New website

[french frank]

Happy New Year all - new website http://www.for3.org/index.php - it's supposed to be squashable for people who look at things with iPads and things, so if it doesn't work …

[mangerton]

Not by me, surely? I missed it this time and probably would have missed it last time too

Happy New Year all - new website http://www.for3.org/index.php - it's supposed to be squashable for people who look at things with iPads and things, so if it doesn't work …

To be honest, I can't remember, and of course it doesn't matter.

About the new website - in the interests of Thorough Testing I've looked at it on my desktop (widescreen) and ipad and smartphone on both orientations, and it looks great on all three, squashing nicely when required.

The only thing I'm not sure of.... that bewigged bloke looking at the computer. Is that a genuine photograph, or is it photoshopped? I think we should be told.

[VodkaDilc]

it's supposed to be squashable for people who look at things with iPads and things, so if it doesn't work …

My MacBook Pro shows it with an inch of brown on each side. Is that so that people with small devices can see it?

I see we are all alphabetical now. (Except for the important people at the top, where the list seems to start with organists and composers - and work downwards from them.)

[french frank]

To be honest, I can't remember, and of course it doesn't matter.

About the new website - in the interests of Thorough Testing I've looked at it on my desktop (widescreen) and ipad and smartphone on both orientations, and it looks great on all three, squashing nicely when required.

The only thing I'm not sure of.... that bewigged bloke looking at the computer. Is that a genuine photograph, or is it photoshopped? I think we should be told.

Bewigged bloke is Papa Haydn, who was painted sitting at his keyboard. But I think he's enjoying whatever it is he's listening to - probably Haydn.

[french frank]

My MacBook Pro shows it with an inch of brown on each side. Is that so that people with small devices can see it?

Quite difficult getting a setting where the text is a reasonable size no matter what sort of hand-held device/computer people are using. Happy to take suggestions here as I persuaded Mark to narrow the width of the text body because on a desktop everything - text and graphics were TOO BIG.

I see we are all alphabetical now. (Except for the important people at the top, where the list seems to start with organists and composers - and work downwards from them.)

Not sure there's any particular order except the alphabeticals …

Better move these to a new thread.

[VodkaDilc]

Quite difficult getting a setting where the text is a reasonable size no matter what sort of hand-held device/computer people are using. Happy to take suggestions here as I persuaded Mark to narrow the width of the text body because on a desktop everything - text and graphics were TOO BIG.

I've just compared a couple of other frequently used websites (Waitrose and Trip Advisor) and they have a similar wasted inch at either side. Is that in order to fit in with people who use smaller devices? Interestingly, this forum is still full width - long may it continue to be so.

[french frank]

I've just compared a couple of other frequently used websites (Waitrose and Trip Advisor) and they have a similar wasted inch at either side. Is that in order to fit in with people who use smaller devices? Interestingly, this forum is still full width - long may it continue to be so.

The thing about the new software is that you can adjust the width of the window and everything squashes up almost to nothing. I'm told people do that regularly - if necessary - as they move from site to site. If you make the forum very narrow you start to lose bits of it altogether.

If you look at Radio 3's home page, it's comparable. There's a patterned background but the essentials are in a narrower column in the middle. When you squash it up it ends with everything in a single column, one item on top of the other - which is how it's supposed to be for iPads &c.

[VodkaDilc]

That is what I suspected. I suppose it's inevitable that things will become more geared to smaller devices. I don't use them and see no need for them; but I'm not in the target age group.

(I think your link to the R3 home page is faulty.)

[Old Grumpy]

That is what I suspected. I suppose it's inevitable that things will become more geared to smaller devices. I don't use them and see no need for them; but I'm not in the target age group.

Me too (by definition, really)

OG

[Don Petter]

Seems to work well on my tablet (Nexus), which I normally have locked to 'landscape'.

It displays in three columns with about half an inch blank background on either side. If I do switch to 'portrait' it uses two columns with borders of about a quarter of an inch.


Further test on my Android smart phone (which I never normally use on the web):

In either picture mode it is perfectly readable, as a single column with no blank edges.

[oddoneout]

I suppose it's inevitable that things will become more geared to smaller devices.

Indeed - as will the assumption that it doesn't matter if those website users who don't have such devices find the new 'improved' version not as good. A certain large national charity was distinctly sniffy when I said I found their new website cumbersome to use on my PC, and slow when looking for information I needed about membership.As I found out later the 'majority of our users' line that they trotted out turned out to be 56%, which still leaves quite a lot of folk not using small devices to access the site.....
I am pleased(and relieved!) to say that so far the bits of this new for3 site I've used seem to look and work fine on my PC so thank you to those concerned.

[french frank]

(I think your link to the R3 home page is faulty.)

Corrected, thank you.

[french frank]

This is the reason why I was enquiring some time back about how members viewed internet sites: whether the browser was invariably full screen or (like me) with the bookmarks sidebar permanently visible and a slghtly reduced browser so that it could be quickly moved to one side.

At the moment I have the browser full screen, I've closed the sidebar and I have a line text so long it's like watching Wimbledon in slow motion. For readibility, there's a line length (number of characters) which is considered 'comfortable' to view and on my desktop full screen is not comfortable. The number of characters is almost four times the recommended length I could increase the text size but then it would be like large print books for the visually impaired

[VodkaDilc]

I must be viewing on full screen (I think) and everything is fine. I did not know that it could be varied; I never have a sidebar displayed. Just for FF's information, her post (No 13 - I never use sharps to mean number) covers five lines: in paragraph 2, the first line ends with the word 'line' and the second with 'four times the'. This might not be the recommended length (whose recommendation, I wonder), but it's fine for me.

[Don Petter]

I must be viewing on full screen (I think) and everything is fine. I did not know that it could be varied; I never have a sidebar displayed. Just for FF's information, her post (No 13 - I never use sharps to mean number) covers five lines: in paragraph 2, the first line ends with the word 'line' and the second with 'four times the'. This might not be the recommended length (whose recommendation, I wonder), but it's fine for me.

My experience too. Full screen, no sidebar, and lines ending with 'there's a' and 'almost four'.

I've never thought, or worried, about line length. It all seems right and natural to me. What is this 'Wimbledon effect' and the theory behind it?