ToledoTalk.com display change, Jan 23, 2014

New changes were made on the week of Jan 20, 2014, and moved into production on the evening of Jan 23, 2014.

A user started a thread about the changes on Jan 24. Here's my response:

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gamegrrl, you must have been using an old, unsupported view of Toledo Talk.

E-mail

The email address is listed in the Contact page, located at the bottom of the site.
http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/Contact

Font

With the changes made last evening (Jan 23, 2014), the default font type is now "Open Sans" from Google, which replaces the previous default font of Arial. For at least the last eight months, I've been viewing Toledo Talk with "Open Sans."

The default font size is a little larger, and the spacing between lines is also a little larger.

You can increase or decrease the font size by clicking on one of the 'As' at the bottom of any page. The middle 'A' is the default font size. Depending upon the phone or tablet, you may need to increase the font size.

Blue bar

On a phone or if you resize your browser to a small window, then a simple, jQuery-based, drop-down menu with the traditional hamburger icon is displayed in the upper right corner of the site.

The navigation bar (or whatever you call the blue bar at the top of the site) now remains fixed when scrolling. The exception is with older versions of the Internet Explorer browser where the nav bar scrolls up as before. When I tested the fixed nav bar in my version of IE 8 (used only for testing), the page of text displayed in a very disorienting way when scrolling the page.

The links in the blue nav bar have been rearranged a little.

New comments and threads counters

On larger screens, such as tablets and desktop/laptops, counters of new comments and threads since your last visit are displayed in the upper right corner of the homepage. The "clear" link will zero-out those counters. This info is not displayed on phones or if you resize your desktop/laptop browser to a small window.

Weather messages

The little weather alert messages at the top of the site are also not displayed on phones or on small browser windows.

Browser Rant

This does not apply to Toledo Talk but for the Web in general.

In my opinion, you should not use the Internet Explorer browser on your personal, home desktop/laptop Widows computer. Maybe the most recent version IE is fine. I don't know, and I don't care. I suggest using other browsers, such as Opera, Chrome, or Firefox on Widows computers. These browsers can be installed on older, Windows XP machines.

When my Mom bought a laptop, one of the first things I did for her was install the Chrome browser. When my Dad bought a laptop, one of the first things I did for him was install the Chrome browser. And I told them, "Don't use IE." But anymore, most of their Web surfing is now done with the Safari browser on their iPod and iPad Mini devices, so all is well.

I use the Opera browser. It's snappy. Firefox is too slow and clunky for me. I had used Chrome for a long time, but it seems that a recent update has caused Chrome to use more CPU, so I switched to Opera. All three are based on a similar codebase, but each adds its own tidbits. I also use the Opera Mini browser on my old dumbphone, and Toledo Talk works fine on that device. Opera Mini can execute jQuery.

#toledotalk - #design - #forums