NOW you can help Dark Matter evolve - Problems?

Whatever it was, is no longer happening. I didn't change any settings, so, it looks like it worked itself out(thank goodness!)

Thanks!

this is what my ATS screen looks like since someone supposedly improved the site. It's a joke. Whoever is responsible should go to google and find a way to fix things back the way they were. I don't mean to be rude but 'my god this has gone on way too long. It's no longer just ats, it is now also wts for 'way too small. Every single website fits my screen except ATS. I have a small 17" screen. I guess I should go buy a 15" one to keep up with the site programmer here. Something is very very wrong here my friends. Once again I don't mean to be rude but this has gone on long enough.

Many sites, blogs in particular, have fixed widths as opposed to liquid widths, you just don't notice it because the content is centered and the background outside the content container has the same colour as inside. Liquid widths can create huge design headaches and disproportionate stretching of elements, especially on sites with as many different user features and elements as ATS.

Internet design usability surveys show that lines of text over a certain length are difficult to read and that most users prefer line length kept to a certain maximum.



The main purpose of large resolutions is to facilitate ease of use for multiple windows/applications or for image/3D/design applications, not to enable lines of text 1600 pixels wide.

De-maximize and resize your browser window then drag it into the middle of your screen. See if that helps.

[edit on 2006-12-27 by wecomeinpeace]

I thought i'd check the width of other forums and the first one I opened looked like this.


link


The second one was centered but it still took up most of the screen.


link


The third one filled the whole screen

link



And here is how ATS appears on my screen



I seriously don't see any problems with having a full screen page unless you had a huge monitor that stretched things too far.

(MODS: If I've broken any rules by posting those images then please delete them.)







[edit on 27-12-2006 by probedbygrays]

probedbygreys, the easiest thing to do, is to set your screen resolution to 1024 x 768.

That is the resolution that ATS has been designed for.



As most other sites are dynamic (automatically adjust for users resolution), this should help out.

My screen resolution is set at 1024 x 768, and I have a 19" monitor.

So far, i have not had any trouble with this configuration on most sites.

when I use the lower resolution I lose all the sharp clarity of the pages. It diminishes the quality of my viewing considerably. So I have to stick with the higher resolution.

A screen resolution of 1024x768 accounts for over 50% of viewers on ATS.

This is followed by 16% having 1280x1024 and 9% on 800x600.

So as you can see, we have designed the viewing experience here to be enjoyable for the masses. I am running a higher resolution and have no problem with the way the website looks.

If you think ATS "is a joke" because our highly optimised presentation doesn't meet your personal requirements, go somewhere else where the width suits you better.

As has been stated previously, the issue is one of usability and design standards.

ATS is an environment where a great deal of reading is anticipated. It's been proven in countless usability studies and general eye-movement studies that people read faster, comprehend better, and have reduced eye fatigue when the text is in manageable columns. This is the reason we have moved to a fixed width... designing the site to ensure the vast amounts of text is displayed in a column width that is comfortable to read.

Additionally, there is some degree of conflicting information on light-text-on-dark versus dark-text-on-light displays... and lots of it has been discussed here. However... of all the users (members and guests) who click on the color settings...
84% stick with a dark background and...
16% stick with a light background.
Interestingly enough, this matches with the percentage of the population that might prefer a light background because of various vision issues.

OK, thanks for your help

[edit on 27-12-2006 by probedbygrays]

Ok, sorry if this has been mentioned.
I just realized this.

I use the light mode, and at the bottom of a thread where it
shows the thread tage, there almost the same colour as the
background, so there almost invisible.

I doubt these are bugs,but they're problems nonetheless.

1.The "Guest Speaker Forum"seems to be missing on the home page.

2.Also the ignorancedenied tab at the top on the atsnn.com homepage links to ignorancedenised.com

i've mentioned this already but zzz says its not a problem because he sees it fine. it doesn't show like that on dark setting, only on light but i see im not the only person that doesn't see it on light setting.

btw, i do like the new spell-checker underline feature in the reply box hopefully members will make use of it. i always used to highlight a word and look it up in google if i wasn't sure of the spelling.

There is a spell checker? Where?

Thats a great thing to have on the site. I used to search it on google too

when you are in the reply box, if you mistype (or it sees a word it doesn't recognise then it underlines it in red. it is set for u.s. spelling though so will underline words properly spelt in english and it doesn't recognise some words that it should. it also picks up on punctuation for you if you forget to use those apostrophies in abbreviated words, as i often do

Not sure if this one has been mentioned or not, so I thought I would throw it out. In the memCenter, when we try to check our u2u's, we are unable to view how many we actually have.



In this shot you can see how tough it is to actually see. When you highlight the text, you can read it easily.

chissler, i checked that and it looks fine for me. i am using light setting.

perhaps when members reply with problems they should state whether they are using light or dark setting

Indeed, you are not.

well, i'm soooo glad that i'm not having problems with my eyes as some would suggest!

btw implosion, i also mentioned earlier that your avatar is not visible on light setting (or dark setting)

You know, typically enough, I see it just fine under both settings.

If you guys are still having a problem viewing this text, I would think it is a cookie issue. I first came across this when I was working on my blog. Some updates would never take hold until I deleted my cookies.

If that does not work, maybe give a tool a go to flush out some temp files.

CCleaner should do the job.



The problem only exists on the Dark setting. Thank you for the clarification.

Edit:

The problem you guys have mentioned seems to be happening on the Light setting. I wonder if Zed was looking at it on the Dark setting when he said it was not a problem.

[edit on 29-12-2006 by chissler]