Board layout

[Kremmen]

The massive logo and all the unnecessary large text ("We have a NEW NAME!!", " (Adjust Your Bookmarks Now)", "Send this page to a friend", etc) and unnecessary blank space means that headers use up almost the whole window of every page on this board, making it necessary to do lot and lots and lots of scrolling to actually see anything useful.

Please get rid of all the extraneous stuff.

[thereuare]

I'll research if the spacing can be changed, and if so, how to do it.

The announcement of a new name will eventually be taken away, but we still have a lot of visitors coming from our old URL (the board is actually only 1 month old today, with the current URL being only 2 weeks old).

The send this link to a friend page will likely remain as it makes for an easy way to have our members spread the word about the site, as they can send our link to up to 10 people at once.

[Kremmen]

It's fair enough to have the announcement on the home page, but it doesn't need to be on every page. The "Send this Page to a Friend" button is an inch high and just wastes that height across the whole window. If you really consider it important, surely it could go next to something?

Look at Flyertalk for an example of a site that's laid out nicely. When looking at a forum, there is nothing but useful buttons (plus a banner, but it doesn't waste space, since it's next to buttons instead of above or below them) above the messages. Here, there are several small sets of useful links, spaced out by enormous amounts of blank space.

[thereuare]

Unfortunately i'm not a programmer (ok, i take that back, fortunately i'm not a programmer :) ).

If i recall correctly i resized the "send this page to a friend" frequently, and one of the problems i was having was getting the text next to the graphic to be legible, as i couldn't figure out how to get the text on 3 lines as it appears now. I resorted to adding the text to the picutre, so the text is actual part of the picture now, which lessens the quality somewhat and therefore requires a slightly larger size than is necessary. I'm sure it can be done so that the text appears on 3 lines as actual text, in which case i could make the picture a little smaller. I'll put this on the list of things to do.

The way the board is set up i don't think it's possible to only have the "we have a new name...." to appear only on the home page. Anything that goes in that white space will end up on every page. I'm not to worried about this aspect so much because this text WILL eventually be taken off the board, so in the long term it's not an issue, although i will look into the spacing issue of it which might help.

Now that i'm thinking about the code and your comments, i'm going to go back and see if i can get the "send this page to a friend" to appear on the right margin but on the same horizontal level as the "we have a new name". If i can do that, then i think it will solve most of the cosmetic issues we're talking about and will move the "board" up about an inch, or whatever the height is of the "send this page".

I do appreciate your suggestions. If you look through all the topics in this section, you will see that most of the suggestions that have been made are now incorporated into the board. I want this board to be a place where people can come to get the information they're looking for as well as have "fun" doing it. Part of that requires that the user like the format and not be "inconvenienced", and the only way that i will know what members like/don't like is thru feedback such as this... so 'thank you'.

[bturner13]

ThereUAre, taking on the job of setting up this fabulous site is a monumental task, I am sure, and you have done an admirable job! Again thank you for allowing me to share my PL travels and to learn lots from other Priceliners!

Would a user changing the Text Size under the View menu above help resolve some of the desktop territory concerns?

[Kremmen]

Now that i'm thinking about the code and your comments, i'm going to go back and see if i can get the "send this page to a friend" to appear on the right margin but on the same horizontal level as the "we have a new name". If i can do that, then i think it will solve most of the cosmetic issues we're talking about and will move the "board" up about an inch, or whatever the height is of the "send this page".

Out of 8cm (on my screen) of wasted space, the "send this page" thing is only 2cm of it.

My suggestion would be to align the "send this page" thing left instead of right and put it in the same table as the "add message", etc, buttons that are on the right. Also, the "send this page" thing is pointless on non-message pages, such as the message editing pages, so it doesn't make sense for it to be on them as it is now anyhow.

Once all the text from "We have a new name" to "(Adjust Your Bookmarks" is gone, that would get rid of all the white space. Reducing the height of logo3 would save header space.