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phillyj
phillyj New Reader
5/23/08 3:00 p.m.

<= yes this panel on the side is annoying. Can it be done? Then the posts can have bigger space and i think that would be better. But I know the putting this new forum was hard work, so thanks . It could be better...

Tim Baxter
Tim Baxter Online Editor
5/23/08 3:03 p.m.

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/the-big-new-site-faq/445/page1/

John Brown
John Brown SuperDork
5/23/08 3:06 p.m.

No soup for you.

carguy123
carguy123 New Reader
5/23/08 3:11 p.m.

Hmmm, it's about 101% in favor of deleting the left side panel or at least reducing it's width by about half.

Tim Baxter
Tim Baxter Online Editor
5/23/08 3:12 p.m.

Except it's not up for a vote.

John Brown
John Brown SuperDork
5/23/08 3:13 p.m.

Right now my car is on the readers ride. The 101% can kiss my asterisk.

Marjorie Suddard
Marjorie Suddard General Manager
5/23/08 3:34 p.m.

I'm looking at Minimac's big dresser Suzuki. Who knew?

Margie

Wowak
Wowak Dork
5/23/08 4:13 p.m.

No comment. :omg:

minimac
minimac Dork
5/23/08 4:20 p.m.

Hey! It's one of my rides and I am a reader....::grin: Queenie: if you like that, I'll show you my Goldwing. And no comments from the peanut gallery!

Capt Slow
Capt Slow New Reader
5/23/08 4:58 p.m.

I happen to like the sidebar... it doesn't look excessive at all... you just need a higher res monitor :grin:

grtechguy
grtechguy Dork
5/23/08 11:48 p.m.

needs to be adjustable.

works fine for my 20" widescreen.

but not on my 15" 1024x768 laptop screen

Keith
Keith SuperDork
5/24/08 8:34 p.m.

It is adjustable if you have the programming chops :) I've poked at it enough to make it drop down to half size if I want to - but I don't want to.

Still, if someone was really wound up about it, a FireFox extension to tweak the CSS would do the trick.

Salanis
Salanis HalfDork
5/24/08 8:48 p.m.
Keith wrote: Still, if someone was really wound up about it, a FireFox extension to tweak the CSS would do the trick.

You can tweak CSS with Firefox? Sweet! How do you do that?

EastCoastMojo
EastCoastMojo New Reader
5/24/08 9:07 p.m.

Ooohhh! I like having the featured reader's ride in the column! Cool! :grin:

Osterkraut
Osterkraut New Reader
5/24/08 11:10 p.m.
Keith wrote: It is adjustable if you have the programming chops :) I've poked at it enough to make it drop down to half size if I want to - but I don't want to. Still, if someone was really wound up about it, a FireFox extension to tweak the CSS would do the trick.

Ooooooh shit, that's right! Goooooooooodbye Bar-thingy!

Mental
Mental SuperDork
5/25/08 1:28 a.m.
carguy123 wrote: Hmmm, it's about 101% in favor of deleting the left side panel or at least reducing it's width by about half.
EastCoastMojo wrote: Ooohhh! I like having the featured reader's ride in the column! Cool! :grin:
John Brown wrote: Right now my car is on the readers ride. The 101% can kiss my asterisk.

Actually, that is really cool, now I hafta find some cool pics of my crappy cars to be featured.

Tim Baxter wrote: Except it's not up for a vote.

On the interweb, they refer to that as PWND!

nutherjrfan
nutherjrfan
5/25/08 2:45 a.m.

most of us read from left to right as taught in school. neglected areas of the grm experience for us post-whores are there on the left to lead us in deeper - simple marketing.

Wowak
Wowak Dork
5/25/08 4:01 a.m.
Keith wrote: It is adjustable if you have the programming chops :)

And it turns out I don't. Alot has changed since I learned HTML 12 years ago.

Keith
Keith SuperDork
5/25/08 9:51 a.m.

Yeah, Tim kinda went to town on this thing. There's a lot more under the hood than people realize.

carguy123
carguy123 New Reader
5/25/08 10:49 a.m.
Tim Baxter wrote: Except it's not up for a vote.

You are wrong Tim it is up for a vote. Viewers vote with their clicks. If we don't like it we simply don't go there.

You know what I don't like about the whole side bar and other changes thing? It isn't the sidebar, it's the attitude.

GRM is copping a very un-GRM-like stance of not really caring about the subscribers and giving us a "you don't really matter to us" type of feel that I have never felt in the magazines or online. This I would expect from Motor Trend or another "big" mag, but in the past GRM has taken pride in the fact that they don't do things like the other guys and aren't really members of Big Corporation America. Well, welcome to the "other guys club" GRM.

I'll still enjoy a lot of the articles and I'll still visit here occassionally, but I'll never feel like you are the champion for the little guy again. Now I'll have to start applying the BS meter that I use on most of the other mags and take all you say and do with that proverbial grain of salt. Trust is like a soap bubble, once you burst it it can't be put back together.

JG Pasterjak
JG Pasterjak Production/Art Director
5/25/08 1:42 p.m.
carguy123 wrote: GRM is copping a very un-GRM-like stance of not really caring about the subscribers and giving us a "you don't really matter to us" type of feel that I have never felt in the magazines or online. This I would expect from Motor Trend or another "big" mag, but in the past GRM has taken pride in the fact that they don't do things like the other guys and aren't really members of Big Corporation America. Well, welcome to the "other guys club" GRM.

Okay, so the sidebar that has predominantly used to feature reader's cars is a sign that we don't care about the readers? Roger. Got it.

Look, if some of us seem a bit snippy about this, I apologize on behalf of the entire staff. But the truth is when you unveil something that you've spent many, many months working on, something that—for the most part—is not a revenue source but merely a community-builder and something that you've designed to be the most accessible, usable and scalable for the widest variety of uses and maintainers, and are then met with personal insults and questions of your integrity you tend to get a little snippy.

I know change is tough for everyone, but sometimes you gotta roll with it. When Tim says "it's not up for a vote" he doesn't mean "quiet, peaaent. Who are you to question our judgment?" Rather, he means "Maybe some things have to be a certain way for US, so we can continue to have a web community that pretty much just loses money, but that the readers love."

So, please, do not mistake a simple sidebar for evidence of us selling out to The Man. That's putting a lot of pressure on the poor sidebar. And rest assured we haven't "sold out." My wife is still a B cup. If we'd sold out that would have been the fist thing to change.

jg

Wowak
Wowak Dork
5/25/08 2:25 p.m.

:omg:

I hate it when mommy and daddy fight. :whatthe:

Xceler8x
Xceler8x New Reader
5/25/08 2:36 p.m.

I'm not a fan of the sidebar. In my perfect world it would be an editable option in my profile for the board. Check box to hide/unhide sidebar.

fiat22turbo
fiat22turbo Dork
5/25/08 3:01 p.m.

....and this is why I suggested having someone other than Tim deal with the users directly at least in the short term. I have been in a similar position before and I know that I'll get snippy with people after many straight hours of work and after you answer the same question for what seems like the millionth time.

So the answer that JG posted should have been what was posted the first time the question was raised about the sidebar, instead we got a short answer that raised more questions than it answered.

The fact that so many of us have strong feelings about this website and the forum, just shows how much we value the magazine and the "family" that we've created here and how much we don't want it messed with. :nice:

Wowak
Wowak Dork
5/25/08 3:17 p.m.
JG Pasterjak wrote:
Okay, so the sidebar that has predominantly used to feature reader's cars is a sign that we don't care about the readers? Roger. Got it.
Thats not it at all. We know the intentions are good. But imagine if your big new office at the new HQ had a pantry-sized door that you had to turn sideways and duck through to get into your new office. Would all the work that went into building the new HQ justify that? I have a degree in Industrial Design with an emphasis on human factors and user interface. I'm not just complaining out of my ass here. Chopping off a full quarter of the user interface for something as trivia as featured rides (I'll be honest, I'd feel just as warm and fuzzy about seeing my car featured if the picture was half as wide, so thats of no bearing) is a poor solution here. Also, I've never complained about the ads, but do they really need to be the same size as the GRM logo at the top? Is this your website or Borlas? I can't tell.
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