The new Doomworld Layout

[Nevander]

I miss the days when all websites were simple and used simple layouts. Less is so much more when it comes to web design.

[Rachael]

I miss the days when websites didn't need flat-coloured texture-less bevel-less gradient-less pop-outs and pop-ups and widgets gidgets gadgets and javascripty interactive gizmos to be considered modern.

[Nevander]

I miss the days when websites didn't need flat-coloured texture-less bevel-less gradient-less pop-outs and pop-ups and widgets gidgets gadgets and javascripty interactive gizmos to be considered modern.

You got that right. Cheers to that one.

[Enjay]

Speaking as someone who does use a phone to do a bit of browsing, personally I find it an utter fallacy that the flat, bevel-less style is phone-user friendly. Yes, many websites are hard to use in their desktop-friendly format and need a phone-friendly alternative but the look that is often adopted for phone-friendliness neatly sidesteps the features that actually make browsing on a phone better and merely stick with the malformed concept that looking a bit like win8 means it works well on a phone. Forcing both desktop and mobile users to have that kind of interface is even worse. Isn't that right Mr Ballmer?




Like this post if you agree.

[Rachael]

Like this post if you agree.

I tried to hit the like button but this popped out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

[Viscra Maelstrom]

you know, a lot of people complain about a website's layout being mobile unfriendly, and yeah, in terms of what buttons you can press on, that is quite annoying, but the layout itself works just fine if you tilt the phone to the side. bam. now you can read the text without the constant need to zoom in and out!

[DoomRater]

I can use this site just fine in my Moto E and the screen on this thing is absolutely tiny. Making sure the same site behaves well on a screen only 480 pixels wide is a good start. It's all in the formatting.

[jdagenet]

Damn, Post Hell was funny to look at sometimes, but oh well.

[Kinsie]

you know, a lot of people complain about a website's layout being mobile unfriendly, and yeah, in terms of what buttons you can press on, that is quite annoying, but the layout itself works just fine if you tilt the phone to the side. bam. now you can read the text without the constant need to zoom in and out!

If you're browsing a forum on a phone, odds are you are in a public place, and possibly on public transport. Given the circumstance, it might not be comfortable or for that matter possible to use the phone in landscape mode, where you typically need both hands.

This also doesn't completely alleviate issues on the CSS side - on my phone, the page number buttons on this forum's main thread display are around half the font size of the accompanying text, making fat-fingering a lot more likely.

[leileilol]

Meh, i would've gone MyBB and try to replicate the old vB/UBB-ish layout


I also like simple styles and schemes without noisy background images. Simple and flat is beautiful, as long a you don't have modern web 3.0 cruft dragging it down with forced font changes requiring megabytes to cache with shifting anti-aliasing subpixels per page scroll and over javascriptified elements practically reinventing html tags.


One art forum I used to post in wrecked itself completely in the switch to the modern "Vanilla" board software. BBcode broke, there was overreliance on javascript and forced antialiased fonts, no one could edit their posts, a huge dependency on some third-party CDN server for all images, random people getting mysteriously banned, and thumbnails not happening until the image is fully loaded made for a very unusable site for everyone but phone users.

[Rowsol]

I just noticed this. I'm not a regular to the doomworld forums at all, I stay here. I do visit /idgames often though. When the page loaded I was appalled. Where has the clean, fast loading page gone? Thankfully https://legacy.doomworld.com/idgames/ still works. But for how long.

[Kinsie]

Thankfully https://legacy.doomworld.com/idgames/ still works. But for how long.

Ling says it'll be at least until the new Downloads page gets improved some.

[juizzysquirt]

I'm really, really, really going miss the old /idgames frontend. Everyone over DW seems to be more concerned about post hell, am I really only one shitting bricks for losing something as profound and historical as the original frontend, that has been there (AFAIK) from the very start?

Sure, it was old and archaic, but so is Doom itself.

[Kinsie]

The Idgames frontend on Doomworld has nowhere near been around "since the beginning". I can't remember when it was introduced, but it was long enough ago that all the PHP used to write it has been depreciated and will no longer work with newer, less security-hole-ridden versions of PHP.

There is a new version of the archive, built into the forum software, but it's missing features and is generally not quite ready for primetime yet, so Ling resurrected the old server for One Last Job in the meantime.

[juizzysquirt]

I remember when I first stumbled upon it (I think around 2001-2002?) the interface already felt kinda "old", so I just assumed it's been like that since the beginning.

Actually I'm more concerned that they ditch the "idgames" name and rebrand it to something generic, that would indicate it's just for Doomworld community. I guess it was that all along, but at least it felt like "official" hosting service for all Doom mods.