Suggestion: Titles should be longer

[UltraMega]

This site is great and OCN already feels inferior to me but one thing I have to admit I like about the new layout over there is the longer titles. I don't think the layout over there cuts anything off from the thread titles on the homepage. I feel like it's much harder to browse when titles are cut off. IMO they should be longer.

 

I also think the number of visible threads for the latest threads and new threads should be doubled. 

 

 

Any thoughts? 

Edited February 17, 2021 by UltraMega

[Supercrumpet]

For the number of threads, are you referring to the top of the general forum navigation page? To be honest, I wish those weren't there at all. I know they're useful, but I'd prefer if the forum button just took me to the overall forum directory and nothing else.

[UltraMega]

2 hours ago, Supercrumpet said:

For the number of threads, are you referring to the top of the general forum navigation page? To be honest, I wish those weren't there at all. I know they're useful, but I'd prefer if the forum button just took me to the overall forum directory and nothing else.

No I mean instead of seeing 10 threads in the latest section and news section, there could be 20 threads visible in those sections on the homepage.

[ENTERPRISE]

 

5 hours ago, Supercrumpet said:

For the number of threads, are you referring to the top of the general forum navigation page? To be honest, I wish those weren't there at all. I know they're useful, but I'd prefer if the forum button just took me to the overall forum directory and nothing else.

It is not on the roadmap yet but I have wanted to make certain elements of the homepage collapsible as a per user setting which is likely do-able for the "Latest" widgets on the homepage. I will see if this is something we can do BUT generally speaking site configurability fall under the purview of premium subscriptions, however I would make that decision later on.

3 hours ago, UltraMega said:

No I mean instead of seeing 10 threads in the latest section and news section, there could be 20 threads visible in those sections on the homepage.

I would only opt to show 10 by default.  This is in order to to not elongate page scrolling any more than what there already is. However it may be possible to have a "Reveal more" type feature which would allow viewing of an additional 10 topics. I think this is possible but would have to speak with my dev to evaluate it.

[UltraMega]

36 minutes ago, ENTERPRISE said:

 

It is not on the roadmap yet but I have wanted to make certain elements of the homepage collapsible as a per user setting which is likely do-able for the "Latest" widgets on the homepage. I will see if this is something we can do BUT generally speaking site configurability fall under the purview of premium subscriptions, however I would make that decision later on.

I would only opt to show 10 by default.  This is in order to to not elongate page scrolling any more than what there already is. However it may be possible to have a "Reveal more" type feature which would allow viewing of an additional 10 topics. I think this is possible but would have to speak with my dev to evaluate it.

A load more button would be great. 

I took a few minutes to make a alternative layout suggestion for the homepage. I made 2, one with 10 rows and one with 20. 

The threads are just stretched out in my edit, but if the layout were like this it would allow for more room for titles. I noticed the titles for the podcasts tend to be quite long as well so moving that to the bottom would allow for even more room for titles for those. Moving them to the bottom would also mean you don't have to line it up with the other sections that show ten rows since you probably only really need to list the more recent two or three podcasts. 

Moving the scrolling section to the bottom also helps break up the filler part of the site which I think makes it more digestible to a wondering eye. 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by UltraMega

[ENTERPRISE]

Thanks for the suggestions. I actually did not know you were referring to the Homepage but either way the comments are applicable.

 

When it comes to reviewing these parts of the site, I will see how feasible a widening of the sections is. 

 

I don't expect this to get looked into or a little bit due to high priority items but when I have news I will comment here

[Diffident]

The homepage has a limited variable width.  It shrinks but it only stretches to about 1390 pixels. If the variable width was wider, that would allow the titles to be longer, the wider your browser window, the longer the titles.

[Supercrumpet]

On 2/20/2021 at 6:59 AM, UltraMega said:

No I mean instead of seeing 10 threads in the latest section and news section, there could be 20 threads visible in those sections on the homepage.

 

Okay yes, we were talking about the same content (effectively) but on different pages. The homepage is indeed a bit more narrow and there's not much of anything below those lists that you'd have to scroll more to get to so I agree. Longer and wider lists here would be more functional with little drawback, but personally I never really visit the homepage (just go straight to the forum section) so I'm not terribly invested in that myself.

[UltraMega]

42 minutes ago, Supercrumpet said:

 

Okay yes, we were talking about the same content (effectively) but on different pages. The homepage is indeed a bit more narrow and there's not much of anything below those lists that you'd have to scroll more to get to so I agree. Longer and wider lists here would be more functional with little drawback, but personally I never really visit the homepage (just go straight to the forum section) so I'm not terribly invested in that myself.

Titles are a little longer on the forums page but still many are cut off. I think the titles should be longer (smaller font or just allow titles to take up two rows) for both. 

[Snakecharmed]

The title length issue on the home page is pretty straightforward. I'm guessing the same code is used on the forum index page, but I haven't checked that page specifically.

 

.info a {

display: -webkit-box;

overflow: hidden;

text-overflow: ellipsis;

}

 

Anyway, the display: -webkit-box; CSS property causes the latest activity columns to have equal height (which looks clean) and the next two properties cause the thread titles to be width of the container and then display overflowing text as ellipses. I think text-overflow: ellipsis; is being set elsewhere other than .info a because toggling that doesn't flip the text overflow style between ellipsis and clip.

 

Since the -webkit-box display property is proprietary, I wasn't seeing it happen in Gecko-based Waterfox which I use more frequently than Blink-based Vivaldi.

 

Widening the largest viewport for the home page which Diffident suggested above isn't a great solution because that involves making changes to the theme's grid system, and also wouldn't directly address the fact that the three-column layout for that component is used all the way down to a viewport width of 768px. The collapse into a single column should happen at a higher breakpoint.

 

Playing around with the font size of the thread titles and/or the height of div.topic would be a better way to go.

 

WebKit/Blink-based browser:

 

Gecko-based browser:

Edited February 22, 2021 by Snakecharmed