D forums now live!

[bearophile]

Vladimir Panteleev:

> I'm not quite sure what browser or configuration you're using, 
> but the screenshot does not represent the intended look of the 
> forums.

That's the latest Firefox release, I have not used scripts to modify the page rendering, I have used two Firefox options present in its regular graphical menu. Other people where I work, and friends or mine, use similar settings. Firefox designers have added those options, and have put them well visible in that menu, because there are enough people that use or want to use them.

The purpose of PDF viewers is to show a formatted document, where the position, color and shape of every glyph is decided by the person that has created the page (or by her software). HTML documents, by their nature, specify mostly the contents and the semantics of the page, and leave most of the presentation to the browsers. There are browsers that even read the page aloud, so the "look" of the page is an audio signal. A person that writes HTML pages has to keep in account, as example, that up to 8% of male viewers are color blind, this is not a Firefox option, unfortunately.


> Removing them would make the forum rather ugly in the normal view mode.

I think they are too much thick, they steal too much space.


> I don't understand how you can claim that it takes up vertical 
> space when it's alongside the post. The only case where it would 
> waste vertical space is when the post is a few lines long.

I meant there is a empty vertical rectangle, it steals a rectangular surface. Doing so steals both vertical and horizontal space.


> Viewing the forum in a modern browser will cause the menu on the 
> left to be hidden when there is insufficient space to show the 
> full width of messages.

I have just seen you are right. But I think the text lines of the messages are too much short. The end result is that less than half the page is used by something that's not content. My HTML design sense tells me this is not good.

Bye,
bearophile