OSNews

why not ask him to make the comments wider for people with higher screen resolutions

There's a problem with that. The line length we have now is just about right; you can't make it too long because of decreased readability, as our brain copes very badly with reading long lines.

"There's a problem with that. The line length we have now is just about right; you can't make it too long because of decreased readability, as our brain copes very badly with reading long lines."

Hey, if my eyes can adjust to "pinkdot" I'm sure my brain can cope with longer lines. ;^)

EDIT: erm, so long as such does not entail requiring one of those irritating scrollbars on the bottom of the screen :-P

EDIT2: eternal misery and suffering to the one who came up with THAT idea...

Edited 2006-04-01 18:56

I agree. I do appreciate OSNews making those calls for me and all, but it would be nice to see a non-fixed view for those of us who actually like that. I guess we aren't really worth the extra coding though.

I have to agree with Thom. The current line length is just about right. Reading text stretched across the entire screen is difficult to read for most people.

It would be trivial to add a button to allow folks to change from fixed to elastic, similar to this guy's site: http://micahdylan.com/ (upper right hand corner).

had to wait ~5min. to open it in firefox

Adcode. Sorry.

I hope you are not trying to tell my that after midnight... oHNo! - do something than
...pleeeeaaassssseeeee

How often do you go into prefs? That would be something I'd be interested in knowing.

True I don't very often however you have so much unused space on the sides. Moving it to the side means you can use up unsed space, the user can see more news before scrolling, and if they for some reason want to change prefs they don't have to go to the very top.

Consider though my resolution is 1440x900 so I have a LOT of unused space - not quite sure how it is at lower resolutions (or not widescreen resolutions).

Just resize your OSNews window and the "unused" space can be used by another window.

You don't have all your windows maximized, do you? That would be a waste on a 1440x900 display.

No I don't, but when I'm on just to do some browsing I have it using the full screen and I usually only go to OSNews when I'm just browsing around.

How often do you go into prefs? That would be something I'd be interested in knowing.

Don't you have some kind of stats package that can tell you this? Or, just put log statements in the code for that page?

I never touch prefs, but I go to my user page to review comment history all the time (to see if I've been responded to. It'd be super handy to have the number of responses listed with each post on usercomments.php).

And the new layout sucks for going to said pages. The links are way too small and are farther away from most of the content, which means more scrolling.

You mean:
All your databases are belong to us

Edited 2006-04-02 00:55

You Sir, have some good web coding skills. Now if only you could remove the ads on some other sites as well

Amen, Reverend

I'd say the Web 3.0-thing ought to say a few things

ThinkGeek got me earlier today, I didn't pick up on it until I tried to order the 1-up mushroom (which I really wish they'd make...plastic/rubber/whatever)!

Heh, thanks for reminding me it's April 1st, I was believing Ars' Duke Nukem review too.

I fell for the World of Warcraft new race joke...for about five minutes I was ticked because the new race was going to be Wisps, when I was SO hoping for Furbolgs!

Then I remembered the date...

Then you have to be a member. That is the layout for those with memberships.

So, you are telling me that they have a way to increase readesrhip and make everyone's experience nicer and that they have explicitly and consciously chosen to degrade everyone's enjoyment of the site to force people to "upgrade" to the layout that doesn't suck?

Where did these people go to business school? You never introduce a feature and then take it back and you never make your user's life miserable.

That's one way to look at it, I guess. Of course, we could always just NOT pay the hosting and bandwidth bill and shut down the site. That's another option.

If hosting is your problem, I would be happy to work with you to find you a host that would provide all the bandwidth you want.

The condition would be no ads and no memberships. In other words, move OSNEWS from a business to a community ruled and community oriented site.

But I suspect that you were not serious and that hosting and bandwidth are not the deal breakers that you make them out to be.

We're very happy with our host. Server space and bandwidth are never free. This is not up for further conversion. The site needs to support itself.

None of the editors are paid here, no. The money off advertising and subscriptions is used to pay for bandwidth, an admin, and the colocation, pretty much.

I would agree with you that it doesn't make much sense to pay for a site that rehashes others' stories. However, osnews does have 1-3 original stories every week, offers a good way to communicate your thoughts to a given story, and the subscription gives you a faster-loading site (much more important if you are on dial-up), plus it helps maintaining the hardware and software.

However, it begs the question: why are you here and you got in the trouble of registering to get an account if "sites like this" is of no interest to you?

I must add that it would have been very nice if you had continued updating the site through the temporary membership, so that we could have actually seen what it is like to be a member, rather than having only this one new thread, which isn't even a news story, to post in. I suppose it is a small leap of the imagination to imagine the faster updating site being easier to read many threads and stories with, but without having actually used the site a lot while in its members-only form, many people (such as me) won't know if it's really worth upgrading for. Not to say it wasn't an appreciated gesture.

And re:porcel, the inclusion of ads is the biggest difference between this and the members' site, and that is common practice on the internet. The OS News bar on the side is to make the site have a better overal layout, for if it were at the top but the ads were at the side, everyone would bitch and moan about the UI.

Deletomn wrote:
'Just in case some of you haven't noticed... They have some really funny stuff on Slashdot right now.'

hehe, yes, Mattel's BarbieOS is simply hilarious.