The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

Please let us know what you think about the changes we have made to the message board.

Just a quick word about the changes/modifications etc....

There are a few obvious changes like the new navigation and the new mascot Ralph. NC43hog dreamed up the little guy and we thought he symbolized what we want here on the board -- so we have dubbed him the patron saint of civil, hardcore Redskins discussion. We hope that every time you see Ralph, you'll remember that while this board can get quite intense, we're all just fellow bleeders of the burgundy and gold. Ralph is pretty hardcore, but he's also pretty mellow. He prefers civil, intelligent football conversations over senseless bickering... just like we do.



Those of you that log in at 800x600 won't notice anywhere near the difference that those of you that use a higher resolution will. I have adjusted all the tables from a fixed width to a variable one so that those with higher resolutins make better use of the added real estate. There will be a few sections of the forums that still have fixed widths and look a little out of place, but I will get through them as I come to them

Most of what I tried to accomplish was better navigation, so hopefully you will find it easier to move around in this ever expanding board.

The toolbox on the main page will hopefully be useful to you all. I did not add any tools, I just took what was there and hopefully made them more usable for you.

On most of the other pages, you will hopefully notice cleaner, more understandable navigation at the bottom of each page. In some instances I took a few things away and my apologies if I removed anything that some of you found useful. I just found that in an attempt to not 'leave anything out', the creators of phpBB went a little overboard and the navigation links etc.

I tried to keep the ones that were most useful and remove ones that could be accomplished with other links or tools anyway.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, but hopefully you can look after a good lot of them

Please vote honestly as we are always just trying to build a better site.

the site looks great!!! u guys do great work here...this place has become my favorite on the web...great opinions and good facts on all things skins....great job everybody

good stuff. the "view next topic" links worked fine this time around. my isp was also having "technical difficulties" when i posted about it not working, so that could have been part of it. everything seems more organized now.

Nice touches, boss. Very aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Clean. Snazzy new mascot pic doesn't hurt either...

Overall I actually like it but what I really don't like is the messages extending the entire length of the screen. My computer resolution is set high so I am reading from far left to far right. As a programmer I know the work involved in a new design so cudos to you for all the work and an excellent job.

It feels more lived in now. Nice

I'm glad that the majority of you see some improvements.

As to the question of 'higher' resolutions... no web designer can really do much more than use variable widths and have it fill the screen. Most people with a high res complain that they only have info on such a small part of their monitor. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't as designers.

About 95% of the net uses 1024x768 or 800x600 now... so it is common practice to try and suit these two resolutions as best you can, and live with what's leftover.

As I said... you can never please all of the people, all of the time.

Boss I meant no disrespect and as I said as a programmer I know how much work and effort was involved. I agree with you must develop according to the majority but you asked for honest opinions and for me I have 1280 x 1024 resolution. If I recall the tables did not span across the entire screen before as they do now. For me this means when I read postings I have to read one long line from far left to far right instead of it bunched up to a multi-lines area of the screen. I had figured that I would point that out incase you might decide to have it go 80% across or something that could make every resolution happy. I might not have many postings under my belt but I have been a member since before most of these guys with hundreds of postings. I only have posted when I really felt the need to speak out but I am on this board reading the latest and greatest every single day. I meant no insult and I did compliment on the great work. I love this place and would not BLANK where I eat.

I took no disrespect at all ike and appreciate the input. I didn't mean to imply otherwise if I did.

Setting at 80% would just make it way too awkward for 800x600 users... all column widths would become too squashed to contain the data that they do and the length of the pages would just grow and grow.

But as I said... it's impossible to make it work for everyone, everywhere in every format, on every OS and at every res... you just have to try and play the numbers that are out there. I constantly visit stat sites to see what the current trends are and try to design accordingly. As 15" monitors are phased out, so will 800x600, and then I'm sure all the designers will migrate to a format that is suitable for 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

... until then, you have to live with being in the minority.

I have a TSR running that just allows me to quick click to a different res... might be a solution for you if it's really a nuisance.

One thing that might not be apparent from the board members is that we have a TON of overseas visitors and we get traffic from all over the world. Quick shout out to the people that visit from such seemingly remote Redskin areas as Botswana, Cocos islands, Belize, Tanzania, Tuvalu, and Seychelles, we get visits from over 50 different countries monthly... it's one of my favorite parts of the web stats. One day i'll put together a full list of all the countries that we've been visited by... it's pretty cool.

I like to think that they should still be able to enjoy their experience and A LOT of the world outside of North America is still on 800x600. Too early to abandon it yet in my opinon.

But I do appreciate the feedback and I apologize if it seemed I didn't. I have thick skin and can take whatever I get back when i ask for it.

This may be too simple to mention but . . . why not just adjust the width of your browser so it doesn't fill the entire screen - then bump up the text size if it is too small.

We should all be so lucky as to have Front Projection Monitors.

Changing the browser size may be an option, but to me when you start messing with your internal font settings, you make most sites look bad as that is something that is virtually impossible for a designer to completely account for.

On the mac side it is a browers setting not an internal setting. I can bump up or down the font size and it doesn't become a permanent setting. Command + or - and you are good to go. I use that alot since I am getting old and can't see as well as I used to.

Well I'm always just trying to keep the peeps happy, so I thought a simple solution for you ike would be to create an entry page that framed the page at 80%... I thought that might make for an easy solution without having to change all of the settings... it seems to be working fine, though I didn't go through it that extensively.

I posted the page here if you want to bookmark it.

http://www.the-hogs.net/forum/index1280x1024.php

Man, you are to good. I like the new logo and navigation seems to be fairly easy. Keep up the good work.

i think you did a great job as always with this board.
it,s certainly my favorite to go to and discuss everything that needs to be discussed regarding the skins.

nice new look there boss.

Boss you are way to good to us!

ike075 wrote:Boss you are way to good to us!

... just trying to help my Redskin brethren

So I take it that accomplished what you were after?

corny