A quick history: Last September, Iranian.com upgraded from a manually crafted set of pages to a modern content management system that supported community / comment features. It was a big step forward, but it left a few issues.
First, it left a lot a screen space vacant. This format uses the more modern, wider screen. That should make it easier to view things.
We kept the three columns, but made them wider. That should make for easier reading.
The prior layout had two "skinny" columns on the right, which was hard to read. This one has skinny column on the left with "narrow" content, the main column with story summaries and a medium sized right column which houses video and other content better.
We are asking our advertisers to avoid animated ads and to use the extra space for making their messages easier and less intrusive. We want commerical messages to be available to those readers with a need without annoying everyone unnecessarily.
Last, the new format will better support the new features we plan for 2008. (More on those in a later post.)
What do you think? Any suggestions for improvement.
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Anonymouse: I see what you mean
by Foaad Khosmood on Mon May 05, 2008 01:38 PM PDTIf you are seeing 1.25" of margin, you must have your desktop resolution set higher than 1024 width. What's important to note is that, this is how it looks to you. I only have 5 pixels of margin on my full-screened browser, much smaller than yours.
If we make it wider, it would look to you like we are expanding to "full screen" and taking advantage of the "blue stripes" but for people with lower resolution like me, the browser woud force us to use a horizontal scroll bar to go left and right. The whole page will not be visible because it's too wide for us. We don't want people to scroll left/right, so we made is just wide enough to avoid that at 1024x768 resolution. To people with higher resolutions, it looks like there's some background space left over.
Does that make sense?
more featured blogs
by David ET on Mon May 05, 2008 01:02 PM PDT1- Considering how quickly articles drop from featured blog list, I suggest more than 5 featured blogs .
2- You need a more prominent and defined design for the actual material so they dont seem so blended with ads which reduces the quality of the site.
Foad Blue margins
by Anonymouse on Mon May 05, 2008 12:56 PM PDTI don't know the technical term, it could be the blue background behind the white island of content stuff.
I can refer to it as margins. About 1.25" blue margin on each side going vertically from top to bottom, left and right of screen.
It is just blue and not being used. When you went to this format it got smaller but it is still there. Why not make it smaller like 0.5" margin on each side?
sorry ,but a little too busy...
by Tahirih on Mon May 05, 2008 12:55 PM PDTI will get used to the looks of it , as long as the featured blogs are at the top of the front page.
My best regards,
Tahirih
Anonymouse, what blue stripes?
by Foaad Khosmood on Mon May 05, 2008 01:00 PM PDTYou wrote this before, but I'm not certain what you're referring to.
Are you talking about the part of the graduated blue background that is visible from behind the white "islands" of content?
This is because we have a fixed-width design when we went to web 2.0. Without it, we would have no control of what the site looks like in different screen resolutions. I have a relatively low resolution setting on my computer (1024x768) and I see what could be described as "stripes" on left and right edges of the screen.
But for higher resolutions, these stripes will look thicker and more like a background. We did not want to make the site wider than 1024x768 which our logs show the vast majority of visitors are at. However, at this resolution, we wanted to take advantage of the space for actual content so we expanded right up to the edge of it.
Foad what about deleting the blue strips?
by Anonymouse on Mon May 05, 2008 12:27 PM PDTFoad what about deleting the blue strips? or make them smaller? what is special about leaving them there?
Looks like a bug to me...
by Azarin Sadegh on Mon May 05, 2008 12:21 PM PDTThanks for your efforts and Sorry to spoil a bit your joy...but as my laptop crashed a few days ago, and today was the first time I logged on Iranian.com, I really thought the setting of my new laptop is all wrong..I changed them several times, until I found this blog. I am using Internet Explorer for my browser. But the layout is all messed up. (Other sites look normal though, so it should be your new look.)
It really doesn't look good (not at all)..It is pretty much unusable.
Azarin
Thank you Foaad
by IRANdokht on Mon May 05, 2008 12:18 PM PDTThe Firefox format is fixed, thanks!
Since we're all here to read the articles, wouldn't it make more sense for the ads to stay on the right hand side as they were before?
If there was a delay in loading the page and we didn't notice it before, why change the format to make it annoying to the readers? I am confused now...
IRANdokht
Better !
by Souri on Mon May 05, 2008 12:06 PM PDTI did it. Now just a little bit better, but ...it really looks like another Iranian web site (Payvand news of Iran) //www.netnative.com/news/
Is that the same? or almost ?
REFRESH REFRESH!!!
by Foaad Khosmood on Mon May 05, 2008 12:11 PM PDTHI all,
Thanks for your input. There should not be any "overlapping columns." This is most likely as a result of your browser caching CSS and image files.
Where ever you see overlapping columns and messed up borders (like the film strip on top of the first page), please refresh your browser a few times to see if it goes away on its own. In Firefox, this is called "reload page". If that doesn't fix it, then it could be a real problem.
The "slowness" is most likely because it's taking time to draw the left side column before the system moves on to the middle part of the site. Previously, the main part was getting drawn first, so people probably didn't notice that while they started reading the article some of the material on the right was still being loaded. It is kind of annoying though, we will have to brainstorm a way to addressing this.
We also discontinued using the "messenger" function a long time ago. Any member can use the "contact" form to email another member from that member's account page.
Have "Next" and "Previous" for top row display items.
by What a heck do I know (not verified) on Mon May 05, 2008 11:25 AM PDTOr better have arrows for them.
Too slow
by Souri on Mon May 05, 2008 10:48 AM PDTI don't know if I will like this new presentation, but....who care ? Like it or not, we have to deal with it as always.
just let you know that it became "impossiblly" slow !
Too slow, very slow for a hasty person like me who wants to first overview things before getting into a serious blog.
Is that a technical problem or it will stay always like this?
Looks horrible from where I'm sitting
by n.zanincanadai on Mon May 05, 2008 10:18 AM PDTNow that I've spend a bit of time on it...let me tell you what I think.
- Ridicoulously slow.
- Design is just terrible from a user stand point. Important items have been moved around for the sake of ads. If interested let me know and I'll send you screen shots of what it looks like from here. I can't get to my favorite places without scrolling for a million years.
- Why do I have to click on Log in to get to the log in fields? Just put them on top please. With this speed...are you kidding me? :)
- Most importantly, I know that changing items around works your brain and it's good for alzeihmers but there's no need for all this messing around. If you MUST change something, just zero in on those items. Why change the look so often and with such MAJOR variations.
- Did you fix the MAJOR bugs? I can't use my messanger function. NONO EXISTO AMIGO. I would think that most users would appreciate bugs fixed first, before major changes.
Bad New Look
by Foad on Mon May 05, 2008 09:47 AM PDTIf you like I could email (send me the email address) you a screen shot of your home page. Many items are overlapped. Foad
Personally I think it is very confusing and not clear at all!
by Anonymous-2 (not verified) on Mon May 05, 2008 09:32 AM PDTI much preferred the previous version. When I looked at the site today,I thought there was something wrong with my computer because everything looked out of whack, the various postings are superimposed on one another. There is just too many things going on. The lines and borders are not formated appropriately.
Why do we need to see these advertisements when we provide comments?
Sum it up the web-site needs work! I believe the previous one looked alot more professional!
...
by Red Wine on Mon May 05, 2008 09:21 AM PDTummm... Man nemifahmam keh chera enghadar shomaha beh in site iranian.com var mirin ??? mageh version ghablish chetor bud,ha ? bad bud ??? alan maleh man bad juri ghati patieh... hameh chi ro eshtebahi neshun mideh, chapaki dideh misheh !!! intori keh nemisheh keh har dafeh ba adam bazi konid !!! Jahanshah jan pls digeh dast nazan beh inja !!!!!!!!! puffffffffff
not quite usable
by IRANdokht on Mon May 05, 2008 09:08 AM PDTI had to log on with Mozilla Firefox and the columns are all overlapping. It's not going to be easy browsing this site today.
Also the ads appearing on both sides feel like a one-two punch, there is no escaping them now.
It was much easier avoiding the advertisements distraction when they were all on the right and the actual content was on the left.... On second thoguht, that's probably why they were moved around and now completely cover the whole page.
Thanks for posting this info, the format change would have caused panic for me if I had not been aware.
:0)
IRANdokht
It is slower I confirm
by Troneg on Mon May 05, 2008 08:57 AM PDTIt is slower for sure.
bug report!
by ZH (not verified) on Mon May 05, 2008 08:48 AM PDTIt's a complete mess on Firefox on a PC too.
Needs Work!!!
by PedramMoallemian on Mon May 05, 2008 08:10 AM PDTyour designers must've never looked at it with a mac/firefox combo as it looks compleletly messed up. get them back to work.
Otherwise, anything is an improvement as I was never a fan of the new "blue look" and do not believe in gutting a site to upgrade web 2.0 features added.
good but
by mazfaz on Mon May 05, 2008 05:51 AM PDTgood but a bit slower than before
mazfayaz
Why STILL the 2 blue sides?!
by Anonymouse on Mon May 05, 2008 05:38 AM PDTWhile this is much better, I asked the same question when we were asked about it the first go around and I ask it again; why still the 2 blue vacant strips?
I know I can change my own browser settings and reduce the 2 blue strips on the sides but the text gets bigger too.
So let me ask the question this way; why ARE you keeping these 2 blue strips on the sides? Seems to me they are not serving any purpose other than to use space.
If someone has some special attachment to these strips and it is a must keep, well reduce it to something like no more than 1/2" on each side, instead of the current 1"+.
News & opinion columns
by sz (not verified) on Mon May 05, 2008 05:12 AM PDTIt looks good, as more and more of the member recommended “news” are in actuality links to opinion pieces, is it possible to add the news source in the featured news column? Or better yet, space allowing, have a column dedicated to recommended opinion pieces.
Nice!
by Killjoy (not verified) on Mon May 05, 2008 04:23 AM PDTSimply Nicer Than Before.
All The Best!
very good
by Troneg on Mon May 05, 2008 04:19 AM PDTDo you plan to have a simple layout for mobile devices ? I mean Windows Mobile Smart phone ?
Thank You
by Nazy Kaviani on Mon May 05, 2008 02:52 AM PDTDear Wayne:
Thank you for bearing the good news! I know what a lot of hard work has been going into changing and improving the site for the past year. It's good to see those changes emerge one by one! Thank you, Fouaad, and Jahanshah for all the hard work.
Thanks
by IRANdokht on Sun May 04, 2008 09:02 PM PDTAs a frequent visitor of iranian.com, I appreciate the efforts you are all making to improve the site and keep it up to date. I don't have any problem with the current format, but looking forward to see the new one. I only have one issue today, since I am still looking for an article that I can't find, I was wondering if you could add another search on the site.
Some websites have two options, either search the web or search the site. We only have one here and it's web-google. Some of the older articles are hard to find,
Thanks again and best of luck
IRANdokht
You made me go back and
by Bahram the Iranian on Sun May 04, 2008 08:45 PM PDTYou made me go back and check the sites that I usualy log into to see their layout(funny I never gave any attention to this before).I guess is all about the widht??some sites use more space and diplay smaller background.there are both advantages and hold back .you get more space for your content but then It could get too busy harder to surf around the site.in my opinion you could use more space.this site must be among the thinest ones I visit regulary.
I wish you good luck with your new project.