I'm using Firefox with ad-block, and other than the font, header and footer, nothing much has changed. I'm having no trouble seeing the colors, although the blue is lighter than before. I think the background has always been white on my screen, with no ads on the sides (after installing ad-block, per advice of someone on GW).

I like that the text is all on the left 2/3 of the page -- much easier that scrolling side-to-side, IMO. I noticed on this thread, that the only time the text goes all the way across is when a large picture has been uploaded in the same post.

No problems with the cursor when posting, at least in this message. I notice that when I hover anything highlighted in blue, it turns green.

*No problem with the editing feature.*

This post was edited by mama_goose on Mon, Feb 11, 13 at 19:30

I've been having the cursor issues for a while now. I thought it was my laptop. I had to change my settings back as they were causing problems on other web sites. Is GW listening ?????

If the powers that be would just darken the blue link text a bit I wouldn't mind the changes.

The text is delayed in showing up in the text box when I type, probably due to whatever coding problem they're having with the ads appearing over the text but my browser Maxthon) blocks page ads and banners so I can't see them.

Otherwise, the header looks pretty cute, and that green grass is a nice touch.

I like the new look and the new font - I find the font easy to read, but I can see that on some screens perhaps with lower resolution or smaller screens it could be harder to read as the lines get too thin.

I have the overlap problem. It happens on the fonts where a high resolution (and therefore wide) picture has been posted because the text gets wide to match and overlaps the ads. I think on the old pages the ads moved farther to the right when that happened. I'm on Firefox on a PC.

I like that the new page header takes less space - less to scroll past.

The blue text on links is light - it would be easier to read if it was darker.

I cannot post a topic! Am running Google Chrome on a Mac that is running on Leopard. When I click the "Preview Message" it takes me to the home page of Gardenweb and not the preview page. What is up with that? Very annoying as I need all your help to get this kitchen plan finalized this week! UGH-H-H-H!
I sent contact message to administrator and have heard nothing.

I am using Safari on a Mac, OS version 10.4. I don't like the new format at all. The text is much smaller . . . too small for my 50 yr old eyes . . . and the text area seems too small (with too much background area behind). The small text area coupled with the small text makes the page feel congested and very difficult to read. It is hard on the eyes. All I can say is that I used to LOVE logging on to GardenWeb, but the poor readability of the new look is really uncomfortable.

This is what it looks like on my large monitor, yuck!

It looks ok on my ipad.

After checking the format of the Garden forums, I can understand more of what most of you are seeing. On those pages, I see a page with about an inch of space on each side, with grass at the top. On the Home forums pages I don't see the grass. The font is also much smaller on the Garden pages, and not bold.

Is the 'collapse' symbol on the title page new? I don't remember seeing that before.

This post was edited by mama_goose on Tue, Feb 12, 13 at 7:52

I do not remember if the collapse symbol was there before. That is about the only thing about the change that seems to be working properly for me though.

How does this thread look for you guys . . .
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/gal0214583516468.html

For me, when that page opens it shrinks down super small. So small that the words would have to be read with a magnifying glass. The column for the text is only 1-2" wide on my screen with the text approx 3 point font size. As opposed to this format problem thread where the text column is 5-6" wide and the font is approx 10 point font size.

Thank you, angela12345.

On my browser the thread in your link looks the same as all the other Home forum pages I've seen--no change in font size.

**I went back to that thread and scrolled all the way to the right. Wow, I noticed half a page of the grass/blank space. Also noticed some large pics posted on that thread, too--would that make a difference?**

This post was edited by mama_goose on Tue, Feb 12, 13 at 9:56

Not sure what to make of all this - I have a Mac at home and a PC at work, several web browers on each - I've tried them all and everything is fine on all of them. Is it the Ipad you are having trouble with?

For the record, that thread you linked to looks fine as well.

The thread angela posted in fine for me.

This thread the ads cover the first post, text and photos.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg021251473109.html?19

The cursor disappearing is still an issue.

angela12345, the thread you linked was originally posted in 2009. Here's a link to one of my favs, posted in 2010, modest or quirky kitchens. It looks the same as the thread in your link--lots of blank space if I scroll to the right. How does it look on your screen?

I know it has been said already, but this light blue font on white is VERY hard on the eyes, just not enough contrast. And the light green grass all around it with the light blue sky are giving me headache.

Please change the colors!

The thread angela posted in fine for me.

This thread the ads cover the first post, text and photos.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg021251473109.html?19

The cursor disappearing is still an issue.

No problems on the ipad here. You can just pinch it larger, just as you could before, but the font doesn't appear especially small. I'm not seeing ads covering the text, but of course that could be because the server didn't happen to hit on ones that do.

Angela's linked thread moves the scrolly part of the page to the far left edge of the background a minute or so after it opens, but no other problems with it.

*********For those who don't like the font style, font size, colors, or format, PLEASE email your comments to GW Administration!! I did it yesterday and will do so again today.**********

I am linking the page for comments below. I found the link on the announcement from the sticky on the "Exciting Announcement" at the top of the home page.

Please let them know if you aren't happy! It's the only chance we have of trying to fix this new mess.

Here is a link that might be useful: Submit your comments HERE

Well, I'm not really sure what I'm doing, but I went into 'tools', then 'options', content section, then default font 'advanced', and unclicked the 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts' box. The font went back to serif/Times New Roman (same as the GW 'clippings' font), but the size seemed smaller. I hit cntrl/+ one time and it's comfortable for me.

There are also color options. I hope I'm not confusing anyone, because it doesn't take much to confuse me. :[

I wish those font options were available on the ipad. They are not. I cannot change from this infernal, childish new font!!!!

As for the grass, it appears briefly on the GW homepage when it begins to load and then disappears leaving me with a sea of white. The page looks ugly and plain on my screen. Yuck.

Breezy - forgive me, because I am not familiar with the Ipad. Do you have options for other browsers? Or are the problems the same no matter what brower you use?

On each computer I use (Mac, PC and PC laptop) I have chosen the Arial font, as it's my favorite and easy to read, and all web sites are displayed using it. I've also been able to choose the color of "read" URLs, etc. All my settings have overridden whatever GW has done.

Is there any way to do that with an Ipad browser?

This post was edited by purplepansies on Tue, Feb 12, 13 at 12:07

So has Tamara not weighed in at all? Has anyone emailed her? Change can be hard to take of course; trick is to figuring out (a) what will resolve with familiarity, (b) what can be fixed ... and (c) what isn't worth it! I'm not liking it either, but am willing to believe there is a large amount of (a) at play for me. Using MBP, 10.6.8 w/firefox 18.0.1 These specs mean nothing to me but they definitely will to the developers.

I'll email Tamara: tamara.amey@nbcuni.com -- if others do too perhaps we can call attention to this thread located here, perhaps inadvisedly.

In general, I should think a sans serif font would be an improvement; I think we might get used to this. On my mac it's easy to make it all larger for decrepit eyes by hitting command and the plus key together ("cmd-+") repeatedly, if necessary! :)

HI Folks,
We are working on some improvements -- specifically the display and font issues. Hope to have that implemented today.

We're also trying to find out why the text/photos are overlapping into the ad area and hope to have this fixed asap..

Yesterday, I know that Mac/Safari users were having separate issues with the overlapping. If you are still seeing this -- outside of what PC users are seeing -- please contact me via email and let me know. A screenshot would be extremely helpful as well as the url of the page where you are seeing this.

Thanks!

Tamara

Thanks for the update, Tamara. :)

I don't seem to have an options um, option in the tools drop down? This bright white is really hurting my eyes.

I'm having the same problem as the OP on all PCs I have. 2 at home and also at work. All 3 using versions of Internet Explorer. Thanks.

I do not like the new colours or the font size either. I find it very hard to read.

Ok, they have fixed the thread that I linked to above. It is working normal for me now.

It's not the font SIZE that is the problem for me. I can pinch and zoom on the iPad. It is the font style that is the problem. The font style is a harder typeface to read on my screen, even when I have zoomed the screen. Purplepansies was able to force her browser to override the GW changes, but I cannot find a way to do that on the iPad.

I still have not opened Gardenweb with my laptop yet, so I don't know how the font will look to me there.

I don't seem to have an options um, option in the tools drop down? This bright white is really hurting my eyes.

Somehow they are over riding when you manually put height and width constraints on pictures within threads. Now the pictures are not showing up as expected and not working right

For example, I may specify image Height when I am posting multiple images that are different sizes and I want them all to show up the same height on the screen. This is especially good when one of the pictures is way bigger or taller than the rest.

This is not working correctly right now. Gardenweb is overriding something, but I have not figured out what it is so I can figure out how to make the images show up the way I need them to. I do know they are overriding the images retroactively even on older threads, so there may be many threads where the pictures used to be an easily viewable size that are now much much larger. It looks stupid to have 2 regular size pictures and 1 huge one.

I am not seeing the bright white many of you guys keep mentioning. What do you mean by that ?

I do agree the light blue links are not enough contrast against the white background. A darker blue like they used to be was much better.

The thread that the OP originally linked is now working correctly for me. It looks like GW has changed the width of that image so the text -and- the image are now staying within the lines and not running over the ad on the right. Maybe its part of this new image control thing they are doing.

The registration is still off on the words in the blue bar across the top of the screen. Speaking of contrast, the blue in that bar is kinda too dark. There really isn't good contrast between that blue and the black. The white "halo" around the letters makes it even worse because the letters are showing up blurry, not crisp and legible.

The cursor in the text box is now working correctly for me.

The read/unread threads are changing color when I have read them and staying changed even when I refresh the screen now. Blue is unread, purple is read. (the blue that is too light colored against the white backgrund)

The font style is a harder typeface to read on my screen, even when I have zoomed the screen. Purplepansies was able to force her browser to override the GW changes, but I cannot find a way to do that on the iPad.

No, safari for ipad is somewhat limited that way, and I think they're forcing a specific version of the site to ipad--the back background area (currently green for me on a desktop) isn't there, so it's not just a browser thing.

I haven't read all the comments, so I apologize if this has already been covered to death.

Once you click on a thread with more than a few words in its title (see link for example), it is forced to wrap unnaturally because of the Clippings image on the right. The narrow area for text has exacerbated this situation. It's not a critical issue, but it does look very clunky.

Here is a link that might be useful: Title text wrapping

Well, I know that this subject has been beaten to death, but I noticed today that a couple of threads on the first two pages start out with a white background, then turn light green part of the way down:

How should I brighten my kitchen?

Please post pics of your counter tops.

They both have more than 100 entries. Is anyone else getting the color change?

*Edited to add:
I found another long thread on the Home Dec forum--same color change:

Please look at these draperies...

This post was edited by mama_goose on Thu, Feb 14, 13 at 15:23

I was asked how I set my browsers to override GW's font. I'm at work now so can tell you what I do on my PC where I use either Internet Explorer or Firefox. (I do have multiple browsers on my computers, as I find that sometimes certain websites do better on different browsers.)

For IE, go to Tools ->Internet Options -> General. At the bottom of the box it says "Appearance." Click on "Fonts." For text size, go to View -> Text Size.

For Firefox, Tools -> Options -> Content -> Fonts and Colors (size is here as well.) Be sure to click on "Advanced Settings" and set the fonts there as well.

I use Arial, as I find it a very easy-to-read font.

When I get home later I will look at the browsers on my Mac (Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome) and post how I do it there.

Hope that helps,
Lisa

Home now, on a Mac.

On Google Chrome, click "Preferences," scroll down to the bottom and click "Advanced Settings." Under "Web Content," you can change font and font size.

On Firefox, Preferences -> Content, then you can change font and colors of links/unread links.

As for Safari, I forgot that with the updated OS system, the option to change default fonts disappeared. (I haven't used Safari in years!) Did some searching, and there are some ways to work around this, but I have not tried it yet. See the link below. If you're not comfortable trying this, until and if GW changes anything, you might want to consider going with a browser that allows you to alter the font, etc.

Lisa

Here is a link that might be useful: Uploading Style Sheets to Change Font in Safari

I don't like how it's now forcing such a narrow area for text display of posts. Instead of being able to make the page wider and having the width of the posts expand with it, the posts stay all crammed together in a narrow area.

Sorry, but I'm not seeing anything so far that I consider a significant improvement - especially considering all the horrible side-effects of the so-called improvements.

How much testing was done prior to deploying the changes? Was any usability testing done?

I think some of the overlapping has to do with creating a fixed space for the text so on certain screen sizes it doesn't get autosized with the text wrapping. Ie not browser dependent, butbrather screen size settings dependent. Better to allow resizing to users settings than hard coding it.

Buehl--did you see the quote on their big announcement sticky at the top of the main page? It says their motto for these 'improvements' is "do no harm". Ha!! Lots of harm in my book, and very little, if any, good done. I just don't get the point.

Honestly, I'm not sure what you mean about a "narrow text area"? The width of mine is the same as it always was, and stays fixed when I resize the page, with a column of "white space" on the right where ads should be.

Have you tried a different browser?

purplepansies, thank you for the tip on the Arial font. I set that as my default, after finding that Times New Roman made my Hotmail page look different. I like the Arial much better. :)

"...stays fixed when I resize the page,..."

That's my point...in the past, if I made my window wider, the line width expanded to match the wider window. So, I might go from 5 lines in a post to 3 lines b/c of the wider line width. Now, it's crammed in the middle with a lot of "white space" (actually pale green) on either side - far more empty/blank space than space that's actually used for the threads!

"...The width of mine is the same as it always was..."

Mine certainly is not! It was expandable b/f, now it's not!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here's what I'm talking about....

First, the old page formatting. Notice how the line width for text expands when I widen my window:

Narrow:

Wider:

...

Now, the new page. Notice how the line width stays the same regardless of page width...what a waste of screen real estate!

Narrow:

Wider:

Thank you, Buehl, I get it now.

I think the "white space" is where the ads are (that I can't see.)

I guess I don't see it as a problem, because the one thing that irritated me doesn't happen anymore - some posts were too wide for my computer's screen size, and I would have to keep moving the scroll bar back and forth to read it. Maybe that's what they "fixed" and the result is the fixed width of the posts?

I sent a message to Tamara last night, but also b/c of that - it seems my pics are smaller. In my reveal thread they now look smaller than they were... I'm thinking it's b/c of the white on the sides.

You would think they would spend this effort just modernizing this software, not going two steps backward in terms of revealing images, a critical part of this forum.... just sayin.

The sticky-thread thing is just ludicrous. That's what I know (and about all I know) about forums, and I know it's old "technology", having it accessible and fixable. What Buehl's had to go through with it is nutty! Moreover, her dedication, it seems to me, should put her in a category of listening-privilege that the slightest peep she had to make about the 'hardwired' workings of this list, it seems to me, should be attended to immediately. Just sayin again.

I'm sure there's a lot more about online forums and threads that could be attended to here, the wheel not reinvented, so slowly, etc.... It's a little bizarre.

BTW, information-wise, the same happens for me. Increasing the size of the firefox screen does not increase the size of the embedded GW image, just ups the amount of white on the sides.

Aliris19: I think they may be smaller. In the past, when the threads could take up more space on the screen, you could post bigger pictures. Now with a fixed and narrow thread space, there isn't room for bigger pictures. This may become an issue as we try to help design kitchens - not being able to post layouts, etc. big enough to read.

We'll have to see. BTW, I also emailed Tamara last night!

Yes, I've just been noticing this in a popular older thread in the bath forum. The photos were great--large, very easy to study for detail, but now they're so tiny as to be useless.

EDIT I realize that for new threads the small photos are just thumbs and you can click for the original, but that doesn't seem to work so well on most threads posted before the change.

This post was edited by writersblock on Mon, Feb 18, 13 at 0:50

Anyone hear from Tamara???

nope- I emailed last week...

Buehl
You are definitely right. I looked at an old thread I posted with overly large photos. They are now shrunk to 1/3 or so of the width of the white space.
Does this mean we don't need to resize pics to post, since they will automatically shrink to the relative postage stamps I see on the screen?
And it certainly means that I must consider the small size when I format the pics, zeroing in more on important details that may otherwise not show.
Drat.

I don't want to post pictures, any more. Seeing them distorted is very unpleasant.

Also, their formatting is having the opposite effect as well ... pictures that were formatted as smaller by using height= and width= are now showing up in their huge original size. For example, let's say I have posted 3 pictures side by side. The original size for the first one in pixels is 200x200, the second is 300x300, and the third is 800x800. Using formatting, I could have all 3 pictures show up as 200x200. Their new formatting is overriding the pictures and reverting them to their original sizes, so the 3rd picture is showing up as huge in comparison.

Now, let's assume that 800x800 is the largest picture they will allow. If someone posts a picture that is larger than that, then it is automatically being resized down to their max of 800x800. As writersblock pointed out, that is making some of the pics too small to be legible.

And they still have not fixed the font style. They still have it in this hard to read font. Can we please revert back to "do no harm" ? Tamara, where are you ?!?!?!?!