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MNHQ

Testing Testing - Ok so now here's our new look (but you don't have to have it, do you hear?)

395 replies

JustinExcelsisMumsnet · 19/12/2008 21:43

This is a sneak preview of our redesign - it's planned across the whole site but we thought we'd give you a preview of Talk so you could give us your thoughts. ETA is early in the new year (God willing).

Two things we should make clear:

First Customise talk and Mn Classic WILL STILL BE AVAILABLE so don't panic if you really hate it!

Second it's not finished yet so not everything works perfectly - it's a test site.

You might wonder why we are bothering with a redesign by the way. We have had quite a lot of feedback that newcomers find the site a little hard to find their way round at first so we are trying to simplify it. We haven't changed much overall in nine years but we've added quite a few bits and bobs on, and to newbies it can be quite daunting we think.

And one more thing - we've found in the past (and we know ourselves) that change can be disorienting but do give it a go for a wee while before you trash it completely, please? .

There's no link to it yet - YetMoreTech will post it in a minute - he wants to add more caveats before he posts it up!

Hope you like it (or at least don't loathe it) - let us know your thoughts.

(Please address all complaints to [email protected])

OP posts:
BabiesEverywhere · 23/12/2008 09:35

Can we have a spell checker for posts ?

Or the ability to edit a post for the first five minutes in order to correct stuff, which wasn't there when I previewed 'honest' ?

SixSpotBurNativity · 23/12/2008 10:54

Don't like it but will stick with Mumsnet Classic.

jingleMAMADIVAsbells · 23/12/2008 11:03

I will give it a go at the momment I'm not sure because it's new so will take a while to sttle into.

Can I make a suggestion not sure if it's possible right enough.

But is there anyway we could have (without having to search because alot of people don't do that) some sort of thing that when we start a thread it comes up with a list of similair threads before actually starting a new one, because then we could see if there is any advice relelvant without having the same threads over and over again.

Am I making sense?

Also how do I keep sing this mumset will there be a link or summit?

morningpaper · 23/12/2008 13:04

"it SUCKS the sweat off a dead donkeys balls"

that's a good night out in Taunton

MrsSeanBean · 23/12/2008 16:27

It's good that the talk topics are more easily visible. But is/was the old site broken/ did it need fixing?

MNHQ
YetMoreTech · 23/12/2008 17:47

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

Yep!

nannynick · 23/12/2008 18:20

The bars are now (at least in FireFox) a light blue (#D8EAFC for techies/designers).
The word Add in Add a message is in . Could all the bar text be in ?

The font-family for the ThreadTitle is different to the font-family for the ThreadBody. Could they not be the same?
While on ThreadTitle, there is a large gap below the ThreadTitle and first postbar. This I suspect is due to the increased margin for the bottom of posts (which I like). Could you try changing the padding settings on ThreadTitle such that there is the 5px top and side padding, but not at the bottom. May look a little better then.

Littlefish · 23/12/2008 19:03

YMT - Sorry if this has been commented on a million times. I run IE and thought that the gap between the title bar and the rest of the messages was going to be sorted yesterday.

It's still there on mine. I have to scroll down a mile before I find anything at all.

Sorry if you thought you'd fixed it!

everGreensleeves · 23/12/2008 19:07

mp you live in Taunton you fucker

we NEED to drag you a bit further south for a meet up

[not remotely traumatised by moldiefarce as didn't trust any of you anyway]

randomxmas · 23/12/2008 19:42

IMHO....
only thing that could be improved.....

.....The contact poster on every thread is too much as it seems like we all contact each other about posts. The icon is better as it is unobtrusive.

Or contact poster could be on the profile section for those that want this option.

MNHQ
YetMoreTech · 23/12/2008 23:24

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

nannynick · 24/12/2008 01:01

Possible workaround for the IE problem:

When viewing thread posts,

replace with:

After #Threadtitle in the CSS (links.css in test mode), add:
#Threadposts { float: left; width: 67%; }

On a very large screen this may make quite a gap between end of a posts text and the right side content... I haven't got a large screen so can't test that.

Also of note, I don't think the Table used for Threadtitle is needed. Just creating a
This is the thread title
looks sufficient and seems to work in Firefox and IE.
Hope that helps and that Mumsnet Techies can give my coding a try to see if they get the same results I'm getting locally on my machine.

RumpeliciousChristmasWishes · 24/12/2008 12:53

Great!

nannynick · 24/12/2008 13:19

Can I ask a question with regard to page width, when viewing individual posts.

Currently (on the to-be-old system) messages expand to fill whole window width once the right-side advert has been displayed.

The new design seems to have a Right hand column, which results in posts not expanding to fill whole page width once the right-side content (links, ads etc) have finished.

Is it the intention to try to get posts to go all the way across, or not?
Personally I don't mind posts not going all the way across.

MNHQ
YetMoreTech · 24/12/2008 18:36

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.

nannynick · 24/12/2008 19:37

YMT - You are right alas, it does constrain the width all down the entire page, so does not resolve. However having now played with it a bit, the problem area appears to me to be class postbar.

Currently width is set to 100%, which Firefox treats fine, but IE6 wants to put below Talkside content.

The soluition is to set width to be auto
So postbar becomes:

.postbar {background:#d8eafc; width:auto; font-size:10px; border-top:#FFFFFF 1px solid; margin-top:12px;}

Please can you give that a try, it's only a very little bit of coding

MerlinsBeard · 24/12/2008 21:37
zenandtheartofbaking · 25/12/2008 00:59

Wah! I'm too new to post and I want to offer something really, really, really important.

[sulks]

nannynick · 25/12/2008 15:23

zen - offer away... let the mumsnet techies know what you think of the new site design. If you use Internet Explorer as your webbrowser, ignore the big gap at the top when viewing message posts as that YMT says will get fixed (with luck they may use my code to fix it).
Link to Test Mumsnet site (to save you scrolling to find the link)

MatNanPlusTINSEL · 25/12/2008 17:29

I have to scroll halfway down the entire page to find the threads on the test site.

Am using AOL not IE.

SleighGirl · 26/12/2008 21:04

Please please please please under for sale/wanted could we have a "wanted" section it used to be so helpful for getting bizarre and random things and many people would look at it every few days rather than at the indivdual categories IYSWIM

wotuhohohoinat · 26/12/2008 21:16

And could the wanted board not be limted to CAT people pleeeeeaaaase. I have no credit/debit card so cannot get CAT - hence I can't sell on here anymore

RustyBear · 26/12/2008 21:44

The IE thing seems to be better now - I thought it was totally fixed till I logged in - then, presumably because I have the hide thread option set, I got all the 'hides' from the end of the titles at the top of the page.

nannynick · 27/12/2008 11:09

The code for .postbar has been changed it appears. A techie must have been working on Boxing Day.
MatNanPlus - Should now also work in AOL, as AOL to my knowledge use the IE browser engine. Give it a try, see if it works.

As ever with any code fix, while it may fix it in one browser, it can make it worse in another, so expect YetMoreTech (and team) will be testing it for quite some time yet.

Anyone use iPhone, iTouch? Does it work on them?

nannynick · 27/12/2008 11:15

RustyBear - I think the IE fix only affects the posts view page (so once on a thread, reading individual messages).
Any idea what page you are viewing when you see the 'hides'? Are you perhaps viewing the thread list page (no idea what the technical term for each type of page is), where it lists the thread title, number of replies, date of last reply, author of last reply? Or is it when viewing Active conversations?