GroupDIY - A fresh look and mobile/tablet friendliness (a work in progress)

PRR said:

And the white-space is Too Damned Big.

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I agree. I like the clean lines but there is just too much wasted white space.

Cheers

Ian

Definitely still too white
Maybe it's "mobile/tablet friendliness" but is not for the laptop...
New look is great, i like it, but the spacing between everything is still too big. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling...
Thanks for back the "related topics" below the viewed topic!
There's also one thing which still missing to me - notification about new replies/personal messages. It was useful option

Would a darker skin eat less energy?

Is there a way to tell the forum I'd rather browse on the standard non-mobile layout? On the ipad portrait I can see only four sub-forums on the front page.

I remember this whole debate on the web community some years back before service providers realised nobody ever requested some special layout for tablets in the first place. Tablet != iphone.

[edit]

actually just noticed the front page squeeze happens on any browser when in a 16/9 portrait layout. suppose it makes sense on an iphone.

Same here. The old page was perfectly fine on my IPAD. The only DIY related page that is absolutely bad on my iPad is the MicandMod page...
Can't comment on phones as I don't browse GDIY from my phone. The GS mobile page is good for phones but some kind of ridiculous for Pads.

Cheers

Thanks for your work with

Ethan said:

Hello Everyone.

You may have noticed our beloved GroupDIY looks a little different.
We've been getting more and more requests for a better user experience on mobile devices.  Rather than installing (and supporting) an additional plugin just to support mobile devices, it seemed as though a better solution would be to implement a fully responsive layout.

This is still a work in progress.  Some features may be broken and some parts of the site may not be fully responsive (yet).
In the coming days/weeks, I will continue to make fixes/updates as needed.

Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Click to expand...

Thanks for your work with the web-pages!
I do a bit web-design, and I'm not really sure one size fits all regarding tablet and traditional monitors.

Checking my tablet:  Looking ok.
Hard to log in (the passwordfield gets hidden by my text-entry.)

Readable new replies. Icons takes to much space on left.

Threads: Readable and ok looking.

Reply: Should ideally be trimmed down, but seems ok.

Overall: Not bad regarding both formats

Ok, tablet this and mobile that.

Say this is your browser now:


and your tablet:


Take some white space away, so it looks more like it used to, and here's your browser (I did not reduce font size):


and your tablet:


Please explain how the first two examples are better.

Here's what I'm noticing:  the large gaps around page elements like horizontal rules, signatures, message/post headers, make it visually difficult to distinguish where the headers start/end and where the content is.  This means I spend a lot of time visually scanning the pages for the actual content?

Perhaps some kind of CSS tweak that makes the post bodies a lighter color than the forum generated between-post sections?

gltech said:

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This is not at all my tablet-size.
My cell-phone has 30% of that width.

G-Sun said:

gltech said:

Click to expand...

This is not at all my tablet-size.
My cell-phone has 30% of that width.

Click to expand...

Man, my image is of a tablet. I didn't say it was a cell phone. A cell phone's worse. My point is that, no matter the screen size, you can see more content on any device when there's less white space.

On my iPad it works just fine, but on my computer, I have to say there is a large blanck on either side. But overall, good job

The width I don't mind.
It is easier to read text that is not one long line, but broken up. It makes it much more like a page.

My problem is
a) the wasted space at the top  (about half my desktop screen is taken up by the banner, breadcrumbs, 2 search bars, news and whitespace), which means the first thing you need to do is scroll before seeing anything interesting
b) Over large fonts. Sure, you can zoom out, but it is annoying to do that every time, plus it makes the page thinner...to thin!
80-85% of the size for fonts is Ok I think. Still a bit bigger than normal, but not too big...

background could be a little smoother, too. some kind of grey/white, something softer. just my 2 cents

Ditto the comments regarding the always present banner.

Is there a way to make the banner so that one could collapse or "dock" to get it out of the way?

More and more sites are adopting this "hey look at me I'm a banner and I'm not moving no matter how much you scroll". 

Much preferred the stationary banner fixed at the top of the page.

Thanks for "Alerts" back!!! 

ln76d said:

Thanks for "Alerts" back!!! 

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Are these the annoying "beeps" that just appeared when opening every new page?

Nice!  Ethan...
Thanks for the new search bar, with the ability to get to advanced search.

If I ever really wanted to google search (not really) I can do a google search for "keyword site:groupdiy.com"

Great work

b

duantro said:

ln76d said:

Thanks for "Alerts" back!!! 

Click to expand...

Are these the annoying "beeps" that just appeared when opening every new page?

Click to expand...

Who on earth thought it was a good idea to put beeps on EVERY page load??? Incredibly annoying!!!

The iPhone navigation at the bottom is back! I'm not sure if I'm getting used to it, but I'm digging it more now.  It's cleaner overall. I can live with more scrolling if it means less people will have problems reading it. I don't tilt my iPhone to landscape, so it's good enough for me! Thanks Ethan.

Love the smart search. Great!