New look DITL beta test

[IanKennedy]

Only issue I've got is that the quick links at the top aren't lined up squarely with the out-of-universe button bar directly below it.

The quick link buttons are not meant to line up with out-of-universe buttons. I deliberately offset them so they didn't seem like a second row of blue buttons. That would not be in the LCARS style.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

I suppose the second beta is better then the first, the quick link buttons are a nice addition, but they're half hidden when I visit the site on my Wii.

Is that half hidden horizontally or vertically? If it's vertically then the browser is probably not standards compliant and is ignoring style settings. Is there an option to turn those on?

If it's just not showing the rightmost buttons then it could be a small screen layout, the site is designed to work at 1024x768.

Have you tried forcing a reload of the site.

Actually it cuts them of horizontally. They're cut off by the blue buttons. It makes them harder to click. I don't know if it's a problem the site has with the browser or what the deal is. I know that I personally browse the web a lot on my Wii when I don't want to mess with my lousy laptop and I'm sure there are others who do the same thing so it might be a good idea to see if it's a fixable problem. Or you could keep the old layout and avoid the problems all together. Why are you changing the layout? I don't think you mentioned the why.

[Captain Peabody]

Meh...not a huge fan. In my opinion, if you're going to move the bottom bar to the top, you should at the very least modify it so it "fits in" better...especially the way the bar curves up at the left makes it pretty obvious that it was designed to go on the bottom.

With a few modifications, though, it could work...but as is? I don't really think so...

[IanKennedy]

Actually it cuts them of horizontally. They're cut off by the blue buttons. It makes them harder to click. I don't know if it's a problem the site has with the browser or what the deal is. I know that I personally browse the web a lot on my Wii when I don't want to mess with my lousy laptop and I'm sure there are others who do the same thing so it might be a good idea to see if it's a fixable problem. Or you could keep the old layout and avoid the problems all together. Why are you changing the layout? I don't think you mentioned the why.

Then the web browser is ignoring the instruction to top place a top margin on that area of the page. As I said previously please can try and force the page to reload fully. If may well solve the problem.
Thanks
Ian

[IanKennedy]

Meh...not a huge fan. In my opinion, if you're going to move the bottom bar to the top, you should at the very least modify it so it "fits in" better...especially the way the bar curves up at the left makes it pretty obvious that it was designed to go on the bottom.

We deliberately left it the way it was in order to make it look more like an LCARS interface. Typically there are a pair of opposing swoops that join together into a strip. Which is exactly what we have in both betas. Here's an image from a real screen used on TNG:



The original site had the swoops but we talked our selves out of putting them together for practical reasons. We we were aiming at 800x600 at that point and the loss of those 17 pixels at the top of the screen was not acceptable at that size. Given we've been targeting 1024x768 for many years now we thought it was time to allow our original design to come to the fore. I must admit the at the index2.php version is that original, however I do agree splitting the head and body was wrong, which is why we changed it to the current index3.php version. That left us with a 17 pixel gap at the top of the screen. We then played with a number of things to fill that space. We had versions with text links, versions with these scrolling numbers:



Which was very LCARS but also extreemly distracting. Finally we settled on the version you can see here with the mini round ended buttons. This helped the interface by providing the quick links we had previously had on the home page to a place that you can get to each of them via one button click, rather than having to return to the home page each time.

With a few modifications, though, it could work...but as is? I don't really think so...

Unless you can suggest a change for the better I think we're very happy with the current setup. As I've said previously I can make it a user option, but the new interface with be the default.

[Captain Peabody]

Okay...well, I can see what you were going for with this, though I'm still not completely sold. But really, it's fine with me...I'm not too picky.

And considering I can't even get on to the website anyway, it's kind of a moot point...

[IanKennedy]

Actually it cuts them of horizontally. They're cut off by the blue buttons. It makes them harder to click.

I presume you're browsing using Opera on the Wii. If so are you able to update it, I'm not sure if that's possible. I've tried it with Opera on the Mac and it's not showing the issue.

Anyway, I've tweaked the html/css to remove any ambiguity that may have existed in how it should display the frame. Can you force it to reload the site and see if the problem still remains.
Thanks
Ian

[Blackstar the Chakat]

oh...bloody hell, I believe is the phrase. I think I figured out the problem, or rather stumbled on it. When I was coming to the forum the pointer moved the top buttons to the side. Then it dawned on me. For what ever reason the browser converts the bars on the page into side scrollable items. That's not a problem but, the top quick link buttons you added are set up the same way, just with a different look. The quick link tabs are scrollable up and down(and sideways) because there isn't enough room. As a result you can only see the top or bottom half of the buttons at any given time on the Wii's browser. I don't know if that helps you at all or if it's fixable but at least we have some idea what it is.

[IanKennedy]

oh...bloody hell, I believe is the phrase. I think I figured out the problem, or rather stumbled on it. When I was coming to the forum the pointer moved the top buttons to the side. Then it dawned on me. For what ever reason the browser converts the bars on the page into side scrollable items. That's not a problem but, the top quick link buttons you added are set up the same way, just with a different look. The quick link tabs are scrollable up and down(and sideways) because there isn't enough room. As a result you can only see the top or bottom half of the buttons at any given time on the Wii's browser. I don't know if that helps you at all or if it's fixable but at least we have some idea what it is.

OK, I understand what your issue is. It's a browser problem on your end, those frames have been told they must not scroll, however you browser is ignoring that instruction. That doesn't matter, however, as I've completely reworked the entire system this morning. It now uses far fewer frames than ever before and it should mean you get a better setup on the Wii. I've checked the new setup on Mac and Windows on IE, Mozilla and even Opera and it works fine. Let me know about the Wii.
Thanks
Ian

[Jordanis]

Alas, I have been away for a few days and missed much of the discussion.

I have to say that this makes the site far too cluttered at the top. The problem is the grid of buttons: it's too many buttons tall. It makes it difficult to quickly visually track through things. It's kind of like when someone posts a page of text without line breaks or indentations.

Since I'm a long-time visitor of the site, I can figure it out pretty fast, but I have to imagine that to someone not so familiar, it would be difficult to pick out exactly the button they're looking for.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

oh...bloody hell, I believe is the phrase. I think I figured out the problem, or rather stumbled on it. When I was coming to the forum the pointer moved the top buttons to the side. Then it dawned on me. For what ever reason the browser converts the bars on the page into side scrollable items. That's not a problem but, the top quick link buttons you added are set up the same way, just with a different look. The quick link tabs are scrollable up and down(and sideways) because there isn't enough room. As a result you can only see the top or bottom half of the buttons at any given time on the Wii's browser. I don't know if that helps you at all or if it's fixable but at least we have some idea what it is.

OK, I understand what your issue is. It's a browser problem on your end, those frames have been told they must not scroll, however you browser is ignoring that instruction. That doesn't matter, however, as I've completely reworked the entire system this morning. It now uses far fewer frames than ever before and it should mean you get a better setup on the Wii. I've checked the new setup on Mac and Windows on IE, Mozilla and even Opera and it works fine. Let me know about the Wii.
Thanks
Ian

Excellent work. It's now working fine on my Wii. Thank you for your hard work.