A Few More Layout Changes

[wimg]

Dearest Members of & Visitors to the little Fountain Pen Nut house on the digital prairie,

 

Small Changes to Layout

We have made some changes to the Sidebar layout, which means that the Recommended Reading block will disappear - currently it only references the Latest News, which should have this particular item right at the top of new items .

 

Similar sidebar items in different parts of FPN have disappeared or will disappear as well.

 

Another change is the disappearance of the bar with links to the various manuals, rules and guidelines, right underneath the picture links to various FPN support buttons.

 

These do all still exist, but take up much less space on your screen now, namely in a new menu, which displays as a bar at the top right above the Search facility and the User/Member options menu. You will find a variety of options there, grouped under several categories, namely:

Latest News - Rules & Guidelines - FPN Blogs - Shop Walk 'n Talk - Support FPN - Manuals.

 

All in all this means that a little more space is dedicated to the matter of most importance, actual content, and that it is always possible to find any of the options moved in a somewhat less frivolous presentation .

 

The new Donations option, that of Iridium Supporter, is available through the FPN Support Menu as well. A button and possibly a tab will follow soon. Do note that as mentioned before, this option is only available to Gold Members.

 

Another small change is that in the Forum Topic Index lists: that has been extended now from 20 to 30 topics. We will follow closely what this does to performance, and if this works well enough we may even extend it further.

 

Enjoy!

Warmest regards, Wim

On behalf of
The FPN Admin and Moderator Team

 

Addition:

The Iridium Support Donation option has now been added to the Support options available through the Support button, and via the Shop FPN Tab. It is also available in the Support FPN Menu at the top of each page.

Edited September 22, 2013 by wimg
Addition

[RMN]

Ok, I understand the present view is not yet the end result. A few suggestions/remarks after a quick view of the changes...

 

At the moment the bar:

Latest News - Rules & Guidelines - FPN Blogs - Shop Walk 'n Talk - Support FPN - Manuals.

is on top right, above the bar with login/out, PM and Notification and options.

I would rather see these on the same level:

the new bar on the left, and the login etc bar to the right. This will save space.

 

And we have at this moment several doubles: A classifieds tab, and classifieds in the "shop walk+talk" And two blogs, tab and pull down menu.

 

Also, in the topics, the far right is empty, except the button: check the latest news, right on top. I would suggest to make the actual topic window dynamic to fill the whole width of the browser window.

[wimg]

There are a few doubles deliberately, so people may find things more easily.

 

As to the layout thing: this is fixed, there isn't anything we can do to it except change the order and add an icon if need be to the menu items (which we may do with time); it is part of the application which controls the tabs and tab order. Just that we never used the menu option above the actual board index it provides, until now.

 

As to the Check The Latest News link: that is the old sidebar still, it will disappear in about one or two weeks time altogether - it only serves as a reminder, it links to this topic. When it disappears, the links in several of the apps will disappear too (Blogs, Classifieds, Upload, Store).

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim