[dlang.org] new forum design - preview

[John Colvin via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 13 January 2016 at 06:01:41 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev 
wrote:
> http://beta.forum.dlang.org/
>
> https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed/pull/51

I tried using this a bit and it's ... frustrating. I'll try and 
describe the thought process of a visit:


I load beta.forum.dlang.org, fullscreen, at 1680x1050.

All text looks very slightly out-of-focus and the bold text is 
far too tightly packed.
I notice that there are lines of text that are truncated (post 
titles), despite having loads of whitespace free on the page. 
This is instantly irritating.

I click on a post and it is loaded in horizontal split mode.

The right panel of the split view extends significantly lower 
than the left panel. The navigation column extends down further 
still.

There is some wasted vertical space above the footer and a *lot* 
wasted below it.

In the actual post window, I now have a line length below 60 
characters, which is way too small for me, I prefer closer to 80 
for reading (also I don't want code to start getting wrapped 
below 80). Nested quotations in replies end up with very 
restricted line lengths.

I click the "Toggle navigation" button.

With a line-length of 82 and less wasted vertical space around 
the footer, I'm much happier. However, now I've lost the left 
navigation column and the header bar.


A few summary points/suggestions:

The horizontal split layout looks horribly cramped in the default 
view, which is very irritating to look at, given the large white 
spaces either side of the content.

Users can always resize the window to make line lengths smaller, 
but if you've capped them too low they can't do anything to make 
them longer.

Having the "toggle navigation" button is nice for focus (less 
clutter, on demand), please keep it, but don't use it as an 
excuse for the design to be rubbish without it. I like to 
*option* to hide all the navigation, but I shouldn't have to just 
to get reasonable line lengths.