Overall layout

Hi Dick,
not that I think you don't have enough work!!
I can very well live with wikiloops just as it is and I love it.
Only I think the dynamic layout leads to quite a lot little errors in the design - distorted avatars, missing buttons, invisible riff infos etc, depending from the screen width, even with full size browser. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
Why not a fixed lay-out ? You hate scroll bars perhaps?

Probably you have a good reason for that... I just ask
Greetings
Lutz

dear Lutz,
I had versions with so many scrollbars in one view, I really started to hate them... the problem you are poinnting at is not too easy to solve - fixed layouts work well, but since there is so many screen types from phones to widescreens theese days, you will always have big compromises with a fixed layout - either, half of your widescreen wont be used, or you would have to scroll right to see your user functions on a standard 1024 by 8-something screen... and we have to remember, not all countries/musician will have highest standard gear at home, propably theres still some users watching on VGA resolutions...
So what most bigger pages do is a trick: first, checking the visitors screen resolution, then send them to a version optimized for this resolution - so theres like 15 or more different fixed layouts available, that are called up depending on the visitor.
I have not gotten that far yet, so a dynamic layout is the best solution I could come up with while avoidung important features being hidden in unseen parts of the page (it would really suck to have to scroll right to use shoutbox or favorites I think)
but as you pointed out, theres some issues unsolved by that approach.
I will do an attempt on split-by-resolution one day, but its not very far up on my priority list.
One last thought: Internet explorer is extremely picky in dynamic design, most of the effects you are naming do not happen that way when using firefox (which is my browser of choice). I'll do my best to do some quick IE optimizing, but some issues wont be solvable that way... so maybe you give a firefox a try and let me know, how much of your issues disappear that way :)

keep on asking, I'm always glad for feedback, and it helps me not to forget the issues I should be taking care of soon :)
Dick
-fatalist coder of this site-

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Thank you Dick,
now I understand much better - so many things in site construction that I don't know.
And as I said, I can well live with the layout as it is. The most important here is community, atmosphere and respect - which is flawless!

Lutz

Hey, just to give a quick feedback. I'm using chrome, and I haven't recognized any bugs yet, regarding the layout. But now as Lutz mentioned it, I will keep my eyes open. :)

thanks! I try to do regular checkups on all kinds of browsers and diffrent screen-settings, but its hard to keep up with that.
Some things are of so minimal effect, you wont notice them at all if changed, but as Lutz pointed out, they may be of huge effect on someone else. When do the riffs disappear Lutz? I was really surprised to read that, neer seen it.
I only know the thumb-buttons tend to bug up on small screen resolutions and the right textlinks in the playerpanel tend to be broken down to another row...
Well, it would be very surprising if thre where no way to tell I'm not a learned coder, remember, I started coding php last christmas :)
but again, thanks for pointing theese things out, I prolly would not have noticed the search-site being messed up in IE without Lutz pointing this out.
I should keep track of changes made by user recommendations, you'd be surprised to see how many well liked features were recommended by you and fellows :-)

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In Internet Explorer everythings was dependent of window size, rather unpredictable. Even the full size mode was not perfect. But most of the time it was working quite ok.
Now I switched to Firefox, because you were right, in Firefox everything looks very nice!!

ok fellas, as you might have noticed, I changed wiki to a fixed layout last night. After I had looked at wiki on a 1600 by something widescreen, I really felt this could not stay the way it looked (all stretched).
For the reasons I explained above, the fixed layout is screen-filling on 1024-resolution - everything above that will see a rightborder, keeping the page in right proportions. It looks a bit strange at first (and the border is almost half the sceen on a real widescreen), but I hope its an improvement to those who never seen it before.
As always, thanks for pointing out any bug that might appear - somehow I gt the impression, much less will be hidden or floating away now... still lots of things to improve...

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