Sidebar - suggestions please!

[amateur51]

Just returned from a late dinner to find it up and running! Looks great. A further enhancement to this great forum

Many thanks.

Wow!

Many thanks french frank! It looks great!

[Don Petter]

As usual, I'm the idiot on these occasions. I can't see any sidebar. I've closed the Forum and opened it up again. I'm assuming the home page is when you click 'Forum' at top left and see:

Forum
The Radio 3 Forum
Welcome to the Radio 3 Forum
Radio 3 Messageboards
etc etc

or is there another home page of which I am unaware?

I have looked at my General Settings this time, but can't see anything about switching off sidebars.

[FFAdminMKS]

As usual, I'm the idiot on these occasions. I can't see any sidebar. I've closed the Forum and opened it up again. I'm assuming the home page is when you click 'Forum' at top left and see:

If the sidebar is turned off, you should in any case see two large chevrons >> immediately to the left of the messageboard Welcome Thank you for joining us



Edit: Oops, sorry, I was forgetting who I was. I've been fiddling with it.

[Don Petter]

If the sidebar is turned off, you should in any case see two large chevrons >> immediately to the left of the messageboard Welcome Thank you for joining us

The lines

Welcome
Thank you for joining us

are the first entry in the 'Radio 3 Messagebords'/'The unofficial forum for listeners to BBC Radio 3' section, after a large button with a single quote icon, but no chevrons anywhere.

Are we entering screen shot territory yet again?

[french frank]

Are we entering screen shot territory yet again?

This is what you should see if the sidebar is turned off:

[Don Petter]

This is mine:

http://i1231.photobucket.com/albums/ee507/Don_Petter/ForumHome.jpg

Could it be an IE6 thing? (Keep meaning to upgrade, but never needed to yet. Perhaps this is the incentive.)

[french frank]

Do you have another browser you could try it in? Safari, maybe?

I use Firefox (for Mac), but I've whipped through Camino, Safari and Opera and they're all fine.

[Don Petter]

No. I don't have any other.

Don't worry too much if it's just me, as usual. I'll try an upgrade, but don't want to get involved with changes today, as we're off to Paris for a week tomorrow (Yipee!).

[french frank]

I'll try an upgrade, but don't want to get involved with changes today, as we're off to Paris for a week tomorrow (Yipee!).

That's better than an old sidebar, isn't it?

[Russ]

Could it be an IE6 thing?

Yes it is. I've just had a look at the front page in a few browsers (at http://browsershots.org), and the sidebar doesn't show in IE6. This is likely to be caused by IE6 lacking the ability to run the sidebar script.

Russ

[Osborn]

I think the initial links should be very short -to R3 and BBC homepages, weekly schedule, Po3 and a couple of others. It's much more satisfactory to add new links than delete unused ones. Also, the 4 month old enterprise has to keep lining itself up with R3 and demonstrate to the BBC that it has no intention whatsoever of sprawling into a general music/arts forum and chatroom.

And in 6 months time RW will be saying "...and that's how MBs should look and run - ours were rubbish!"

[french frank]

I think the initial links should be very short -to R3 and BBC homepages, weekly schedule, Po3 and a couple of others. It's much more satisfactory to add new links than delete unused ones. Also, the 4 month old enterprise has to keep lining itself up with R3 and demonstrate to the BBC that it has no intention whatsoever of sprawling into a general music/arts forum and chatroom.

We are beginning to make a bit of progress and may be able to add Listen Live and Listen Again to the Nav bar (alongside the What's New button) in due course. That would remove those from the sidebar block.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to link to the weekly schedule grid because it isn't an R3 page which refreshes itself: each week has its own date so a link would only go to that one page even when time had moved on. The daily schedule page does refresh and the weekly grid can be accessed from there, or from the R3 homepage. I can't see a way round that atm.

It might be a good idea to have a smaller block with the essentials - perhaps with the new Po3 in its glorious liveness and the Proms. And a separate block (hope I'm not running ahead of my capabilities here ) for sundries.

I've also made some headway with the banner - probably just a simple title to begin with.

And in 6 months time RW will be saying "...and that's how MBs should look and run - ours were rubbish!"

I've told him that already - he didn't comment

[Don Petter]

'Could it be an IE6 thing?'

Yes it is. I've just had a look at the front page in a few browsers (at http://browsershots.org), and the sidebar doesn't show in IE6. This is likely to be caused by IE6 lacking the ability to run the sidebar script.

Russ

Thanks, Russ. I can relax now - I'm used to everyone else being out of step.

[Nick Armstrong]

I've also made some headway with the banner - probably just a simple title to begin with.

Hey nice banner!!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

if you are still running with IE6 you should definitely upgrade to a later version [very poor security] or better still Firefox or Chrome ... far less demanding of your pc than IE ...