Can I disable the merging of pages?

That header is more an experiment than anything else. It won't look like that in the long run.

But yeah, you're on the right track... too many options just increase complexity and risk of breaking stuff.

Looking at it now, it does seem to take a little too much reading real estate away from the page. It doesn't have to though. There could be a little less empty space in the header.

I'm not complaining at all though. I find if very useful.

I'm contemplating a scaled down one, that includes the "started by" and number of replies. What do you think?

More information is less space sounds awesome! I'm sure whatever you decide to do will be great.

I'm all for a scaled down version. Would be be possible to have the Active Feed, Search, Recent, etc. links included as well? Especially Recent. By far I use Recent the most. I know, I should just add it to my favorites bar.

Yeah, I totally like the idea of a scaled down one. I can't explain it, but if it was half the size, it would blend in with the page better, IMO.

Ye gods, I'm getting old. Managed to post my comment on this excellent new feature not only in a different thread but in a different forum.

Anyway, this is good. Thank you, Jeff.

It feels like the topic banner needs something to separate it visually from the rest of the page, so scrolling elements of the same color don't blend in. I'm thinking a thin black or white line, like this.

I do like the thinner banner though.

With the page merging, here's another thing I'm struggling with. I'm a chronic page refresher.

Every time I refresh, the page location goes back to the middle of the mega page. So, I have to keep scrolling all the way to the end or where I left off.

Is there anyway to program the site to save the page location when one refreshes? I've just been doing a crazy amount of needless scrolling here lately.

At first I thought I didn't need to refresh anymore, as a "Load new messages" button pops up when typing (which I thought was an excellent added feature, by the way). But, for some reason, it doesn't always work, and manual refreshing will bring up new posts that the automatic feature didn't register.

You don't have to refresh though. If a new post is made, it will appear at the end of the page.

This may just be the way I use the site but once I am in the forums I don't need immediate access to other areas of the site. I think you remove the fixed site header and replace it with a button that takes you back to the top of the page.

I'm the same, in that I stay pretty focused on the forums. Though I understand the point of the header is to encourage traffic to other areas. It seems to me it would make far more sense to as a sidebar or something similar. Less valuable real estate.

Would a thinner, more discrete bar be better?

If you want the navigation bar there at all times, yes, I think thinner would be better. I'm like DJ and 8.3 in that I'm usually just in the forums, so the only thing I'd really like to see at all times is if I have any private messages on the side.

I personally prefer when there is no bar-locking so that I can use as much of the screen real estate as possible, but that's just 1 opinion.

The biggest change I'd like to see here in terms of screen real estate is adaptable horizontal forum width. We all have high-resolution, wide-screen monitors these days, right? If you look over at the kicentral.com forums, the forum width adapts to how thin or wide you make the page. When you simply maximize the forum webpage, you get about 75% horizontal coverage. When you maximize here, you get about 33% horizontal coverage.

As a result, most of my posts here look TL:DL. ;) When I rarely post over at KI Central, my thoughts are about the same length, yet they all look about 4 ines long. It's more like reading a newspaper here, which I'm sure some prefer. But, I'd personally like more horizontal reading width.

The width will never by dynamic. It's very much a fact that wider columns of text are harder to read. That's why newspaper columns were always so narrow, and even magazines tend to do two columns on a page. I can't stand text can sprawl across a thousand pixels. It goes in the face of everything I know about usability.

The floating top bar thing is an interesting use case, because I have objectives for the site specifically, but the forum project is open source, and something people may drop into any site. Trying to marry the two things and sometimes conflicting goals is hard. But I do have some ideas. You're right that the PM count is one of the primary reasons for the floater.

OK, I made a few tweaks. I added a recent link in there for the folks who prefer that. I reduced the font size. I also put a subtle shadow on the box so it doesn't blend in with the user name headers. Is this headed in the right direction?

The box seems larger to me now. The space between the topic and the Recent/forums/suggestions needs to be smaller, and it will look good.

Couldn't you make the topic header box all one line of the same text size, but just bold the current topic? Then, you could shrink the topic header box dramatically to a thin line.

So, it'd be like:

Forums > Suggestions for CoasterBuzz > Can I disable the merging of pages?

Oh, and I'm confused what "Recent" does. It seems like it'd take you to the same "Suggestions for CoasterBuzz" and be a redundant link?

Josh: Shift-refresh... you're probably seeing the old style cached.

Recent takes you to the recent topics page.

I do like the smaller box and the white shadow. You might be able to go even smaller with the topic title (same size as News/Forums/Roller Coasters in the maroon banner?) since the tan box makes it stand out anyway. But I realize it doubles as an element at the top of the page, then locks as you scroll down; at a smaller size, it might look weird/get lost when it's in the starting position.

Edit: The more I view pages, the more the current size box seems like a good compromise. Serves its purpose without getting in the way, at least on my screen (1440 x 900 with the browser window max'd).

Also, as a graphic designer I'm with you on wide lines of text being difficult to read. :) Even with greater linespacing to avoid losing one's place, reading a long line of text can be fatiguing.