usability of the articles

[Pat (rActive) Harbord]

Can anybody else read the articles online?

The font is small the line spacing is tight and the line length is very long.

my eyes hurt (it is late). This site is a very poor cousin of a pretty good printed publication.

Don't let the technology (and web developers) rule you, apply some common sense learned from printing and apply it here.

Happy to help you with all this

[RCM&E]

Hi Pat, sorry to hear you're having problems reading the site. The tech team will be able to advise you better when they see this, but in the meantime: which browser are you using, and what resolution is your screen at?

[Robin Tapp]

Hi Pat,

If you could give us the details that Tom asks for that would be helpful. Do you have any problems with any other sites?

If you're having problems with a few sites you could try the text size setting in both firefox and IE you can find this on the view menu (In IE 7 if you can't see the menus choose tools then menubar.) In IE I'd suggest medium in firefox you can't tell what setting you're currently on you can just increase and decrease it.

[Pat (rActive) Harbord]

Hi Tom and Robin

I see this more of an editorial issue than "technical"

Have a visual designer look at the site (like me)

I am technically capable of making the text bigger. But thanks for the tips anyway.

I'm running Firefox 2 on mac OSX (10.4.8)
and IE7 on windows XP
screen res is 1440x900

I'm an evangelist for good usable communication (web sites a speciality). Anything you can do to make a great online experience is good for your audience. This will give you a warm feeling and an increase in repeat visits and overall satisfaction.

I suggest you make the centre column fluid, this would allow all your users to adapt the column into a more manageable width. As I say it's only really an issue when you go over around 8-10 lines of copy. This is why I singled out the Articles and not the forum threads

You could also control the line spacing via CSS (use em or %, never any fixed methods). Basically offer the user a great default setting and then allow them to control the layout with their browser.

Keep up the good work, glad to see the forums running - it will be interesting to see who has enough time to split their attention between RC Groups, Wattflyer and Model Flying

Pat

[Robin Tapp]

Indeed I believe in many things your saying however many people want to be able to say that's what people are going to see pixel perfectly. For whatever reason be it advertisers wanting to know exactly where their ad will appear through to people from print magazine expecting to know exactly what their readers sees.

Thanks for your advice the more people who push for more flexible layouts the happier I am (it does however produce a few problems with the look of content in some sections)

[Antony Wright]

I thought Id just offer my 2p worth in light of Robin's last comment. Like Pat I have a background in IT - and in particular multimedia (I taught the subject in school). I do agree with what Pat says - I run mine at 1280x1024 and yes I could alter text size if I wanted to but for me the one thing that would improve it greatly (as mentioned by Pat) - is the spacing between lines.

[Pat (rActive) Harbord]

In the last 6-8 months there appears to have been quite a jump in the specs of machines out there (especially in the UK).

1024x768 is now the minimum screen res for around 70%. I guess the audience for this site is 40+ (the BMFA could tell us for sure). I would bet that most have fairly good machines, as £500 gets you a fine laptop these days.

I reckon that many will be using resolutions higher than 1024x768, they may not even maximise their browser.

Issues for web designers are around good use of more space when 2 years ago it was how to squeeze all the content and the advertising "above the fold" at 800x600

I just checked in the printed publication and the lines are set quite loose (this is good)

Robin, you can change this, and you can push for more flexible layouts, you can even do this without compromising your advertisers and publishers needs. This as you say will make you happy.

I don't buy the people (not end users / customers) wanting to see it pixel perfect. This is old school thinking and not reality. It's your job to educate your masters.

End of the day, if the site is superb, you get more hits. Advertisers are happy, publishers are delighted.

[Robin Tapp]

Preaching to the converted. However unfortunately particularly some people i've worked with in the print industry really don't like the idea of not knowing what you get to see exactly. Fixed width design versus variable width design. You guys are pretty smart folk and can work out how to resize the window for what you want. Heck some of you can even change the font size without being told how. HOwever those people are certainly the minority.

[Pat (rActive) Harbord]

That's a shame Robin.

I've always found that once I've explained (and run a demo). Stakeholders have always come around to the new way of thinking. "They" wouldn't even notice a change to the line height, but we would ;)

Also, you are behind the competition. Both RC Groups (check the article pages) and wattflyer have fluid layouts.

Users don't need to know it's there. They simply get a good experience whatever they do to their browser and whatever their screen resolution is set to.

I'll leave it there for now. Thanks for listening.