RASIKAS.ORG - NEW FORMAT

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 17 Jan 2011, 14:00

The textured background is very pretty, it is a nice idea, just it cuts contrast and readability. How many books have a visible texture pattern on the paper? The rules of typography have been discovered by practice over hundreds of years, and few of them are changed in any way by the fact that the words we see are on a screen, not on paper.

A smooth grey, like the one I am looking at right now in the post-a-reply dialogue, would cut glare and make for easy reading without eye strain, whilst keeping contrast levels high. Those sacrosanct rules of type were set in a time when the medium did not emit light, so perhaps one rule we can adjust is "black on white is the most easy-to-read combination": a soft grey is a good compromise.

The textured effect on the non-text areas on this dialogue page still looks very nice.

kssr · Post by **kssr** » 17 Jan 2011, 14:05

I too could not locate EDIT, QUOTE

Normally people resist change. The (mostly) overwhelming appreciation for the changed format is a clear indication of the healthy attitude of our forum members. It is nice to see that. I am sure the minor hiccups will get solved soon and with regard to the colours, layout, etc., we will get used to it in a few days time.

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 17 Jan 2011, 14:33

Select all. We get white letters in blue background.

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 17 Jan 2011, 14:38

In the 'Edit' or 'Post', we get only 'Preview' and 'Submit'. The Cancel Button which we used to have earlier is missing now.

S.NAGESWARAN · Post by **S.NAGESWARAN** » 17 Jan 2011, 18:52

To,
srkris [ADMIN],

Regarding the New format for our website, I would like to suggest the following.

1.On any day, black or for that matter any coloured letters will be bright and more visible with the white paper background compared to the grey colour background paper.
2.The font size of the letters posted by the Rasikas is to be increased[ MOST IMPORTANT].

The above points if considered will help all the Rasikas, more so for the senior citizens like the U/S.

Kindly consider the above points.

S.NAGESWARAN.
17.01.2011.

kssr · Post by **kssr** » 17 Jan 2011, 19:14

One more observation:

Previously the name of each TOPIC in the listing, will be bold when we have not visited it and it will become normal once we have visited it. Instead of it now we have a bright bulb/ faint bulb change on the left side which is not clear. IMO the earlier BOLD/NORMAL change was a good feature to directly lead us to the unread strings.

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 17 Jan 2011, 19:34

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I will work on most of them. Please bear with me until they are fixed.

vidya raja · Post by **vidya raja** » 17 Jan 2011, 20:03

Thank you very much too happy with the new look.

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 17 Jan 2011, 20:09

S.NAGESWARAN wrote:The font size of the letters posted by the Rasikas is to be increased [MOST IMPORTANT].

By pressing down the 'Control' button and scrolling the mouse, the font size can be changed.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 17 Jan 2011, 21:20

It looks and interacts better on iPad. The green on gray texture (I actually like the textured background) - I am ambivalent about the color combination - somewhat clashing. Red is even more clashing.

Nageswaran sir - you can change the text color by clicking on the up arrow (^) next to the letter "A" that appears on the top right of the page (right below Advanced Search).

Some of the buttons are perhaps too small by default and also darker-gray text on a gray-background can be hard on some eyes (e.f.

Arun

uday_shankar · Post by **uday_shankar** » 17 Jan 2011, 21:57

http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 81#p185196
Photos, as in the above thread, are being clipped instead of auto sized.

suma · Post by **suma** » 17 Jan 2011, 22:47

uday_shankar wrote:http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 81#p185196
Photos, as in the above thread, are being clipped instead of auto sized.

Same here
http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=15375

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 18 Jan 2011, 05:54

Yes, the images are clipped. But the problem of text run to the full width of the image is solved !

And I get the full image when I scroll down the size.

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 18 Jan 2011, 06:01

The 'read/unread' button disturbs. Should we sukravathanee?

mohan · Post by **mohan** » 18 Jan 2011, 06:54

In the list of topics what is the circle with scrolling text meant to illustrate? Some are animated while others are fixed and in different colours.

sureshvv · Post by **sureshvv** » 18 Jan 2011, 13:54

I think the animated icons have gone away now. Thanks!

They are baaaaaaaaaaaaack........

Withdraw my thanks!

What does it mean anyway? Animated vs.non-animated? Red Animated vs. Blue Animated?

Not as if the old fogies here are not confused enough

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 18 Jan 2011, 13:56

Hi, the red icons display unread topics/posts. The blue ones are for the read posts. I will remove animated icons since they tend to be distracting.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 18 Jan 2011, 14:04

This old fogy is happy about it too, but not happy at all in searching still the Edit facility

sureshvv · Post by **sureshvv** » 18 Jan 2011, 14:27

Thanks reinstated

Where are the quote and edit buttons?

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 18 Jan 2011, 15:05

I think I was happy one step back, with how the forum listings were then

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 18 Jan 2011, 17:55

srkris
While reading a chain of posts like this one (where there are atleast 4 to 5 posts in an hour) , one thing is the user id is not registered enough in our heads . Two suggestions (not sure if it is indeed the best) to improve it

1. Between the posts the small gray bar is too thin in width , increasing thrice that size will be good so that we register in our heads

2. Can we have a small band of background like what we use to have it in previous avatar "over the post no by forum id and date" ,so that conspicuous band will help us all to register easily in terms of who has written that post .

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 18 Jan 2011, 18:14

rajeshnat:
good suggestions.

srkris:
As for point 2), more line space between the 'Heading line' and the '# rasika date' line will also solve the problem.

I am not sure whether we pester too much!
But, is any other design option available for the 'read/unread' button?
A simpe ● or ● (large size, of course) will do.

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 18 Jan 2011, 21:59

Chembai,
Can we please have links open in a new window automatically, and not have to chose it every time with a right click?

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 19 Jan 2011, 07:44

rshankar,

If you FireFox you could do that with the TabMixPlus Add-on. In the options for this add-on, you could force all links to open in a new tab, leaving your original page intact. But if you choose this option, it will apply to all websites.

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 19 Jan 2011, 08:40

Is there some kind of animation function turned on when a new page loads? Everytime, I click on a new link the new page appears with a little flash (like in some ppt slideshows). I thought something was wrong with my display adapter, but thankfully everything is ok there...

srikant1987 · Post by **srikant1987** » 19 Jan 2011, 13:52

Ravi,

On most browsers, you can middle-click a link to get it to open in a new Tab.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 19 Jan 2011, 20:28

srikant, I think Ravi uses a system whose mouse has only one button

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 19 Jan 2011, 22:52

Any problems with the server? The site seems to be unavailable (slow to connect that browser gives up) often for the last 30 mins or so. But then once in a while (like now), I can get through.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 19 Jan 2011, 23:49

I was going to post the same.

I've been getting regular timeouts.

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 20 Jan 2011, 00:19

Yes, the site seemed to have problem. In fact I sent a message to srkris.

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 20 Jan 2011, 00:25

Seems there is too high a load on the server that brings it down. I don't think it's due to normal usage.

srikant1987 · Post by **srikant1987** » 20 Jan 2011, 08:38

srkris,

Is Search working properly now? I wasn't able to find bilahari's Vedavalli mami @ MA review.

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 20 Jan 2011, 22:32

Two problems with this new site change:
==================================

1. Images are not getting resized but gets chopped.(already mentioned before by uday)

2. This problem I just discovered today some posts donot have headings in green and images are chopped

See this url where none of the posts appear to have heading.
http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=12223

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 20 Jan 2011, 22:50

Srkris,
# 1. Last Feb 2010 , when you did a migration from a older rasikas(rasikas_flux) to a newer blue site , you kept the old copy of the site in http://rasikas.org/rasikas_flux site can we have the just earlier website (blue one ) too in a different url, We all 5000 + users will Appreciate that

# 2. Are we all expected to trouble shoot and help you kill all bugs so that this "new green avatar of the site" sparkles without any issues.

# 3. May I know the real purpose of this site migration to this green avatar, while we get few pluses which I appreciate much, but we do lose out a lot and we just have to do QA and help you fix the issues . Can you spell out clearly the necessity of this migration , a very direct 4 or 5 liner answer will help all of us immensely, I know you can write straight? .

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 20 Jan 2011, 23:01

May I know the real purpose of this site migration to this green avatar

It's a conspiracy

Rajesh, the green avatar has nothing to do with the problems. As you know we faced an outage of several days with the old server just after new year. I have migrated the entire forum to a new server, and it is expected that the migration would not be 100% smooth. The green avatar just changes the background colors and fonts, that's it.

Most of the problems we face has to do with the fact that I am not a software guy to begin with, and I have a full time job to add, that leaves me with an hour or two at best to work on these issues every day. I cannot hand over this work to anyone else for reasons I don't want to mention. These are not excuses, I know you expect a functional forum without any hiccups. We are moving towards it and I assure you everything will be fixed soon.

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 20 Jan 2011, 23:20

Srkris
The site went down and you migrated the site to a new server that point is well taken , hats off to you

in doing that .It happens and I certainly do not blame you .
But when the site came up and within few days why you went for this change , I am sure the crop of images and the posts not having title has to do with your changes of this "green avatar".

Can you put the older blue site coexisting along with this green avatar . I bet even in the newer server with the blue site restored as another site the images and the headings that are noted in #83 will not have a problem, because when suma posted sandeep bharadwaj's photo the truncation atleast did not happen (I am talking about newer server after the week's outage when suma posted the image)

The green avatar is introducing new unforeseen bugs that you seem not to catch it . If you are not a software guy and not having team why you are tweaking .

As such despite meeting you for just 5 minutes, I know there is no conspiracy in you(I know you are a nice guy), but there is an element of carelessness/single man show that you seem to show at regular intervals which is perhaps not expressed to you directly . Only few people like me are expressing , few fellow mods like VK and CMLover donot confront you and the rest help you inclusive of me to be a programmer, always having some post to write and forget about the image chop, heading missing and search broken(I wish you had put all your effort to just get the advanced search working better than changing the colors and fonts ).

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 21 Jan 2011, 00:23

The photos resize issue is fixed. The external links in new window issue is also fixed.

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 21 Jan 2011, 08:09

srkris,
Well done!

The 'unread' button is now polite!
The # and name of rasika are now given importance.
The 'report', 'quote' and other buttons are all very clear. So too the 'e-mail'.

► Similarly, you may change the 'edit' and 'report' buttons.
► Hope we get accustomed to 'Marginal' disturbance!

Pratyaksham Bala · Post by **Pratyaksham Bala** » 21 Jan 2011, 09:48

MISSING!
List of Members and also the link to their posts.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 21 Jan 2011, 11:04

"searching for unread posts has been disabled"

Oh dear, you must be having some big problems. Hope you find a way out!

Without the unread posts page, the board is hardly usable

EDIT: it is possible to use the new-posts link instead, but not so neat.

venkatakailasam · Post by **venkatakailasam** » 21 Jan 2011, 13:07

The letters and color are hazy. finding it difficult to read the contents freely.
Can this be helped?

venkatakailasam

rajeshnat · Post by **rajeshnat** » 21 Jan 2011, 13:08

Nick H wrote:"searching for unread posts has been disabled"

Oh dear, you must be having some big problems. Hope you find a way out!

Without the unread posts page, the board is hardly usable

EDIT: it is possible to use the new-posts link instead, but not so neat.

Nick,
While srkris can reenable unread posts, I am not sure if you do know about the usefulness of the link "Active Topics".
The ActiveTopics link exactly shows the view like "unread posts". It actually does "Display posts in the last 7 days ". Click Active Topics and go to the end of it. For me Active Topics is the most important link to make it usable.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 21 Jan 2011, 15:53

I use "unread posts" search as my bookmark into all my regular forums: what I want is to know what happened since my last visit, whether that was five minutes or five days ago. I'm thinking that "new posts" is, here, almost as good.

"Active topics" would be very good in the circumstance where one comes to the forum to post something in an ongoing conversation, but it does not have unread posts. Usually I forget, and go looking for the thread forum by forum. Thanks for reminding me

girish_a · Post by **girish_a** » 21 Jan 2011, 16:09

Is it only me who finds it difficult to read the text on this new background? I find it to be quite a strain on the eyes.

srikant1987 · Post by **srikant1987** » 21 Jan 2011, 16:18

Ahh! Finally someone else finds this extreme contrast of black on white straining!

Unlike books, which reflect light, these computer screens emit light, and the intense white is often very distrbing to me.

The traditionalists might still like the book colouring -- but maybe like Nick was saying, a grey-without-pattern is a better compromise than this white-with-pattern.

srkris, probably you're already stretched to your limits, but could you consider offering user-specific themes? |(
---
JUST TRIED TO EDIT MY POST WITH THE LINK SRKRIS GAVE.

srikant1987 · Post by **srikant1987** » 21 Jan 2011, 16:20

Back-to-back posting because I still couldn't find any EDIT button -- duller colours on computer screens will also save energy as compared to this intense white.

kunthalavarali · Post by **kunthalavarali** » 21 Jan 2011, 16:37

Just saw this thread. Have not read all the comments. My first impression is that the title colour is dull. Could be in a brighter colour.
Thanks

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 21 Jan 2011, 16:55

Srikant, maybe your browser's cache is not refreshed? Can you press shift+F5 and check if the edit button appears? Alternatively, try clicking on this link http://www.rasikas.org/forums/posting.ph ... 2&p=186371 to edit your post. Let me know if either of these works.

srikant1987 · Post by **srikant1987** » 21 Jan 2011, 17:09

Srkris, the link you gave worked, but clearing the Browser cache and restarting rasikas.org didn't work.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 21 Jan 2011, 17:28

srikant1987 wrote:srkris, probably you're already stretched to your limits, but could you consider offering user-specific themes? |(
---

The lingo is skins!

Unread posts is back. Thanks skris. next time I miss something I'll try to remember to give it a few hours before complaining :$