Wide-screen monitor

The forum pages no longer adapt to fit the monitor. My 16:9 monitor now has 3 1/2" of white space on the left and right sides. Posts that were three lines long are now five lines long which results in fewer posts per screen and more scrolling. Is there an option to re-size the pages to fit the monitor being used?

Someone noticed I was actually bracing for complaints about the cartoon guy up there ^^

My experience has been (way more) more complaints in the other direction, that a forum which automatically sizes to full-width becomes tiring to read. I find this true for myself, and studies have shown that people tend to have less reading fatigue when the text is in a tighter column, rather than the "billboard" feeling of having to scan from side to side on a wide screen.

I do have some space to play with in the existing layout and will maximize it tonight to see if it helps. Having said all of that, I believe I can give you an option to choose for yourself; please bear with me as I will need to test it.

Please don't spend a lot of time on this. It's the downside of the wide-screen format that for some unknown reason we're told is so popular. I wanted a monitor with more vertical space to get a bigger image and to reduce scrolling and the only way to get it is to accept a ridiculous width. 4:3 was good and I have wondered why is considered no good anymore. 16:9 is the new "normal" despite the evidence you cite that it is annoying.

OK thanks; if it becomes a problem for a lot of people I will look into it, but for now I believe keeping the site within this 975 pixel width is fairly optimal for ease of reading. If you look to the right of the paragraphs in these post boxes you will see that there is some 'white space' I can use, so tonight I will play with filling it out a bit better; that should help.

As always I appreciate the feedback!

Wide-screen monitors are great for viewing photographs, movies and videos, but I have yet to find a good business use for wide-screens. I much prefer reading in a narrower version as Chris has mentioned.

A couple of years ago we had to buy a new monitor and did NOT want a wide screen. So I looked around on the Dell website and actually found the model that we had purchased a couple of years before that. So when I tried to buy one, none of the Dell reps on the phone even knew that it was still offered. They were surprised when I told them the model number so they could look it up and place my order! Don't know if they still make one. Sure hope so, as I agree with all of you - no real good business use for a wide-screen in a business setting. I guess I will keep my fingers crossed that the monitors we have last a LOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time!

If you look to the right of the paragraphs in these post boxes you will see that there is some 'white space' I can use, so tonight I will play with filling it out a bit better; that should help.

Good job putting that otherwise unused space to work. It's a good improvement. Another idea, perhaps more an involved is to cause the text to wrap around the user stats box on the right. As it is that box reserves the entire column of space even though it is only 5 lines long.

Another thought is to change the box from 5 lines to 2 wider lines and put it on the top line of the post. That would free up additional space.

The "Real Estate Professional/Home Office" topic is 25 screens long. Just pondering how to shorten it up some. The PageUP PageDown buttons get a lot of use!

well...someone had complained about topics being multiple pages, so I set it for 100 posts per page. I can dial it back to 50 and see how that feels. Not sure on the idea about having the text flow under the user profile box on the right I could maybe change that information to go under the "by username>> 29-Apr-2014" text over on the left...maybe delete the time the user joined, just show the date...get it to be wide/short instead of 'square' -- then the remaining post box below would be eligible to have the post text flow across the entire box.

I can play with that later...might be an interesting experiment.

Don't know if it is possible, but would be nice at the end of the page to have a hyperlink back to the top of the page. I've found that on some of the longer posts it's a little awkward getting back to the top, and might even make the 50 per page or 100 per page issue moot. Definitely not a big issue, but just a "little" suggestion! Great Job on all the work you are doing!

thanks Sure, that should be fairly easy by putting a page anchor in at the top, then a link back to it as you suggest...will add that to the list.

well...someone had complained about topics being multiple pages, so I set it for 100 posts per page. I can dial it back to 50 and see how that feels.

I think that comment had to do with other sites that list only the first 25 or so posts or topics, with a link to "next page" 1,2,3,4,5 etc. 100 is good, even 200 as long as the site response time is good. It's easier and faster to scroll or use the page-down button to go through posts than to use a hyperlink to tell the forum software to load another page.

The comment I made had to do with the monitor screen images, 25 screens of posts, requiring lots of scrolling or page-down, or navigation bar use. What you did to better utilize the white space puts more content on each screen, and that is good.

I believe all desktop browsers will go to the top of the page by hitting the home button. It's more of a problem on tablets and phones. Nevertheless, a "jump to top" button at the bottom is generally useful to some and harmless to others.

I agree with Chris's comment about wide displays of text being more tiring. They're also more difficult to hold your place as the eye flips back from the right edge to the left. This is one of the reasons that newspapers and magazines typically have narrow columns. It's also why the Reader features in various browsers use a centered, moderately wide column.

I much prefer a limited number of posts per page, with 25 being fine. But rather than trying to justify my reasons, shouldn't this just be a user-configurable item? I know it is with vBulletin.

I find that the biggest problem with getting to the next page of posts (or previous) is the tendency to make those links unnecessarily small, and thus much harder to click; apparently none of the bboard designers are familiar with Fitt's Law. According to Safari on my desktop, the links resolve to 11px text size while the body is 14px. Even worse is when there's no Next or Prev button, or < and > are used when they're much smaller than the numbers, and especially when the distinction between the current page and others is difficult to discern.

Post-per-page is not user configurable in phpBB without a modification. I set the # of posts per page to 50; let's see how that goes. On the old site it was "infinite" and my mouse scroll wheel would often get a real workout. 50 should be 'better'.

I hear you on the size of the clickable elements - this is something within my control and I can replace all of those little icons with larger versions (over time )

On the 'go to top' suggestion you should see an "up" arrow in the right header bar of each post box; that will take you to the top post.

Perfect, Chris. I don't know about others, but it is just what I needed. Thankx!