Stop the Cap test - Latest Comments in Welcome to the Beta Test

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:34:33 -0000

Avatars here support Gravatar, sort of a one stop place to set avatars for display on any blog that supports gravatar.

Just go here and set yours up: http://en.gravatar.com/site...

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

BrionS — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:49:02 -0000

Corrine, how did you set your avatar?

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:37:49 -0000

I have temporarily turned off Disqus. There are some issues - namely comments left in the editor on the right of the article don't appear.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Corrine — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:53:05 -0000

WP Logon comment test.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Brion Swanson — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:37:20 -0000

I really like this reply mechanism! Disqus certainly seems more usable than the default commenting system. Now if only you could somehow link the stopthecap.com accounts with discqus so people don't have to create two accounts to comment. :)

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

DPM — Sat, 02 May 2009 11:14:30 -0000

Take Action menu item dropdown requires enlarging the window. Mac Leopard, Safari, resolution: 1680x1050.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:56:00 -0000

Test from old comment box.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:55:03 -0000

Testing Disqus. Of course, now oddly the comment box from before is still there, along with this one....

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Dave Meyer — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:42:42 -0000

I missed it! Bold it is.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Dave Meyer — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:15:21 -0000

I have trouble discerning hotlinks (color) especially the important Issues/Legislative contact list. Perhaps use light grey as used in "Welcome to Beta List" date, issues, comments or a contrasting color.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

BrionS — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:59:11 -0000

One more comment for now:

Please add a Login link or button to the final page that is obvious. The current site's login button is not obvious except to those familiar with WP.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Brion Swanson — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:56:27 -0000

Mac iBook G4 - Safari 3.1.2
(resolution 1024x768)

Several problems:
- contrast between panel background (light gray) and text area (white) too close to tell in comment area -- darker background would show up better on poorer LCD displays
- content scales but the quicklink bar does not. At this resolution "Take Action" moves down a row and to the right so that the pop-up text is half off screen
- as resolution goes down, fonts get proportionately larger and start to look bad in the navbar at the top

Mac iBook G4 - Firefox 3.0.10

- same probems (due to resolution and LCD) as Safari

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

BrionS — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:36:18 -0000

Layout suggestions (no idea how they'll actually look):

- Search this site widget on the top of the left-most column. Easy to see, eyes naturally go to the top-left.
- Content Tags followed by Recent Headlines under the Search
- Quote of the Day and Main content in the center column
- Recent Comments and Popular Content in the right-most column

That should balance the page out a bit and make the search and most desirable links (tags, recent headlines) easy to find.

The current layout is very left-heavy.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

justplainbob — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:32:16 -0000

Oh yes...the Take Action drop down doesn't display the two menu items completely.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

BrionS — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:30:34 -0000

Windows Mobile 6.1 with IE 6 Mobile....

...lost cause - don't worry about it

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

justplainbob — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:30:12 -0000

I like the site Phil, but as others have mentioned... The Stop The Cap ! at the top ofd the page is indeed upside down....but I have a feeling that you already knew this. Will have more time to explore this new layout a bit later today...

Firefox 3.0.10
Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

BrionS — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:25:31 -0000

Site looks surprisingly good on Windows Mobile 6.1 using Opera 9.5 Beta browser.

- All CSS appears to render
- images download and are properly scaled
- Javascript works
- Flash doesn't work (but that's to be expected)

Only two problems I ran into:

- This is a rather "heavy" site in terms of amount of data to download per page. To wit, it's a site about broadband caps and one would expect broadband users to be most interested. However, on the go reading is probably not too far outside the realm of possibility. Perhaps there's a CSS theme for the media type 'handheld' that removes a lot of the fluff and trims it down for mobile devices
- this page crashed my phone in Opera after trying to click on the 'Share' widget. It's likely that the size of the page simply overwhelmed my memory, but just thought I'd note that it did crash in Opera

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:24:25 -0000

I might experiment with Disqus and see if that works or clashes... it's a comment system management service. Might clash with the look of the site though.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:23:10 -0000

Yeah, that is weird... only visible from Issues category, not when clicking on article itself.

The thumbnail element is an add-on (as seen in Recent Headlines). I didn't think it would also turn up in the article only in some placed. Might be a bug.

Also, the vertical line appears to be coming from the fact the picture is stuck right in the middle of a quoted text section.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

BrionS — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:04:11 -0000

Agreed. Couldn't remember if that's how it currently is.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

BrionS — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:03:03 -0000

That explains why it didn't show up immediately. I saw no notice that my comment / reply was being held for moderation / approval. That could be confusing.

Also not fond of the way replies are all at the same level and in-line with other comments -- hard to tell replies from comments and which replies are to which comment / reply. I know it says 'Reply' but there's only the horizontal rule visual distinction. I guess I'm nitpicking now. :)

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Dave Meyer — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:48:52 -0000

Re: Issues/HissyFitWatch. Theme photo is placed twice, one large, one small with first line running for a few words down left side of large photo. Mac Leopard, Safari 4 Beta.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:45:45 -0000

Comment editor being to the side and not below existing comments is going to irritate me... I can feel it. Makes it hard to reference others' comments.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:43:26 -0000

Linking often will trigger the spam feature, which means I have to manually approve... one link shouldn't have set it off tho.

Re: Welcome to the Beta Test

Phillip Dampier — Sat, 02 May 2009 08:42:15 -0000

That is on purpose... beta test