still available, but here’s the rules in case it gets overwritten:
q {font-family: "Comic Sans MS", MarkerFelt, MarkerFelt-Wide;}code + p + blockquote {background: url("http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2011/08/tiny_gumby_trans.gif") no-repeat scroll 0 0 transparent; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide;}
code + p + blockquote p {font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide;}
geocatherder
8 December 2012 at 2:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I don’t see the previous/next links at all, either at the top or bottom of the article. I miss them! Please replace. I use Firefox — I hope that doesn’t have something to do with it.
tccc
8 December 2012 at 2:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I think it looks bad. The while shadows look amateurish, as does the new logo.
I know someone spent a lot of time and effort on this, and I appreciate that. I would see about re-doing it though.
The previous look and feel looked more professionally done.
For what it is worth, I know I could not do any better myself, I have zero artistic or design talent, but like everyone, I know what I do not like.
chigau (無)
8 December 2012 at 2:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
geocatherder
The previous/next links are right under the topmost ad, in tiny grey letters.
chigau (無)
8 December 2012 at 2:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Although “This post has no tag” seems to mean that you can’t get back to it that way.
Lofty
8 December 2012 at 2:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Meh, I’ll get used to it in time. It’s the discussion that I come for, in any case. The width is OK for me as I prefer to read on a 17″ widescreen laptop. I’m sure there will be people unhappy with the new format but I can bear it. As for ads and Firefox, if you can afford to subscribe a few bucks to FTB, use Adblock Plus. It saves my sanity and half my download limit.
Cheers
Chris Clarke
8 December 2012 at 3:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
A possible downside of the wider comment divs is that I’ll have to spend time finding HD bunny videos for neutralizing trolls.
Chris Clarke
8 December 2012 at 3:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
More helpfully, it seems to mostly render okay in Chrome on Snow Leotard.
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 3:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I don’t like it, it’s just not a good design. Colours are bad, too many boxes (That’s fine if you’re running a page of ads and nothing else.) Font is tiny in the comment box, killfile is gone, gravatars are better on the right, and who in the fuckety fuck thought switching the position of the preview/submit buttons was a good idea? Preview first, submit second. Also, why is the preview button damn near invisible?
Nes
8 December 2012 at 3:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I haven’t read further in the comments yet, but Pteryxx’s complaint is why one should be using percentages for widths, not absolute values. It also doesn’t scale up if I decide to fullscreen my window, leaving a relatively narrow column in the center (roughly half my screen space is unused grey). Granted, having it fill a fullscreen window may not be desired, as text seems to be easier to read in narrower columns, but that’s what max-width (with an absolute value; and min-width to prevent shrinking the boxes too much) is for (though, of course, IE’s handling of it is buggy).
Alethea H. "Crocoduck" Kuiper-Belt
8 December 2012 at 3:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Logo=yuk. You cannot unsee the tampon. I liked the old blue one much better.
Sans-serif in big blocks of text (comments) = bad idea. Fonts are currently all mixed up and inconsistently sized.
White drop shadows on the titles in the right sidebar make me think I’m seeing double. Am I drunk? Am I wearing someone else’s glasses?
On the positive side, it’s good to have more width for the comments.
robro
8 December 2012 at 3:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pteryxx is correct. The design doesn’t appear to be liquid or flexible, as they say in web design. In other words, when you resize the window (or view the page on a smaller screen) the columns don’t shrink to accommodate the view area. Liquid, flexible design is considered de rigueur and ultra-important in this day of mobile devices with varied sizes and orientations.
I personally think the post and comment text is too wide. There are various numbers out there for the optimal width for easy reading: 50-60 characters, under 75, and no more that 100 characters in liquid designs on large displays. I’m not sure what these numbers are based on…probably heuristics.
Some of the fonts are fairly small for my tired, old eyes. I’m not a fan of serifs. I’ve read the rationales for their advantages, but I still find them busy. In print they are fine, but I find them harder to read on screen.
The shadow in the curve at the upper right of the logo box, where it merges in to the horizontal tab banner is awkward. It seems to bulge out near the top, and the bottom just cuts off.
Preview failed for me last night, but it just worked.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
8 December 2012 at 3:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ah, the Redhead likes bunnies. Time to start a collection.
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay
8 December 2012 at 3:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m sorry, but it’s awful. Change for change’s sake is exactly what it looks like:
1. The contrast between background and text has been lowered. For the love of Pete, WHAT IS IT with web designers doing this? It’s a *horrible* idea that makes reading hard.
2. The sans-serif fonts exacerbated #1.
3. The comment box is way too wide. It’s hard on the eye to scan so long a sentence horizontally. There’s a reason magazines and newspapers use columns, and it’s not because they don’t know how to do it any other way.
4. The front page of FtB has ugly centered text.
5. PZ, Pharyngula’s still massively overcrowded. One has to scroll through five screens to get to the recent comments section. Banners for things like A+ are massive and oversized. There’s just too much crap that demands to be loaded and looked at as obstacles before getting to the content one really wants to see.
I’m sorry to be so negative; I realize it sounds churlish. But every time we go through this it looks like no one bothers to listen to any of the reader feedback from last time and insists on doing exactly what people complained about.
Menyambal --- son of a son of a bachelor
8 December 2012 at 3:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I dislike the blue background behind comments. I’d take it if it were behind alternating comments, but would prefer white overall.
The sans-serif font in comments makes them harder to read.
The new blockquote is a bit overdone.
Yeah, the Preview button should be larger, and more like the default choice—I’d not go as far as requiring Preview before Submitting, but encouraging might help.
The new logo is bad. It just contains the letters F T and B, and has nothing inspiringly reminiscent of free-thought, atheism or logic—I dunno, a lamp, or a flaming sword of fire—but does look like a tampon to me now (dang whoever pointed that out).
This comment window is small. I’m using Firefox (with NoScript) and can just drag the lower right corner out to something workable, but not everyone can do that.
Speaking of the window, I like having the HTML tags right there—I think I asked for and got that, thanks—but I still have to fiddle with them. None have the / close tag, so I have to remember to insert that, by pasting again and typing, where a pair of open and close tags would be faster and surer. And the HREF tag doesn’t have the /a so I need to remember that. I’m finding it easier to copy from my own text file, or to type the HTML myself. And the abbr, acronym and cite tags elude me. So if you could improve the tags I’d appreciate it, or if you want to lose them I’d not complain.
Of course, if all you intend is to say that those tags work, I’m letting you know they could work better if I could copy and paste them a little more. Thanks.
One more fiddly-piddly: The comments come up with a left margin that puts them away from that side of my window. I need to scroll over just a bit to get all the text into a narrow window. I’m multitasking on an old laptop, and it’s space-deficient. I think others might have the same issue.
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 3:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also, preview sucks. Hard. It isn’t working properly.
A. Noyd
8 December 2012 at 3:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Testing yet again to see if I can get a comment through…
sheila
8 December 2012 at 4:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I like the bigger font, but could we please have the “Next post” “Previous Post” links a little bigger? It takes about three goes to click on them.
caveatimperator
8 December 2012 at 4:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Look at this comment thread. Do ANY of you actually have your own opinions? No, you’re just members of the FTBullies brigade, can’t even have your own opinions on something as simple as a site layout!
…eh, forget it. I can do a pretty good impression of creobots and science deniers, but I can’t get the MRA diction right.
natashatasha
8 December 2012 at 4:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
To quote my response to The Atheist Experience:
“The decorative banner at the top take up half the height of the screen (for some reason there’s a large amount of white space between banner and text), it’s not immediately clear who the author of a post is (if you’re new, or don’t know all the banners), and this information is only available half way down the page.
The author tab in the column should be swapped with the advertising one, so you can see who it is, and the white space below the banner should be removed. If those changes are made, I think most of the issues will be taste, rather than usability.
Oh, and the grey bar with “FTB”, “Privacy Policy” etc. up the top is awful at displaying correctly. Instead of terminating at the borders of the box it’s in, in some pages it will go to the edge of the screen, while in others it will terminate on the button’s themselves, leaving a giant gap in the massive header.”
Also, I find the new reply boxes irritating. Since most people have a lot more horizontal space than vertical, doesn’t it make sense to put the icon, name and date to the side of that person’s response, thereby diminishing the vertical space taken?
I find the sans-serif fonts harder to read, and I dislike the dark box behind comments; maybe if it were lighter and alternated between comments it would be better. Lastly I didn’t even notice the ‘preview’ button since it’s so small and the same colour as the background. And when I click ‘preview’, it seems to remove the double-spacing I put between my paragraphs, so here’s hoping that the actual post keeps it.
John Morales
8 December 2012 at 4:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I have no problems with the design, and I prefer sans-serif.
But yes, the combox font size should match the comment font, rather than being much smaller.
–
Caine, preview works fine for me.
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 4:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
John:
Depends on what you’re doing. In another thread, I inserted a link and used bold text and the preview was a hot mess.
frankb
8 December 2012 at 5:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I agree with Josh #76 and that moving ad at the top is the work of the devil. Pretty soon that ad is going to be drifting through my sight when I am away from the computer.
Chris Clarke
8 December 2012 at 5:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I actually wish the red part of the logo looked more like a tampon: we could claim it proudly as a Red Badge of Antimisogynist Courage or some such. As it is, it looks like the worst case of Applicator Fail I can imagine.
consciousness razor
8 December 2012 at 5:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The “author” part in the column on the side doesn’t change. The only way to tell if the author is PZ or Chris (here, for example) is by looking at the link opposite the title of the article. Or maybe by noticing Chris’ distinctively and suspiciously non-cephalopodian writing style.
Uhhh…. “It’s hard to find stuff or focus on what’s written here, because the design is awful” definitely falls under usability.
——–
While I’m at it, the little opening quotation marks in blockquotes look silly, take up space and add to the visual clutter, while serving no purpose whatsoever.
nms
8 December 2012 at 5:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
My feelings as expressed by a fluorescent lizard
catlover
8 December 2012 at 5:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Please put it back the way it was! Text in the Comments is much too wide — uses up almost the entire screen on my 18″ desktop monitor, and is thus very hard to read. And I have to scroll a lot to the right to see any of the blog names. I detest having to scroll. Also, I, too, get “Error 404 – Page Not Found” when I click on “Older Posts”. I like the font the Comments appear in. I don’t at all like the centered text for the blog summaries. I detest the new logo. The other one was nice.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — but it wasn’t broke, and you fixed it! :( Please — put FTB back the way it was!
Chris Clarke
8 December 2012 at 5:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
<stagewhisper>Excellent. They suspect nothing.</stagewhisper>
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 5:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Chris:
Yeah, sure, because us women don’t see enough tampons, right?
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay
8 December 2012 at 5:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If you’re using them right you shouldn’t see them much. Ladybrainz.
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay
8 December 2012 at 5:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Why am I not showing up?
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay
8 December 2012 at 5:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay
8 December 2012 at 5:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also, why do we have to type yet more characters for the blockquote html function?
Is there any possibility of a simple WYSIWYG editor?
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 5:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Josh:
You don’t. Regular blockquote markup works.
Chris Clarke
8 December 2012 at 5:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes, but the thing you fail to realize is, um,
Look! Over There! Condors!
*runs away*
se habla espol
8 December 2012 at 5:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Aha! I fixed a lot of the readability problems by using the NoSquint addon for Firefox. Now, with text zoom set at 145%, I can read the microscopic text font and get the sidebar on the same screen. That size is a bit big for comments and article text, but the comment-entry box is usable.
It doesn’t make the sans any easier to read vs a decent serif font, thought, nor does it correct the lack of contrast between the text and the background coloring.
The silly open-double-quote in a blockquote doesn’t take up as much space, since the blockquote text overwrites it (with my current settings). It does impede readability, though, having the silly stuff as background for the presumably interesting text. And the blockquotes show up in a decent serif font.
Now to try preview … No response to clicking the Preview button. … Let’s hear it for real-time debugging! It worked this time.
The preview appears in a decent serif font, but the comments (including, I trust, this one) are still in the crummy sans serif font.
se habla espol
8 December 2012 at 6:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oops, I was wrong. Even with NoSquint, the silly quote-mark in blockquotes still takes up space and adds nothing to the layout. It’s just nested blockquotes that use the readable (serif) font and overwrite the silly quotemark.
John Morales
8 December 2012 at 6:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
se habla espol:
Your aesthetic preferences contrast to mine; I find less clutter easier to read (and thus prefer sans-serif).
(How you find a lack of contrast between black and the palest of blues is beyond me, though, unless you have visual problems)
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 6:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hopeful test.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
8 December 2012 at 6:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Interesting.
Badland
8 December 2012 at 6:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Am reading this on an iPhone 5 and can’t see any way of scrolling between posts. Very vexing
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 6:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It won’t work for me, I’ll just have to wait.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
8 December 2012 at 6:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Caine, I left this in the lounge a few minutes ago. If this is what you are trying.
(blockquote cite=”creationist”)Comic Sans(/blockquote)
Rodney Nelson
8 December 2012 at 6:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
catlover #88
QFT!!1!ONE!!
flit
8 December 2012 at 6:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“Older Posts” doesn’t work anymore and takes me to a 404.
On Chrome.
magistramarla
8 December 2012 at 7:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
For some reason, reading the comments on that blue background gives me a headache.
I had to stop to sleep off a headache this morning. Now that I’m here again and reading comments, the headache has returned. I hadn’t realized that there was a connection until now.
This is going to make reading my favorite blogs difficult.
Oh, and I much preferred the old FTB logo.
A. Noyd
8 December 2012 at 7:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Testing to see if I can post yet…
carlie
8 December 2012 at 7:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Something about the new layout seems to make the ads pop out more, and it’s not a good thing. On mobile the whole thing actually looks pretty good, but on my laptop, if I just call up the blog, what I notice and in what order is:
1. FTB logo, which is too damned huge
2. a banner ad
3. a sidebar ad
4. the blog banner, which I first mistake for another ad
5. whatever is the newest post
This seems to me to be very suboptimal. The first impression is that it’s a site that has lots of ads, and I have to search for content. I know you have to do advertising to stay afloat, but the amount they dominate the top of the page is really distracting. If the sidebar ad was moved down and switched with an actual content box (like recent posts or something), that would at least help the first thing you see to be more content-dense.
Also, those ads on the side that scroll with you had better pay a hell of a lot, because there’s little I hate more than ads that move with me and block all the links I’m trying to use.
carlie
8 December 2012 at 7:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, also, I liked it when the comment boxes alternated shades (barely); it made it easier to read.
John Morales
8 December 2012 at 7:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
magistramarla, most browsers have ways and means for removing backgrounds from webpages.
comfychair
8 December 2012 at 8:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
DO NOT LIKE all the posts being shortened to little snippets; I know some blogs here did it that way before, and I tend to read less of their content because the snippets aren’t always persuasive enough to make me wanna click through to another page and read.
I used to check Americablog once a day, and it was nice to scroll down reading everything until I got to the last post I read on the previous visit. They redesigned the site to something ‘new’ and ‘hip’, and suddenly all the stuff I was happy to read before was no longer interesting when reduced to a headline+blurb, and so I stopped reading. Eventually deleted the bookmark, even.
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 8:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yay! We have alternating comment colours.
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay
8 December 2012 at 8:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
John, this thread is about what people think of the code being served up, not about how they tinker under the hoods of their own computers. You just can’t resist being a jerk, can you?
John Morales
8 December 2012 at 8:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
[meta]
Josh @112, is your comment is about what people think of the code being served up?
(Seeking to be helpful is jerky, but complaining about that is not?)
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
8 December 2012 at 8:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
APPLESAUCE…Er applause. ;)
PZ Myers
8 December 2012 at 8:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
OK, I’ve been poking around to try and fix a few things. A few remarks, though.
1. This is the new design. I’m not going back, because the old design was hideous — you all just got used to it. You’ll get used to this one, too. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to adjust it so it looks better.
2. I like the logo — to me it looks like a hammer, and nothing like a tampon. Are you people sticking hammers up your hoo-has? It is too large, though, and that will require nagging the techie to adjust, I can’t fix it in css.
3. Column width is a problem — the old one was 500px wide, which was about right. It’s too bad we didn’t go to a fluid css layout in this version. That’s not hard to do, I had it on the old pharyngula.org site, so I don’t know what happened here. I could artificially narrow the column by adding white space to either side; would that work? Too clunky?
4. The css has a lot of layers I’m struggling to wade through: some things are just weirdly refractory to being overridden. I haven’t yet been able to change the comment font. I’ll keep noodling around.
5. I will get rid of the ALL CAPS titles and white shadows on the right sidebar, eventually.
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay
8 December 2012 at 8:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Seemed to me you were snarking and suggesting mm should take care of the problem herself and not bother complaining. I apologize if I read that wrong.
SC (Salty Current), OM
8 December 2012 at 8:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I don’t like that the default seems to be “FTB Active” rather than “FTB Recent.”
poose
8 December 2012 at 8:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Minor issue-
The annoying “floater” ad on the right side renders on my screen as just slightly too big that I can tell it to get lost ( [X], lower rh corner)
I had to click on the ad and THEN kill it.
Firefox, latest edition, netbook with screen resolution set at 1040 x 600.
Other than that-like the new look. And yes-NO COMIC SANS!
(Horrors, the horrors…)
Chris Clarke
8 December 2012 at 8:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
That was suposed to be a PRIVATE piece of information.
poose
8 December 2012 at 9:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also-
PZ-you’re not standing out (would that be outstanding?) any more. The background of your comments is the same as all else.
I liked it in the past when an author’s comments stood out from the background. Yeah I know F “PZ”, but it was better in the past when God came home and slammed the door on a troll-you looked forward to it!
(and re: my last comment? I meant it to infer that COMIC SANS is an integral part of the pharyngula experience, would be missed if inadvertently deleted, and the statement should have terminated with a “?”.
Sorry.)
Rawnaeris, FREEZE PEACHES
8 December 2012 at 9:09 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thank you for nixing the blue, as the orange boarder around it was painful. PZ, yours still has that orange.
Please give us our serif font back.
Another voted hatred for the floating ads. On my tablet and phone. If I try to zoom in, they just get so big as to cover up all the content. Also, the close box rarely works first click.
Jafafa Hots
8 December 2012 at 9:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Do not like.
On the front page, only two recent stories appear for each blog, and you have to scroll like hell to get down the page.
The comments?
Ugh. Will add about an hour to scrolling through a 200-comment post. Each comment is way too large, has too much space around it, and the sans serif?
Already I’m going crosseyed.
Won’t be reading any comments threads formatted like this again. Just can’t deal with it.
Oh well. There’s no fighting the iPadification of the internet. Everything is going to be oversized, each page will contain less actual content from here on I guess.
I hate what they did to all the Google stuff.
Touchscreens need to burn in digital hell.
Menyambal --- son of a son of a bachelor
8 December 2012 at 9:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It doesn’t look like a hammer to me, but that would be excellent. Thor, iconoclasm, swords into plowshares … yeah!
Thanks for working on this site, PZ. And thanks for having it.
Me:
italics
underline
strikeRawnaeris, FREEZE PEACHES
8 December 2012 at 9:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
….And I hit “submit” instead of “preview.”
I don’t like the centered font + the bullet on the main page.
I also see the tampon in the logo. It’s one of those things where you might not see it right away, but once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
I still don’t get appropriate line spacing in between paragraphs.
PZ Myers
8 December 2012 at 9:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, look. Serif font for comments. Progress!
poose
8 December 2012 at 9:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Admin issue:
I looked at the changes, wanted to make a recommendation-no link. Anywhere.
Either I’m daft, blind or you might have missed something here…
You need a general link for site issues. I’m sure you know this but may have missed it in beta.
poose
8 December 2012 at 9:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
okay-better, but…beige? with red text?
eww…
AJ Milne
8 December 2012 at 9:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thanks. Great. Now, see, you wrote that, and now I look at the logo, and what I see is…
Well, let’s just put it this way: it sorta puts me in the mind of the porcupine suggestion/invitation of yore. Except with hand tools.
(/… which isn’t all bad, I guess. Could come across as a sorta subliminal warning to trolls, too: ‘This graphic is an iconified representation of a cross-sectional view of the posterior of the last wanker who tried socking to whinge about the dungeon in which he was already justly ensconced, after said ruse was discovered… Bear this in mind.’)
theophontes (坏蛋)
8 December 2012 at 9:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Is there any way to make this a little more subtle. Perhaps too much emphasis when a small indent (for example) would do. There is still a lot of noise (trivial items overemphasised … such as blockquotes and comment headers (can’t they just be squished flat rather than hogging space?) – rather focus on the comments themselves…
Ag, I shall just have to get used to it… :(
Caine, Fleur du mal
8 December 2012 at 9:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Theophontes, it’s *way* better than it was earlier. Just be glad you didn’t have that shock to your system.
nms
8 December 2012 at 9:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Readability has much improved since last night.
PZ Myers
8 December 2012 at 9:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ll see what I can do about the blockquotes tomorrow. It ought to be easy to strip out that colossal ‘“‘.
magistramarla
8 December 2012 at 10:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes! The alternating colors and the font is much easier on the eyes.
Thanks, PZ
John Morales
8 December 2012 at 10:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
… and I see PZ’s comments once again stand out properly.
(Progress is evident)
A. Noyd
8 December 2012 at 10:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Arrrgggh, can I post yet?
John Morales
8 December 2012 at 10:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ, you may wish to disable comments on the ‘twitter’, ‘about’ and ‘advertise’ posts accessible via the top menu bar.
(I see chigau has noticed! ;) )
John Morales
8 December 2012 at 10:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
… and ‘privacy policy’, too.
Menyambal --- son of a son of a bachelor
8 December 2012 at 11:13 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ, it is looking a lot better. Thanks again.
The font in this comment box is still small and harder to see that the comments once done.
A small whine: Once I click into a post, I tend to hit the End button on my keyboard to jump to the bottom, then page up to the end comments. Right now there’s a couple of large greyish bars down at the bottom of the page, and they make me jumpy.
A little less piddly: Does anybody use those three “Notify ..” checkboxes that I see below the comment box? The two for followup comments seems particularly useless since we don’t reply to comments. If that’s just to get notes for new comments on a dead thread, I just bookmark the thread, or my last comment.
Wholly frack—I just clicked on that “subscribe” link to find out waht subscribing is, and now I can’t unsubscribe.
johnfraser1
9 December 2012 at 12:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
you saved comic sans…that’s enough.
chigau (無)
9 December 2012 at 12:18 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
John Morales
You betcha!
If I had a Real Job™, that level of obsession would be more difficult.
—-
I do not see ComicSans in the comments.
rorschach
9 December 2012 at 1:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not to be difficult, but the fonts have since last night gone from extralarge to supertiny. Reading now gives me a headache from the strain on my eyes. I’ll try a script for Firefox now to adjust the font size and/or zoom, but it’s not ideal.
John Phillips, FCD
9 December 2012 at 1:09 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sorry PZ, but that logo is both oversized and horrendous. So much so that it makes the old one look like an award winning design in comparison. I can see half a dozen hammers on my workshop wall, from a pin hammer to a 4lb sledge and not one of them looks remotely like your T.
The only other real quibble is the size of the previous/next post link at the top being far too small. Plus it is too close to the bottom of the banner ad to guarantee accurately touching it first time on my 10″ Xoom. I got round that with adblock removing the banner ad but it shouldn’t be needed.
Other than that it looks OK using Opera Lab 12 on my Xoom using the full site view rather than the mobile view. Though being fussy, I would prefer the lighter grey used at the bottom of the page to replace the darker grey used on both sides of the page.
chigau (無)
9 December 2012 at 1:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
All that Several Shades of Grayscale at the bottom occupies a full screen on my netbook.
Caine, Fleur du mal
9 December 2012 at 1:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Chigau:
You need to have ‘secret Comic Sans’ in greasemonkey.
Alethea H. "Crocoduck" Kuiper-Belt
9 December 2012 at 2:14 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well, it’s improved already. Fonts & colours looking better.
There’s something wrong about the header, though – everybody’s banners look kind of small and wrongly aligned somehow. Maybe it’s the big-ass tampon-onna-stick logo? Or is that big ass-tampon-hammer? Whatevs. Anyway, I think I expect banners to be bigger than logos.
DLC
9 December 2012 at 3:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The fonts that comments show up in is much better. Could you possibly shift the Next/Previous links to under the articles like it was before ? or at least make them a bit bigger or bold or underline them ? Something to make them a bit more noticeable. Thanks.
Beatrice
9 December 2012 at 3:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It looks much better today.
Could you please do something about the Preview button? It’s nearly invisible.
Beatrice
9 December 2012 at 6:23 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Another thing about preview:
It doesn’t show the link where I put it, but at some seemingly random place.
Pteryxx
9 December 2012 at 7:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thank you PZ for the font and color changes! Much less headache-inducing now.
Seconding this. FTB Recent is my primary means of navigation around FTB. (And, with the overly wide comment column, I have to side-scroll to reach the tab to click it.)
brucegee1962
9 December 2012 at 7:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The toggle between “FTB Active” and “FTB Recent.”
It used to be that once I had clicked on “FTB Recent,” it stayed toggled to that every time I logged on.
Now I have to click on it on every page I visit.
Very annonying.
Pteryxx
9 December 2012 at 7:36 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oo, something GOOD about the new style: Comment numbers are now part of the comment instead of illusory, so they can be searched and copy-pasted and all that good stuff. SWEEEET
Banned Atheist
9 December 2012 at 7:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Nice! Very clean still, but the wider layout means more text per screen view.
@Sili (#4) mentioned the date formatting. To fix just override .post .date { padding: 0 0 4px; } like this:
.post .date { padding: 0px 4px 4px 4px; }
For the “Preview” button illegible text, just change the font color like this:
input#acp-preview { color: #BCBCBC; }
To get rid of blockquote image (giant ” ) just do the following (you might want to adjust padding after):
.blockquote { background: none; }
FireBug is your friend.
Banned Atheist
9 December 2012 at 8:07 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Couple more CSS tips:
Tighten the shadow on the 1st letter drop cap:
p.lead:first-letter { text-shadow: 2px 2px #AAAAAA; }You don’t need the top border on the posts — just the bottom one:
.post { border-top: none; }Get rid of the bullet next to “Preview” comment:
ul.commentlist { list-style-type: none; }Banned Atheist
9 December 2012 at 8:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
OOps… one more: the white space background around tabbed widget titles (‘Recent Posts’, ‘Recent Comments’, etc.) is … er … ugly. Would be better if the background went to the edges on top and sides. How to do this when the h2 tags are inside a div? Use the fact that margins can be negative.
Like so:
div.sidebar h2 {margin: -5px -10px;
padding: 5px 10px;
}
carlie
9 December 2012 at 8:39 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Looking much better now in the comments, thank you.
Banned Atheist
9 December 2012 at 8:46 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
OOOps. Just one more. I swear. :D
To change the font here in the comments field, just override:
#commentform input, #commentform textarea { font: 12px serif; }Or whatever font you want instead.
Are you using WordPress Jetpack’s CSS editor? Sometimes it inserts too early to override, depending on the theme or plugin. You might have to use the theme’s custom CSS editor for some stuff. I had that problem with Suffusion a couple times.
Banned Atheist
9 December 2012 at 8:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Heheh. “Touchscreens need to burn in digital hell.”
I’m with you. Such a fad.
Snoof
9 December 2012 at 11:11 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Individual comments have timestamps, but blogposts as a whole do not. Is it possible to get them included somewhere, perhaps under the header?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
9 December 2012 at 11:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Run your mouse over the date of the post. Up pops the time.
Snoof
9 December 2012 at 11:21 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
…oh.
That little box next to the post title isn’t the kind of decorative graphic I instinctively ignore. It actually carries useful information, like time and date.
*feels embarassed*
Well, thanks anyway.
(Although I note it’s not present on all blogs. I guess that’s up to the preferences of the blogger.)
A. Noyd
9 December 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Testing to see if I can post again…
quirkeegurl
9 December 2012 at 12:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I second comments 20 and 21. Both are happening on my PC. It would be great if they could be corrected!
quirkeegurl
9 December 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
P.S. otherwise love the new look, including the new logo/header style
quirkeegurl
9 December 2012 at 12:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
P.P.S. Here are comments I refer to above:
20
the page doesn’t resize anymore. The sidebar doesn’t fit in my browser window and I have to scroll sideways to scan new posts, recent comments and the like.
21
that huge ad that s l o w l y… crawls up the right hand side and obscures everything is harder to get rid of than ever. The dismiss button on it has always been hard to see, and the last thing to appear, but now it (the little gray-on-gray “X”) ends up 75% off the bottom of my screen (maybe browser-specific? Firefox).
A. Noyd's Alt
9 December 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Seeing if logging in with a different account allows me to post…
A. Noyd
9 December 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Seeing if posting with addons disabled will allow my posts to show up…
Banned Atheist
9 December 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@quirkeegurl (#162 & #21) – Try one of these ad block add-ons… they work like a charm and make the Internet a better place (for web surfers, that is):
For Firefox
For Chrome
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
9 December 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No need to. PZ never mentioned it, and I discovered it by accident.
Rawnaeris, FREEZE PEACHES
9 December 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So, the “older posts” link is borked, and I can’t seem to find the archives.
Did they *poof* or am I blind?
Caine, Fleur du mal
9 December 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The preview button is now close to invisible. The preview button needs to be as visible as the submit button and they are still on the wrong sides. Preview first, submit second, please.
consciousness razor
9 December 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Archives are linked in the same place as Recent Posts, which is above the FTB Active/Recent posts and below the FTB blogroll.
consciousness razor
9 December 2012 at 1:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also, older posts seems to work okay for me. It got to page two and three, at least.
brucegee1962
9 December 2012 at 2:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I used to have my bookmark go to Pharyngula; I’d check that out first every day, then use the links on the right-hand side of the screen to look at what was new on all the other FTB blogs.
Now, a creeping Pimsleur language ad completely covers the right-hand side of my screen, so I can’t look at the “FTB Recent” links. And the “X” to close the ad is just off the screen, so there is NO WAY TO GET RID OF THE STUPID THING!
I guess the upside is that I can learn a new language in 10 days, maybe?
Joerg
9 December 2012 at 4:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I wish the new theme was responsive – meaning able to resize with screen size automatically. That would make it readable on mobile devices, something you can’t neglect anymore. At least I read a lot on my phone now, with a long commute. I really wish a new theme to support that!
Caine, Fleur du mal
9 December 2012 at 4:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Joerg:
Yes, this is a major problem. I loaded Pharyngula on my eeny teeny netbook last night and yikes.
Caine, Fleur du mal
9 December 2012 at 4:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If possible, could you get rid of the auto-indent? That’s annoying as hell and makes posts look seriously fucked up.
Hershele Ostropoler
9 December 2012 at 6:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m glad the timestamps are back, I was looking at Greta Christina’s archives yesterday and it was really disorienting not knowing when things were from.
Bill Dauphin, avec fromage
9 December 2012 at 6:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Fascinating. I gather much about the new look has been “fixed” between the time it was rolled out and when I stumbled across this post a few minutes ago, but I very much like what I see now: It looks cleaner and sleeker than the old design. Interestingly, I think I like it because it looks different… which is the flipside of the “they changed it and now it sucks” trope alluded to upthread. Go figure, eh?
As for the logo, I’d been seeing the “new” logo in my Facebook for a while now… more often than I was seeing the old one, since I haven’t been spending much time on the site. Side by side, I think the new one is much crisper and more professional looking. And I agree with PZ: I see a hammer, not a tampon. Mostly, though, I see a T. YMMV.
And now, back to my hole….
sqlrob
9 December 2012 at 6:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’d be nice if the front page had 3-4 of the most recent articles per blog instead of two.
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie
9 December 2012 at 7:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Go home, preview button. You’re drunk.
(I assume this one is in the process of being fixed.)
chigau (無)
9 December 2012 at 7:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Caerie
Seconded.
That was some Bad Shit Preview took.
chigau (無)
9 December 2012 at 8:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Chris Clarke should have something other than an octopus in his comment when he comments on his own threads.
Pierce R. Butler
9 December 2012 at 8:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I suspect the transition caused my episode of log-in problems (that went away after about an hour of lurking).
Biggest disappointment encountered so far: the “FTB Active/FTB Recent” sidebar tabs show only 6 posts. I’d prefer, say, 26.
That gray-n-red logo uses a perfect color scheme for horror movies. However, the shape of the “T” will surely tip off a few sharper-eyed hyperchristians about the FTBorg’s direct line of descent from the Bolsheviki – before we’re ready to strike! We don’t want them wondering where we hid the sickles…
A. Noyd
9 December 2012 at 10:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Seeing if I can post yet or if my posts are still getting eaten…
Beatrice
10 December 2012 at 2:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yay, preview button is visible now.
Still, it messes with links, showing them in some random place between the text instead of where they appear in the comment.
Tuválkin
10 December 2012 at 3:27 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So, TFB is a new place where “we” can do whatever we want away from mean overlords and yet bigcat #2 cannot ever have a say about design? That sucks.
It sucks twice as much, too as PZ’s own adaptation of the Sb theme looked much more proffessional than what they changed to later, than most other Sb-ers had (main font size, e.g.) and the so far three (?) FTB skin iterations — which frankly look and feel really clumsy and amateurish.
A suggestion? Scrap it all (designwise) and go get what PZ had at Sb: Serifed fonts for content, balanced whitespace, discrete touches of class (drop shadow in titles!) and all that.
(After previewing this comment:) WFT? In-line A-tags get floated left and restyled by CSS?! WTF, really?! What kind of clowns are doing this “webdesign” work?! PZ, you’re a guy who knows and values these things: Go bang on their desk, as this is objectlively broken, instead of mocking us for fearing change.
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 4:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Clicking on one’s nym in “Logged in as [nym]. Log out?” leads to http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/wp-admin/profile.php which is a restricted page that throws an error. It should lead to http://freethoughtblogs.com/wp-admin/user/ or http://freethoughtblogs.com/wp-admin/user/profile.php
John Morales
10 December 2012 at 5:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What ॐ wrote, though it was already broken before, IIRC.
(Now also accessible via the right menu pane via “FTB Access: FTB Dashboard”)
bradleybetts
10 December 2012 at 7:10 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Any chance you could add Previous and Next links at the bottom of the post? It just makes things so much easier, especially when it’s a long post. Scrolling all the way back to the top is a PITA.
bradleybetts
10 December 2012 at 7:12 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also, reply buttons, please. Much thank.
travisdykes
10 December 2012 at 9:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
IDK if anyone else made this comment already or not, skipped to the end after the first 100 comments or so, but would be nice to have the link to the next and prior blog posts be a little bigger, a color that stands out a little more than light grey on white, and maybe located at the bottom of each post as well as the top so its easier to move through as you read them.
chigau (無)
10 December 2012 at 11:17 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Have you noticed that when the number of comments in a thread exceeds 1000 the
“XXX comments”
above the first comment on the page gets stuck at
“1 comments”
eveedream
10 December 2012 at 11:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Love it
eveedream
10 December 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Love it (looks like I missed all the serious problems). Clean. Much easier to read on my iphone.
Not a tampon. I see the hammer, but overall I think accenting the “T” that way makes it look a bit like a messed up cross. Kinda bothers me (but we’ll all live).
eveedream
10 December 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hmm. Looks like my comment posted itself without warning then let me keep typing. That’s weird.
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 2:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve updated the killfile: http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Greasemonkey
+++++
BTW, does anybody still have a copy of Daniel Martin’s last update to his killfile (the one that worked back at ScienceBlogs)?
Not the 2009 version at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4107 — obviously I can still get that one — but the updates that were pushed out from http://snowplow.org/martin/greasemonkey/killfile.user.js ?
It might still be in your Firefox profile folder. If you’ve got it, could you upload it somewhere for me? I suggest zipping it and uploading to https://anonfiles.com/ if you don’t have another preference.
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve updated the killfile: http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Greasemonkey
+++++
BTW, does anybody still have a copy of Daniel Martin’s last update to his killfile (the one that worked back at ScienceBlogs)?
Not the 2009 version at userscripts.org/scripts/show/4107 — obviously I can still get that one — but the updates that were pushed out from snowplow.org/martin/greasemonkey/killfile.user.js ?
It might still be in your Firefox profile folder. If you’ve got it, could you upload it somewhere for me? I suggest zipping it and uploading to anonfiles.com if you don’t have another preference.
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 2:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
test
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 2:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ, can you please whitelist pharyngula.wikia.com again?
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ, could you please whitelist pharyngula dot wikia dot com again?
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve updated the killfile: http://tinyurl.com/7e6xqa2
+++++
BTW, does anybody still have a copy of Daniel Martin’s last update to his killfile (the one that worked back at ScienceBlogs)?
Not the 2009 version at userscripts.org/scripts/show/4107 — obviously I can still get that one — but the updates that were pushed out from snowplow.org/martin/greasemonkey/killfile.user.js ?
It might still be in your Firefox profile folder. If you’ve got it, could you upload it somewhere for me? I suggest zipping it and uploading to anonfiles.com if you don’t have another preference.
Beatrice
10 December 2012 at 3:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Argh, killfile not working for me.
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Beatrice: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/05/thunderdome-11/comment-page-1/#comment-509086
Crissa
10 December 2012 at 3:41 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
‘Older Posts’ link isn’t working for me; Safari 5.1.7, OSX 10.6.8; but what it does do is send me to a page searching for a 404 and retrieves a page about genetics in the search results.
The base page is wider than my window. Why? I don’t know. But it’s annoying. I’m not a fan of windows with huge amounts of whitespace on the side and columns that don’t resize.
There’s no white space between posts which is busy and somewhat confusing. There’s more space between a post and its comments link than between it and the next post, or the comments link and the next post – bad layout.
There’s lots of extra whitespace between comments which is unnecessary. There’s a two-line space at the bottom and top and the number, name, and date/link are on different lines for no reason. I liked the hanging paragraph format better, although this puts the number in the comment so it can be copied, that’s a plus – but the number, name, link and icon have no reason not to be on the same line.
Aside from the overloading of the left side which makes the few links on the right kinda lopsided, and too much whitespace in the logo making the blog title seem awful small in comparison, my complains are mostly usability.
freethinkercro
10 December 2012 at 5:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
For those getting a 404 error for the “Older Posts” link. The link should be http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/page/2/ The link given has an extra pharyngula.
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
10 December 2012 at 6:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Scratch this request:
BTW, does anybody still have a copy of Daniel Martin’s last update to his killfile (the one that worked back at ScienceBlogs)?I got it now. His website was only down temporarily today.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
11 December 2012 at 7:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Trying to access my profile to change my display name and…
What the HELL? O.o
Kagato
11 December 2012 at 7:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The problem CSS rules for links in preview are as follows,
in /pharyngula/wp-content/themes/ftb-theme/style.css?ver=3.4.2 :
#div-comment-preview span.comment-link {
float: left;
}
.comment-link {
float: right;
margin-left: 20px;
padding-top: 5px;
text-align: right;
}
.comment-link a, .comment-link a:visited {
font: 18px arial;
}
I don’t know what these rules were included for, but taking them away fixes preview links and don’t seem to affect the rest of the page.
…
Also, the preview button itself looks funny because of CSS order of precedence, and the
#acp-previewstyles are being overridden by more general rules.Probably the simplest fix for this is to apply the same rules to both buttons.
in /pharyngula/wp-content/themes/graphene/style.css :
change any rule declared for
[...] #commentform #submit [...]to
[...] #commentform #submit, #commentform #acp-preview [...]chigau (test)
11 December 2012 at 10:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
At the bottom of the stuff in the the right-hand column is a link called ‘Log in’.
Clicking that gets you to the dashboard.
John Morales
11 December 2012 at 10:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Azkyroth @199, see #182 above.
strange gods before me ॐ rational skeptic seeking truth for friendship, possibly more
12 December 2012 at 2:03 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
At PharynguWiki ( http://tinyurl.com/f76cy9r ) there are now scripts which change the default tab in the right sidebar — so for instance you can make FTB Recent your default, or Comments and FTB Recent.
Inspired by requests by Crip Dyke, SC, Pteryxx and brucegee1962, so I’m mentioning them in the hope that they’ll notice and find what they’re looking for.
By the way, you can get (imho) better results by using NoScript and telling it to forbid FtB from running its own scripts. This makes both FTB Active and FTB Recent appear at once, one below the other. (NoScript does not override Greasemonkey, so you’ll still have hushfile.)
John Morales
14 December 2012 at 5:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I see this on the right-side bar:
FTB Active
Warning: Missing argument 2 for wpdb::prepare(), called in /home/newfreet/public_html/wp-content/themes/ftb-theme/includes/TabSiteActiveWidget.php on line 46 and defined in /home/newfreet/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 990
strange gods before me ॐ
15 December 2012 at 5:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Me too. Distracting if nothing else.
strange gods before me ॐ
17 December 2012 at 4:49 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ, my apologies for assuming all the old stuff in comment #69 would work in the new layout.
Tested now, the following should be sufficiently specific to override the weirdly refractory CSS, and make Gumby and Comic Sans usable for commenters.
div.comment-entry blockquote[cite~="gumby"] {background: url("http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2011/08/tiny_gumby_trans.gif") no-repeat scroll 0 0 transparent; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}div.comment-entry blockquote[cite~="gumby"] p {font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}
qshould have already been specific enough on its own, but, to future-proof:div.comment-entry q {font-family: "Comic Sans MS", MarkerFelt, MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}Or you could keep plain
qunaltered, so that people familiar with other blogs don’t accidentally ComicSans someone. Instead:div.comment-entry q[cite~="gumby"] {font-family: "Comic Sans MS", MarkerFelt, MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}