Can I disable the merging of pages?

Allow me to play dickhead (big change, huh?).

I wasn't getting the floating header before. I refreshed and cleared my cache and now I am. If I'm to be brutally honest - I don't get it at all. I don't understand why it's there and it makes the page messy. It offers me no value at all.

Of all the things these discussion bring up, I find it interesting how many different ways people browse the site. My own method requires nothing but the "Recent" page (it's what I have bookmarked) and the back button on my mouse (especially now that posts/pages continue to load as I scroll, I'm never more than one page deep). Beyond that, it's unneeded extras to me.

Just throwing my two cents out there.

Until these last few posts, I never even noticed the classic "Recent" link, or what it did. My mind blurred out everything except "Search" as insignificant. I've been missing out, as making use of "Recent" is much more logical.

I was simply staying in the "General Buzz" forum, reading topics, and paging back. I'd then occasionally click "Forums" at the top of the page and analyze the last time users had posted to determine if I wanted to browse a different forum than "General Buzz."

I frequent about 5 other webpages that require constant refreshing, so I right click to refresh habitually. The auto refreshing is a very nice feature here, but it's hard to break the habit when manually refreshing across so many other sites.

I'm going to watch more closely now, but is it possible that after my computer falls asleep, when waking, the auto refreshing will not work immediately? All of my computers have aggressive energy settings, so they take a nap pretty quickly.

I get lost if the text is to wide. I like it skinny.

Gonch, the only value I enjoy with this floating header is that it reminds me of what the topic is supposed to be. Sometimes, I wonder what we are talking about, and being reminded of the topic helps...sometimes. :D

Jeff, this is going in the right direction. I love it that you take suggestions and are always trying to improve the site. Cheers to you!

Yes, too wide of a horizontal area does make it more tiring to read. I was only demonstrating the available range, and how I liked the ability to adjust the horizontal area to exactly what I wanted. I'd probably set my width about 2 inches wider here if I had the option. There are times when maximum horizontal coverage is a great though, like when other forums will have threads dedicated to posting coaster or park pictures tied to a theme.

But since the columns are staying this way, as DJ mentioned, maybe all the floating stuff could dock to the left as a side bar. Then you have a totally clean vertical reading area, and the 67% available white space gets utilized.

My monitors are 24" 1920x1200 resolution though, so maybe we're all seeing things very differently.

Lord Gonchar said:

...I don't get it at all. I don't understand why it's there and it makes the page messy. It offers me no value at all.

This.

The links in the thread title bar seem redundant, considering the persistent site header. If that was gone or moved to the side, it might make the thread title bar less intrusive - hard to say without seeing it that way. But as is, it does nothing but encroach on what I'm trying to read or on the images I'm trying to view.

I know I'm being annoyingly repetitive here, but I would love to see the site header moved to the side. That might completely change my perception of the thread title thingy.

And I'll echo what LK said - it's refreshing to see someone so open & responsive to suggestions. It's much appreciated!

I really like it, now. On my iPad, it looks good. I will have to check it in safari at home, but I'd imagine it looks about right.

I appreciate all of the feedback. Surfacing the different ways people use it is important.

A lot of people here use the recent list, and that makes sense since there aren't many forums. On sites with more forums, it would be less useful. For example, on PointBuzz, I almost never read the employee forum. It gets busy in the winter, so that would be a lit of noise in the recent list. Again, it's design for the world at large slightly clashing with this specific world.

Recent users: Would a "mark all read" button make sense on that page? I assume you don't read every thread.

As for waking from sleep, it depends. Time stamp updating will continue, but even if it does start listening again, it will have missed the notifications about other new stuff.

Has anyone checked out the activity feed? Thoughts?

Lord Gonchar said:

Allow me to play dickhead (big change, huh?).

How do we disable THAT? ;~P Kidding, of course....happy Thursday!

Well, my two cents would be that I prefer the navigational links to be at the bottom of the page, where my focus is when I'm done reading. To have them at the top seems redundant when the site navigation bar is already up there. The frozen topic title bar is cool, though, to keep track of which thread you are in.

You bring up one thing I was trying to address. I tend to click blue icons, and ignore the title. I like to see it once I'm there.

The new bar works for me. I also use the "recent" list exclusively.

OK... I made some more tweaks. Shift-refresh if it appears borken. Much smaller fixed nav now, giving you back about 45 pixels. :)

Jeff said:

You bring up one thing I was trying to address. I tend to click blue icons, and ignore the title. I like to see it once I'm there.

This is something I didn't even realize I did until I switched to Chrome full-time and no longer had a title bar. That's why I appreciate the new static topic banner. And even when I was still with Firefox, it was annoying to squint at the gray title bar to remind myself which thread I was reading.

I think I liked the white shadow better (or maybe a lighter gray would be better?), but overall this is a cleaner look. It leaves the most pertinent stuff in view without taking up much real estate.

I know it's been changing daily, but the current look is by far the best. Functional, but small enough to be out of the way. I do get a strange little hiccup in Chrome, where on the first scroll of the page, the new title bar now covers part of the (no longer fixed position) page header. Not a big deal though, just looked funny the first time it happened.

It threw me for a loop the first time I noticed the page going on and on. :) I do like the floating box for the same reason others have mentioned. Sometimes the discussion gets WAY off topic and you tend to forget what the heck we are talking about.

Plus, if I am either getting bored with a discussion, or in a time crunch and want to look at other topics/threads, the bar is there for me to select something else. Before, I would have to scroll to top or bottom.

Some don't like the size thinking it takes away space. I don't feel that way. As I'm scrolling through a discussion, I am not reading from top of page.

I noticed on ebay, that there is a floating arrow on right side of page in case someone wants to go to top of page easily. Nice added feature. Not sure if it would benefit anyone here since the floating bar has the needed selections.

All in all, I really like the bar. As I am a person trying to get through stuff online quickly, I like the ability to jump from page to page easier. My only suggestion would be to add "News Discussion" and "Trip Reports" to the bar. I know its minor, and being lazy. :) But, it is one less click if I want to jump to either of those instead of clicking "Forums" and then choosing other topic.

I think the thinner, more simplistic navigation bar is a huge improvement.

And I like the dark shadow on the topic header. It gives it more of a floating, 3D look, which makes me think of it as a word vacuum cleaner when scrolling. That makes me feel more productive. Not only am I reading, but I'm helping clean Coasterbuzz. Sorry, I'm getting tired.

Anyway, what would be really cool is if you could make the floating topic header the exact same thickness as the floating navigation bar. Then, only when a user is browsing the forums, the floating topic header can dock on top of the floating navigation bar.

So you'd basically have 1 streamlined floating bar while in the forums, which would be a nice compromise for everyone. The "Account," "Private Messages," and "Logout" would still be accessible, which are the perfect 3 things I'd want from the navigation bar when in forums anyway.

Regardless, thanks for listening to us, and keep up the great work. :)

I really like the 3-Dness of the shadow instead of the little invisible white line too. I welcome the illusion of depth on my screen when I see it on any website that I visit.

The Activity Feed seems interesting. I'll have to decide to look there a few more times before I can tell you if it is useful to me or not.

I hate all of it. Change it back.

;-)

Methinks Carrie's avatar needs to be Grumpy Cat.

Love love love the new page header. I thought the full logo made it too tall, taking up too much real estate. I also like that the cartoony logo is gone once you scroll down, since I browse at work all the time (I mean occasionally, only on breaks) and felt like I had to hide the page every time someone approached my desk.

CP Chris said:

I do get a strange little hiccup in Chrome, where on the first scroll of the page, the new title bar now covers part of the (no longer fixed position) page header. Not a big deal though, just looked funny the first time it happened.

Yes, this happens in Firefox and IE as well. The floating topic header, just before the page header morphs into its thinner self (which, by the way, is nicely done), jumps from below the menu bar (ACTIVITY FEED / SEARCH / RECENT / etc.) to just above it, covering the page header until the morph is complete. It seems as if the topic header should keep scrolling with the page until the top edge of it meets the bottom edge of the newly-morphed page header. I see why it happens, though: it appears that the thinner page header and stationary topic header are all one graphic...

Hope this makes sense. In short, I think it's near perfect aesthetically (size of both bars are great, I like the shadow, etc.), but the animation during scroll is a bit choppy.