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[pnhicks]

Hello Everyone,


This is probably not the right area for this post, so staff, please relocate it as you see fit!



As a user of this forum (it is one of my favorites for many reasons) for a sustained period of time, there is one thing that distracts me to no end!  The location of the "shout box" in the location on virtually EVERY page (including the "SEARCH PAGE") in where one MIGHT make the LOGICAL ASSumption that it was a SEARCH  box, with the only indicator to the contrary, the text "shout" in the command button.


No amount of chastising by members in the shout text window seems to deter the eager searchers, and as this is an "international" forum, one could assume that "shout" and "search" are not that dissimilar, and to put it higher on the page than the search box on the Search page seems to me (not a professional web page designer) that it is a design that could be improved on!


Then again I am a not a social type and have never felt the need to SHOUT to anyone to begin with (the whole bl...dy box could be deleted for all I care).


Just my two cents worth in case anyone wanted to know,


Cheers


Peter

[InmemoryofRomeo]

The shout box used to be a lot more popular, the site is less busy these days The search box is a little hard to find but I'm not sure just how much this forum layout can be tweaked.

[grumpy]

The layout options aren't that great.   

There are only a couple of places the shout box will fit.  We tried the right column, but it wraps a lot and you can only get like three posts to fit.  Years ago it was used pretty heavily and we wanted it on every page.  That may not be as important now.  We also used to have a pretty active chat room.  That's dies off completely.   

I'm open to suggestions.  The layout you have is: header left (where the pleos are), header right (the shout box); menu bar & status bar; top full width area (nothing there now); left , center , and right columns; bottom full width area (nothing there); and the footer.  The header, menu/status bar, and footer go on every page.

The simplest idea would be to move the shoutbox to the right column where it's only on the home page and put the search box where the shout box is now.  I'll turn on a different shout box for the right column and see what people think before I turn off the one on top . . . but please feel free to make additional suggestions!   

[kat]

I like the move for the new shout box but it looks like it could use a character or word limit as it seems to let you write way too much - see the shout from a new member Kaylee (which is the same as what she wrote in her thread asking for help.  I think a limit would help keep it snappy and make more visible on the screen. 

[grumpy]

Sad, but true.  The shoutbox at the top of the page has a bunch of controls on the "content"  things like length of the shout, number of shouts in a row a person can post, how often they can shout (cooldown period between shouts), you can ban, block, or limit individuals, edit and remove individual shouts, and two levels of history.  Once we move the shoutbox to one of the main body columns, all the controls are about how it "looks" like how many pixels tall & wide, text formatting controls, is it collapsible, does it have a title bar,  but you loose a bunch of the content controls.    So, no, if we leave the shoutbox in the right column, there isn't a way to limit the length like we can at the top.

I can put a notice at the top asking people to keep it short, but that's about it.  Does it look tacky?

Should I make the box taller?  I like to try to make the page as a whole look OK for people who have lower resolution screen sizes.  And as more devices go to wide screens height becomes more of the issue.

[grumpy]

As an additional question, if we keep the shoutbox on the side, what do we do with the top of the page?

[PleoAibo29]

I like the new shoutbox and I think the popup looks fine. Nice job, Grumpy.

[kat]

Pop the search bar at the top of the page and maybe move the comic strip up there if you need to fill space? The notice at the top of the shout box looks fine to me and hopefully will be enough of a reminder for most people.