Why do you waste so much space on your screen layout? A big gap at each side?

It also means you have to download a background picture each time. If nothing else, this space could be used to host adverts and even a permanently displayed ‘jump station’ that would always be present even if you paged down and could instantly navigate you to any section at a mouse click. Saves having to go back to the top of the page to navigate

Also, where are your advertising rates? These should surely be easily available for potential advertisers. You must be losing a lot of business this way.

Lindsay…the little hand cursor that appears over all live links does not appear over the “comment” “hide comment” link…it only shows the insert cursor “|” (at least on my computer: PC with Vista Home Edition operating system). It’s a little confusing…

Other than that I like it!

Rob

Thanks for putting comment numbers back. Suggest you put total # of comments for an article on front page articles - it shows what’s hot and where the action is.

As I age I also find I cannot easily discriminate between all black text. Consider colour separators for articles so that people like me can distinguish between them more easily.

Hi Linz,

Yes, thanks for putting comment numbers back.

One gripe (but it is obviously a teething problem!) - I can’t search the site. Typing in “Peter Henning” doesn’t bring up a list of his articles as it used to - it just does a web search. The radio button to select “TT Search” doesn’t work.

But it’s a nice looking site.
N.

Yes, I agree with Barnaby #1. I would rather have no ‘side gaps.’ I’m not here purposely to look at them. I’m here just to read, and the less scrolling the better.

Cheers.

To Barnaby and Russell. Pages with the ‘side gaps’ are made to look good on a 15” display. They fill the whole screen on a 15”. I believe the default screen size nowdays is 1024 X 768px on a 17” monitor. Thats the size I do my pages for. Then the ‘side gaps’ only appear on larger sized monitors. Thats what its all about. Trying to make a web page that is viewable on the most display sizes. A new problem is the fact that people are now web surfing on mobile phones. I recon its up to the phone operating system to work out how the page is displayed in that case.

I don’t agree with Barnaby at 1. Most of the most popular websites in the world at the moment have large amounts of whitespace at either side of their content, Facebook being a prime example. The variety of resolutions used by web browsers these days (from   iPhones to mega widescreens) means that scaling widths is certain to lead to clumsy displays in a large amount of circumstances. It’s irresponsable to used width percentages these days.

However, I agree with the show comment thing needing a hyperlink cursor on mouseover. To the element ‘commentcontrol’ in your stylesheet, just add ‘cursor:pointer;cursor:hand;’ It’ll do the trick just fine.

Those sidescreens are waiting for the day when mainstream media comes to us at a cost.  It is then that Tasmanian Times will pay subscription rates for ALL national and international media services and the members of TT will pay a nominally small subscription rate to view any or all media content of their choosing and at their leisure.

Do you see Lachlan Murdoch?  We the punters will win in the end!

Re #6
Can’t it be done that it just fits whatever screen automatically? Surely! I mean, my 14” TV still shows the same picture as the 26” one.

Russell at 9 - It can be done, however, it is severly out of fashion, due to the very wide variety of resolutions. In some scaling displays, mobile phones display it as only a few characters per line, rather than requiring the user to scroll to the side to view the content.

Also, a whole bunch of studies suggest that even the most literary of folk only like to read 12 words per line. This is a major reason why newspapers are in columns, and books are small. People prefer to scroll down than scan across.

All in all, the major downside of a scaling system is that it looks comically and undesirably wide on a wide monitor, and is basically unusable on most mobile devices. The only time it looks good is on 15 to 19 inch monitors, even 22 inch monitors stretch things so far that most paragraphs are single lines, which isn’t pleasing to the eye. The downside to non scaling displays is that on 22+ inches, the whitespace on the sides begins to be really noticable, the upsides being that on 15-19 inch monitors it looks great, and mobile devices they work fantastically. Seriously, look at some of the more popular websites… they all have a degree of whitespace out there, and for good reason.

Also, in response to an earlier concern that you’re downloading the background image over and over, it should be cached on your computer’s harddrive. If you browse with caching turned off, then you’re having to redownload EVERY image each time you load any page, of which a little background tile isn’t much.

this is the worst designed web site I have had the misfortune to visit. A 6 year old could do a better job!

Not one to be critical of change. All change takes time to get used to and I’m sure we’ll get used to this site. But the site does look ugly on a larger screen. I find the black strip on the left to be very off-putting.

What I find disconcerting is when I click on Read more, and get comments.

Dave, you missed one part of the mill. A line to Gay showing ‘old knobs’.

Butler

One useful service to readers is ‘hotlinks’ in stories so that they can go view the item themselves with just one click.

Can we incorporate hotlinks in our stories?

Whilst many are using their right to freely express sentiments for, or sentiments against the web site here, I have a few words for those so myopic that they get fussed and more than a little damp over the website design.

fuck off arse picks.

#16 Richard, I suggest you modify your vulgar expressions or take your own advice. There is now a code of what is and what is not acceptable and this definitely isn’t!

Remember too, that many of us have contributed to the cost of this site, which I think entitle us to have a say on the design. Most comments are constructive, unlike yours!

(16)
    A bit over the top i think Richard, However i do believe I preferred the old format and one is tempted to ponder with all the black if some GOTH inspired individual had any input into it’s design.

    I’m certainly no expert ,however it is not a design that immediately inspires one to continue on , in fact I find it somewhat sinister , and or “In your face” like someone using cap’s.

    Sorry about that ! but one has to call it as they see it.
              d.d.

Hi Gerry - speak to the publisher, not the author. I dont have any direct access to on line posting - any more than you.

You raise an editorial/ policy issue, not one that I can help you with.

The editors have edited copy in the past. Clearly they felt on this occasion it was useful.

I was wrong about the new site looking good on a 15” monitor. I just tried it and the ‘white spaces’ are still there. The new design means that pictures will be smaller and long-winded text will get discouraged. Perhaps that’s the idea.

I bought a new pair of boots six weeks back. Hated them, even though they were identical to their predecessors. Wear them all day, every day now.
I can’t say I like the new TT, but time will tell!

Karl, it depends what resolution you’re looking at it on that 15 inch monitor. If it’s an old cathode ray, you can have super high resolutions. If the font looks kinda small too, that could be the problem.

If you’re using an LCD, chances are the default resolution for that is 1024x768. I’m using that resolution at that size at the moment (sadly) and I think it looks great. Getting about 10 percent whitespace on either side of the content, about perfect.

That said, it’s a matter of taste. For what it’s worth, I think it looks great and it’s also a design which makes sense. I won’t tell you to fuck off just yet, but keep Steve’s boots in mind. You’ll be used to it in no time.

I’m sure a lot of work has gone into this website, maybe even a very limited budget…
But in my professional opinion (as a web design/developer) it comes across very clunky, of the old school, and the links and grouping of the information leaves me confused and frustrated… it lacks demographic punch!

Also this website isn’t built to the latest web standards (W3C), and will disadvantage the physically impaired “end-users”, especially the blind with their web page talking machines, to no end.

It really comes across that the designed website template is alien to the CMS driving this website - “expression engine”.

Just a couple of examples to get a taste for the latest in media/social media website design and functionality:
- http://www.spd.org/
- http://demo.themeshift.com/dezine/
(my favourite, although it is a demo!!!)

... Anyway, just my take :)
Thanks.

May I suggest again that the total comments received and access to them appear on the front page?

As it is, to see where the action is for an article we have to actually open the article itself and scroll to the bottom, then click again to see comments (why?). Doesn’t matter once or twice but when you want to check 5 or more articles it gets tedious pretty quickly.

If the total comments and access appeared on the front page we’d know straight away where the action was and be able to dive in and comment.

The current design leads to a high click count, particularly when scrolling is involved.

What do others think?

I’m happy with it. Thank you for bringing us something a little off the cuff.

Megs

Around about eighteen months ago the LIBERAL party hired a mini bus to ttravel Launceston to look for new candidate’s but on the back from Launceston the hired mini bus hit a car at Campbell Town.
1…Who name was on the insurance claim.
2…who was driving the mini bust at the time of the crash.
Damien Brown was on the mini bus, was it Will Hodman the driver of the mini bus. Damien Brown you know ?.
Now Will Hodgman has put him self on utube, racing on the death of other’s loved one’s that lost there life, for a Election Vote.
How can you fund $400. million federal funding, when ten years of hell from JOHN HOWARD the FEdERAL LIBERAL LEADER. Wouldn’t give tasmanian any fund hospital to save people., specially bad condition’s on our roads.  Let the people grief in peace WILL HODGMAN, stop making this about the LIBERAL PARTY, when your party hired a mini bus that crashed in campbell town

WIll hodgman vare you the driver of the bus that hit a park car in campbell town eighteen months ago…

Amazing work Linz. All (ongoing) strength. Now, be nice and buy me a fuckin’ glass of wine ... sheesh. :) luv ya