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Hey folks, you know, the people doing the tech work on the site DO read these threads - not all the time, and they can't follow every post. And they can't respond to every feedback remark sent to them or they'd be doing that all day instead of the site work.
But could we please remember that:
a) while we do pay them, of course, they also have donated and continue to donate a lot of volunteer time to this;
b) babble is one section of the entire site, all of which needs tweaking and bug-fixing; and
c) it's really disheartening to work hard on something, do your best during the time available to fix things in order of priority and then read mean-spirited, sarcastic comments about your work. Most of you are being patient and understanding, and I very much appreciate that - thank-you very much. But it sure would be nice if those of you who are writing the occasional sniping or rude remark would cut it out. Those are my co-workers you're treating that way.
I understand that people are frustrated with the changes and the bugs. But let's put this into some perspective, shall we? It's only been a week or two. They're doing their best with limited resources and time.
Alas no, it does not. I tried to make it be my avatar but I'm still stuck with stupid little monkey (babblers look like a crew of mad, winged monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.
Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!
Michelle, most of us appreciate that. It's just that when we look at the source code, this looks like poor software and no amount of tweaking is going to fix it. I commented elsewhere that it fails W3C validation badly. Those errors aren't simply different ways of doing things; they represent structural problems. Before wasting more time tweaking, do you wonder if the powers-that-be need to re-think this project?
Are others suffering from sidescroll on babble? I am, and it's the only webpage that gives me this problem, and it's particularly bad in this thread: "Quebec/Montreal English grows ever more distinct: Mark Abley"
Yes. I have so many problems that they are not worth reporting. I have tried it on Opera, Iceweasel (Firefox for Debian) and Epiphany. I don't want to criticize unfairly but I really think this software was a poor choice.
Oh, wow! I just looked at it using my wife's Windows machine using Firefox. Completely different. I mean completely. Much better. I tried her Internet Explorer too. That one makes it look like the old Babble. This software really favours Windows. No wonder, there are complaints; Linux users are at a big disadvantage here.
I DO have a sidescroll issue on every thread, but probably not as bad as you do. I get an unnecessary horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of each thread, but the amount of sidescroll is only about 2 mm.!
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More importantly, however, I seem to have limited Editing privileges in the Babble Book Lounge - and I'm not talking about posts that I have made. Am I the only one, or does everyone have this?
I am able to edit the first post (and only the first post) in each thread, regardless of who posted it. To prove this outrageous claim, I have added a personal message at the bottom of this post.
I promise not to use my special power for evil purposes, provided babble leaves one million dollars in unmarked fifties behind the third dumpster from the left in the back of the WalMart on North Queen St. in Etobicoke by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning.
Well now that is truely wierd! I'm not sure if Michelle and I can do anything about it, but I'll let the techies know.
Meanwhile, we're getting the 50's printed up on my high quality work printer as fast as possible. I'm sure no one will know that they're in black and white.
(say, what are you doing in WalMart!)
I do know that Windows decides whether scrollbars and thumbbuttons are displayed and not the software running on top of Windows. The forum page HTML code sent to your machine will contain no instructions as to whether or where to insert scrollies. I have the same unnecessary sidescroll bar displayed, and I have a 21.8" monitor. Prrrrobably a Windows bug. No biggy for me. It's just there and doesnt scroll.
On this particular thread page, I have a sidescroll thumb button and some white space on the far right of the page and ad banners, which I can slide past and and view, which is nothing but a vertical column of white space appended to the right of the ad banners. I have no friggin idea of how they might get rid of that. In this instance, it could well be a formatting problem on rabble's end of things but dont quote me. shhhh!
I have discovered that my magical powers in the Babble Book Lounge even work on Closed Threads!
So far I have used my powers only for good, not evil. I have repaired several thread titles by replacing " with real quotation marks.
Who knows how I'll feel tomorrow if I don't get that million.
Okay, now the white space on far right is disappeared and gone. Somebody'sphuckin with us. I do still have the giant long Windows sidescroll button at bottom but nowhere to slide to now. And that is a Windows OS call not the server software genies.
The OS simply responds to the code that the website presents. If the code is compatible with Windoze, it doesn't cause unnecessary scrollbars to appear.
Well, surprise, surprise! The tech people certainly can move quickly when they want to. It didn't take them long to strip me of my magical editing powers.
Now, if only they could act as fast to give us coloured hotlinks!
If it wasn't compatible, the world would blow up. I'm looking at the same front page for Google News with two browsers, firefox and IE. FFox has a giant scrollbar at bottom whereas IE does not. Why is that? Does firefox instruct Windoze to stick a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the window where IE does not?
By contrast, I am unable to edit the first post in the thread, even when it's my own post.
Not a high priority issue, but please put it on the list.
But I still can't edit my own first post.
Is everyone using Windoze and up to date browsers, whether Firefox, IE or whichever?
My Firefox does the same thing as yours, by the way.
My Firefox isn't causing unnecessary sidescroll. The sidescroll I do have is because I sized up rabble to make the font size the same as it was on the old babble.
Regarding comaptability issues with different browsers: not all browsers interperet all html or xml code the same way. So what works one way on Firefox, may work differently in IE. I don't know which browsers they tested rabble on. Plus, every time they tweak the site a bit, it's possible the changes will look different on browsers other than the one the one the techies are using.
I'm going to suggest that the tech people move the feedback button. I don't really like having it show up in the same place on my monitor, the entire time I'm on rabble. It often covers up other rabble content, and I find this irritating.
I'm using IE and my Feedback button is firmly ensconced in the bottom right corner of each page. Doesn't cover up anything.
Unless I am "logged out", in which case I get an incomprehensible error message at the bottom of the page instead of the Feedback button.
Increasing the font size using the browser doesn't make the window any wider. It just causes the text to reflow and makes the page longer. That won't cause horizontal sidescroll.
Windows programs are event driven. Most of the ones I've ever seen don't do much except wait for messages sent from the OS and respond to them. An OEM windows procedure chooses which ones to process while ignoring some large number of them. I'll bet newer apps written for Windows, like recent versions of FFox and perhaps this forum s/w, werent created by a C/C++ win32 api but using VBasic or QT or the like.
That depends. On the old babble, I used my IE browser set with text size to "Larger". It would sometimes cause sidescroll that other babblers never saw because they had their text size set to Medium, Smaller, or Smallest. In fact, I could eliminate minor cases of sidescroll by temporarily reducing the font size.
Of course, with the new improved babble I get one font size only: Tiny.
I should have specified that I was talking about this site and my own experience with it. I've increased the font size here because I found it too small. And I've done it in a couple of browsers without seeing any effect on the page width.
But that does depend on the particular site and the way it's designed. I would think it more likely to run into that problem on the old babble because it was much older software.
Even after keying "ctrl" "+" together? Are you running Windoze or something else?