Ideas for ILX

Part of my problem is that I don't know whether or not the menu is confusing or not. We're all so used to it that it's hard to tell. I mean, it might be confusing, then again, maybe it isn't - I just don't know.

guess papers link in menu plz

Hay, wehn to m33t?

There's only one way to sort this out. POLL.

for me it's not that the menu's confusing, just that the length changes (usually blog view and logout fall off the end on individual thread pages, though that does depend on how wide I've got my browser) and that's mildly... it's not even irritating, it's just a bit messy?
I dunno, I'd rather have a menu bar that's always on two rows (upper one w/ fixed items, lower one changeable), than a single always-shifting one.

how about a ticker that tells you how many times a thread has been viewed? (apologies if this has been suggested already)

an 'excelsior' link where people can click if they found post funny, and if it gets +5 score they go to a dedicated excelsior thread that may actually contain funneys?

xxp yeah I like that idea. The lower one could have e.g. My Recent Posts, Blog View, on the boards/site new answers pages, and New Question, New Poll, for the individual board pages.

Damo, you can kind of see this here: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/Pages/most-read-threads.jsp

I know it's not on all threads, but I'd be concerned about the snowballing effect it'd create - people would gravitate towards the most read threads and these in turn would get read more.

Part of my problem is that I don't know whether or not the menu is confusing or not.

Here's why I think that it definitely is.

Site New Answers -- first thing in the menu, takes you a weird hinterland that may or may not even have anything in it. Needs to be moved out of the position that's intuitively reserved for a home page.
Search -- search is search, probably ok where it is, but might be better in its own place. Maybe a thin sliver of a search field at the top of every page, above the menu even?
Boards -- If it's the home page, it shouldn't be in the third position on the menu, and if it's a list of boards, it should at least be next to the boards that are listed later in the menu.
Preferences, Bookmarks, My Recent Posts -- user-specific stuff usually all goes together in its own place on the menu or on another menu. "New Question" and "New Poll" probably should be lumped in with these, too. It's the "you're in control" section of the menu.
ILM, ILE, etc. -- see "Boards"
[board you are looking at] New Answers -- probably needs more love than it gets in the menu, since it just kind of appears there without special distinction. Sometimes I want to type "whoami".

And etc.

I'd rather have a menu bar that's always on two rows (upper one w/ fixed items, lower one changeable), than a single always-shifting one.

That would be perfect.

what c sharp said was kind of what i was thinking for a while. the menu being one row with everything on it is weird. should be kind of like

Site New Answers Search Boards Preferences Bookmarks Logout Admin
ILE ILM 1P3G IRE etc. (whatever you put there)
New Question New Poll etc.

in my opinion. having three rows isn't too much, right? if the text is small.

takes you a weird hinterland that may or may not even have anything in it

Eh? When is this true?

I did deliberately put it there some time ago, to emphasize it. I think the issue here is that there is a 'home page', but that the home page isn't in itself really very useful. Site New Answers isn't the home page, but it's the most heavily used page, hence its somewhat privileged position.

Do you use Site New Answers, Kenan, or do you typically use the board you're reading's new answers?

Re: the two row thing - I did try this some time back, but it looked a bit ugly. Can try it again though.

yeah most people use it as their home page, i know i do. i barely ever look at "boards" except to check the admin log

except to check the admin log

Should probably put that in the top left and in bold.

Of course the worst thing about changing these is that I can't just do it once, I have to do it on all of the stylesheets!

Eh? When is this true?

Well... now. ANd now.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/fluxion23/Picture1-3.png

Do you mean you've customised it to show no boards?

Of course the worst thing about changing these is that I can't just do it once, I have to do it on all of the stylesheets!

eh? these are content not style changes surely?

Thanks to the "post count" thing and the "my recent posts" thing I just discovered my 8000th post was "grandad".

obv you would need to add a new style for a second menu. xp.

Indeed, but in changing from one to two rows, I can guarantee that a bunch of the stylesheets will not deal with that well.

Do you mean you've customised it to show no boards?

No, I didn't do that. I have never seen anything on that page. Are you serious, it's the most used page? It's blank for me!

Wow - something is wrong then!

Click the "Site New Answers" header - see what it says in it.

Also, just click the "restore defaults" button - see if that makes it come up with something.

haha kenan

No, sorry. my fault. I unchecked all the boards earlier in this conversation, actually, but I didn't know the difference because I have never clicked on that page.

Yeah, different people using it different ways is the truth.

I was cornfused.

you're living in the past, man! contemporize!

i'd be happy to donate some time to fixing shitty css problems caused by 2nd menu bar.

Ha - it's a good page. I like it; in fact, it's basically all I use.

Cheers, Ledge.

Kenan, don't you use your own stylesheet?!

Jesus... on this "site new answers" page that I swear I have never been to before in my ILX life, the "kenan dark" stylesheet looks like lukewarm shit. Why didn't anyone tell me?!

The links are black there, unlike on the new answers page for whatever board you're on? I feel like boiling my own shoe right now.

It'll only be like that if you've done the 'restore defaults', which actually sets everything to black. It's a bit of a bug really - it should just not put a colour on it.

wait kenan doesn't use site new answers? this is like when lex didn't know who john wayne was

Set in my ways, with the worst of them. I got used to reading one board at a time probably about 8 years ago now, and never thought to do it differently.

NOW I understand how people can so mysteriously keep up with ILE and ILM at the same time! I was always like, "Do they just constantly keep two browser windows open?"

Haha!

keith, thank you for doing all this for us.

Oh that's OK... Cheers.

The black text on the Site New Answers page is unfixable with CSS because of this:

<li><a style='color: #000000'

There's an inline style somewhere, and that'll always trump.

And yes, keith, if I haven't mentioned it in a while... you rule. :)

Yeah, the style is how it does the colouring... The bug is that 'restore defaults' should make it not put the style in at all, not make it set them all to black.

(is this how keith spends his holiday?)

lol - going to Glasgow shortly to see various ILXors and Dr. C.

welcome to site new answers, kenan, you will be able to keep up with site new nonsense better now.

Well, not too much. The stylesheet I use is almost unreadable on that page. I'm kind of glad I didn't know that before, because there's nothing I can do about it. The links are black, black forever. Black like death.

I'll fix that...

And this is the most used page? I could crawl into a hole right now. I feel like I've been walking around with a booger hanging out of my nose for the last 3 years.

Well, we just didn't want to embarrass you by saying anything.