Narrow Width of New Indiqo Skins

[petercox1]

I don't know if this is the right place to post this - a topic was previously started on SubDreamer.com but now seems to have been deleted.

The new indiqo skins all seem to be set at a width of 600 px compared to 770 width for the old "Advanced" skin.

The effect on most pages that have any serious content is to waste large amounts of screen space - massive left and right margins, and constant scrolling to read anything in the middle.

It gets even worse if you integrate (say) VBulletin - any substantial posts are almost impossible to read.

I like some of the new designs, but can't use them for this reason.

Would anyone be willing to post versions set to the old (and very useful) 770 px?

:)

[oktam]

http://www.subdreamer.org/forum/index.php?...view=getnewpost (http://www.subdreamer.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=22&view=getnewpost)

[VinylPusher]

Originally posted by petercox1@Aug 1 2005, 01:58 PM
I don't know if this is the right place to post this - a topic was previously started on SubDreamer.com but now seems to have been deleted.

The new indiqo skins all seem to be set at a width of 600 px compared to 770 width for the old "Advanced" skin.

The effect on most pages that have any serious content is to waste large amounts of screen space - massive left and right margins, and constant scrolling to read anything in the middle.

It gets even worse if you integrate (say) VBulletin - any substantial posts are almost impossible to read.

I like some of the new designs, but can't use them for this reason.

Would anyone be willing to post versions set to the old (and very useful) 770 px?

:)
68


All these new designs and none of them are variable width. I thought this was 2005 and we had CSS and XHTML, not 1995 and HTML3.2.

[oktam]

Originally posted by VinylPusher@Aug 1 2005, 10:41 AM
All these new designs and none of them are variable width. I thought this was 2005 and we had CSS and XHTML, not 1995 and HTML3.2.
88

Lol, nice first post

[indiqo]

Well most of the skins are completely expandable though if you'd rather like to have a liquid layout you just have to open up the skin files to change one or two numbers in order to make this change take effect. I personally rather like fixed width skins - that's also probably the reason why I create them - but if you'd like another style it's easily changeable even if your php / html experience isn't that good.. And now to the XHTML & CSS thing - you're definitely right that it's ways better to create skins using these standards, but come on have a look at most of the websites created like that most of the time just using background colors instead of images and plain texts everwhere - I don't want to create a skin with a perfectly validated code, they rather should have a great style and a beautiful overall look, but that's just my opinion..

[petercox1]

Originally posted by indiqo@Aug 1 2005, 04:45 PM
Well most of the skins are completely expandable though if you'd rather like to have a liquid layout you just have to open up the skin files to change one or two numbers in order to make this change take effect. I personally rather like fixed width skins - that's also probably the reason why I create them - but if you'd like another style it's easily changeable even if your php / html experience isn't that good..


Thnks for such a speedy response.

I agree that fixed width can look very good, and gives you as a designer more precise control over the elements. I also think your new designs are very good indeed.

The problem is that you've chosen a really narrow width - which is made functionally worse when integrated with a forum - postings of any length go on forever, and are all but impossible to read coherently. I think we all want to keep our websites as "sticky" as possible, and having a hard-to-read forum is one sure way of driving visitors away.

Is there any possibility that your might produce another version to 770 pixels and that the forum skin could go to 100% of that?

[indiqo]

I may have a look at it tomorrow due to the hard day today but another way to expand the top-navigation-skins is just to add a few more visible categories to the site though the skins are more or less forced to expand which should be the easiest way to handle this 'issue' even for non-experienced users :)

[petercox1]

Originally posted by indiqo@Aug 1 2005, 07:20 PM
I may have a look at it tomorrow due to the hard day today but another way to expand the top-navigation-skins is just to add a few more visible categories to the site though the skins are more or less forced to expand which should be the easiest way to handle this 'issue' even for non-experienced users :)
127

I don't think webmasters can simply invent new categories (and content?) simply to stretch out the breadcrumb menu in an attempt to increase the width. The design should serve the content - not vice versa.

Anyone with a lot of content - and an active bboard - will appreciate having the choice between the existing narrow design and a wider format more suitable to display lots of text. I do hope you can do this.

[Terminator1138]

Originally posted by indiqo@Aug 1 2005, 11:45 AM
Well most of the skins are completely expandable though if you'd rather like to have a liquid layout you just have to open up the skin files to change one or two numbers in order to make this change take effect. I personally rather like fixed width skins - that's also probably the reason why I create them - but if you'd like another style it's easily changeable even if your php / html experience isn't that good.. And now to the XHTML & CSS thing - you're definitely right that it's ways better to create skins using these standards, but come on have a look at most of the websites created like that most of the time just using background colors instead of images and plain texts everwhere - I don't want to create a skin with a perfectly validated code, they rather should have a great style and a beautiful overall look, but that's just my opinion..
101

Hmmm I would have to agree that even in todays developement one could at least make them 770px or something..Imagine a ton on news on a small width column, get hard to read....yes you can edit them, but that takes tons of time and graphical sites are harder to edit.

Also I have to agree a bit with indigo when they state validation of code does not have to be perfect all the time.

However you can control the size issues, Just my 2 pennies worth.

[Wayners]

agree with what both indigo and petercos1 are saying, altho i will say it is nice to have a variable width or have the page goto a percentage of the users resolution./