and again...

Testing removal of the Festive Smilies...

The reason he took off? hahah. We bought him the ticket.

NannyNick, "Possible workaround for the IE problem:"...

I've not tried it (and trying to stay out of actually doing any actual proper work coding), but by the looks of it your suggestion would cause the message display to be constrained to that width, rather than stretching out underneath whatever is in the right hand column. The person concerned will be looking at this again soon. MN is all Mac these days, but we have a few Windows computers and some Parallels instances kicking around to test stuff out.

As for the table that doesn't need to be there, I suspect it's probably because the title is rendered as part of a loop, for use in situations where there are multiple titles. It makes for odd looking HTML when there is only one title, but more efficient in terms of code reuse. That could be nonsense though; it might just be left over from something old.

As to your question, on the new design the current intention is that the messages of a thread will fill the width of the page as far as the right edge of the right hand column. It's a contentious issue though and everybody has a differing opinion it seems.

Thanks for your input.

Littlefish, we know, honest. It's being worked on.

"But is/was the old site broken/ did it need fixing?"

Yep!

"it SUCKS the sweat off a dead donkeys balls"

everGreensleeves, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

TheTwelveDAISYofChristmas (and others), I'm glad you like the blue bars changing to grey, though, they'll be changing again tomorrow! But still to a very subtle shade (sorry to the person whose name escapes me who wanted them in a darker colour!).

EffiePerine, we have tried quite hard to make things less busy. The trouble is, every single thing you remove is missed by someone, so we have to be really careful.

KKNN, don't worry too much about that thread you linked to. It was edited, as an experiment and, well, erm, some stuff happened that wouldn't happen if it was a real thread on the real server.

There will be a new iteration tomorrow and that should address various issues.

mumofmonsters, I was around for the last change. So yeah, I know the kind of shenanigans that goes on.

The update will not be timed to coincide with a new moon, but you never know...

RustyBear, time off? haha

"will hide topics/threads still be an option and can i still read threads from bottom to top all in one page?"

Yes.

Attention blue bar haters...

Could you have a quick look now? Go to a thread - the blue bar introducing each post has gone, having been replaced by just a subtle grey background. Any good?

BellsCarolsNSleighs, as one step short of a button to allow you to choose your own colours, what background and text colour would you choose if you did have the choice?

MotherChristmas2OliverJames, no no no and no! The "new" site is just a testbed. What'll happen, when it's ready, is that the new features, content and look will be applied to the site you're looking at now. There won't be 2 versions running together. And yes, we are definitely going to make changes but we're asking for feedback so that we can make any adjustments that are required.

Last 15 minutes is by no means out of the question. In fact the last conversation I had was that we were dropping last hour because it makes no sense (the site is too busy and there are too many posts in an hour to make a list of them useful) but keeping Last 15 minutes. I think it may have been removed temporarily because it wasn't working quite right.

The width of the page is a really tricky thing. We'll revisit it though.

The add post box is due some styling, yes.

Typogrelf (and Samja - though do note, the blue bars were the product of a graphic designer!) we do understand what you're saying. But it's also true that some people do like to scan a thread based on the posters. I think we'll try a less saturated and lighter blue (and thus less prominent) for those horizontal bars and see if people like it.

georgimama if by playing you mean posting on the new trial site, you can do so now. Just keep in mind that any posts there will evaporate pretty soon.

Tickers? Post counts, avatars, poster ratings, invitation only? Who ever heard of such a thing!

WE PROMISE WE'LL NEVER HAVE TICKERS! The aim is not to dumb down here but to improve usability.

The idea of blue for links is that it will be utterly consistent through the WHOLE site. As well as Talk we've redesigned all the other content and have a ton of fabulous new content too. Whilst talk is the most important bit of the site for many many people we want to try to get more consistency to make life easier for all. The blue bars (which as I've said a couple of times, are probably displaying as taller than they should for some users) are coming in for quite a lot of stick so we'll be sure to beat have a word with the graphic designer on that one.

For those that don't love the "more" option on topic lists, firstly keep in mind that you can click the category and it will expand - you don't have to click the more link. How about we add link at the top that says "Show All" and that would automatically expand all categories?

Thanks to everyone who's tested it so far and fed back. Some of your suggestions we are planning to incorporate already before we release the new format and we promise to have a look at all your comments/ suggestions and to see if there are some general themes/ ways to improve the design.

Do keep your thoughts coming .

The interesting (but difficult for us!) thing about the feedback received so far is that the negative comments seem to vary between "it's too cluttered, there is too much information" to "you're not filling the page enough and there is too much white space".

Some of the space in the column on the right will be filled with useful content.

The messages themselves should expand horizontally to fill whatever width you have available in your browser.

And for those that haven't read this entire thread if you have a lot of space between the title and the body of the thread and you use Internet Explorer then that's a mistake and it will be fixed.

The big ad that lots of people have commented about is no taller than the existing ad that you see on a thread like this one. It is wider, but then the whole page is designed to be wider given that people have higher resolution screens these days.

The thing about the topic list is that for a new user the existing list is pretty overwhelming. So the idea is that they see a friendlier list of the most active topics, but the others are never more than one click away, thus keeping the regulars happy too. We could be wrong and we'll reconsider it if enough people don't like that, but do try to see it from a new users perspective if possible, or at least give a nod to the fact that we'd like to!

Quite how anyone can say it looks like NetMums is confusing to me!!! Messages aren't fixed width, no images, no tickers, no pink, no "my baby's last poo was 4 hours ago and weighed 2.5 lbs".

"Purely out of interest, has anyone at Mumsnet Towers heard of the expression "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."?"

Of course! However, I think anyone who has seen the effort that has gone in to all this - I can think of 8 people who have been directly involved with this work and that many again who have chipped in - would realise we didn't just do it for fun. We have plenty of evidence that the old design is broken, in so much that it was turning people off. We wanted to make it look better and be more functional in to the bargain.

Every single link, every shade of every colour, every single line drawn has been thought about, discussed, debated and in the case of me and Justine, shouted at each other about. It's really not something we just tossed together in an idle moment and we hope it shows!

The feedback we've received so far would suggest that most people are either indifferent or like it, and those that really don't like it are generally happy to stick with the various classic options. This is great news. We'll take the various comments and see how many of the suggestions we can implement. Keep them coming though - nothing is set in stone quite yet. Clearly there are a few issues in Internet Explorer to be resolved and we'll get on those on Monday.

Thanks to all those that have commented, positively or negatively.

Right, will be up at 5am and possibly between now and then too, so am going to knock off now. Keep the feedback coming. It's been very helpful.

apuppydaviesisforlife, it's a good suggestion. There is a (boring techie) efficiency question, but we'll consider it further.

nooka, the lists of topics that you see always, as opposed to the ones that drop down, are still in a state of flux. The idea is to show the most popular ones.

The links at the top will go somewhere, but as per earlier in this thread, they're not ready yet.

And remember, if you don't like the new threads themselves look you'll be able to have them just the way you have them now.

So, see? You like it more than you thought!

Nighbynight, yep, we could, but then people would moan about not having that information we lose. It's a tough call sometimes. We have spent a LOT of time trying to please as many people as we can I promise! Anyway, we'll see what everyone thinks. Keep 'em coming.

lou031205, it's not a bad idea but it's a question of fitting everything in - some people are already saying things are too long or too fussy. We'll give it some thought though.

moodlumhohohoodlum, rationale behind the links at the bottom is that for you as a regular user, you don't really care about them because they're off the bottom of the page. But for people that first come in to MN by finding a Talk thread, it helps them find the rest of the site.