Hi, the new chrono order and #'ing is a great improvement, I captured the screen and put some suggestions on a way to get more messages on the page without all the visual clutter. For me, it is very hard to read between all the grey boxes. The full screen capture below was only 3 small messages back and forth and it took up the whole screen. If we could make the grey boxes small and consolidate some of the info to the direct right of the avators there would be more room for words on the screen. Also, looking thru all the screens the right hand side of the screen does not seem to be used for any menu functions/coding, maybe we could extend the comment space of the page to the right. That would allow more space for sentences. We have alot of white space on the screens. The sticky warp shed is slowly getting easier to open here on the new Weavolution.
These are great suggestions Deb. We've had a couple of discussions with our developer to change some of this. How did you mark this up so cleanly?
We'll toss around these ideas and others and see what we can do.
Thanks!
Hi Allison, I have a mac so this is mac speak....I am sure that IBM has the same type function somewhere...
- I use Grab to capture the screen, it is saved as a tiff
- I open the tiff in Preview, Preview has recently been updated with annotation tools, just the basics but they work well. I woke up one day and they were there with a software update! They are perfect for quick notes.
- On the Preview main menu look under Tools and then under Annotate, you can draw ovals and squares and add text. You can also change colors/size of these graphics so they show clearly on whatever graphic you are marking up.
- Once you made your notes and have everything as you want to communicate you save it as a jpg. Then you can upload it as needed.
Hope this helps. Deb, ps.....dare I also bring up the question....should our avatars (photo) show up on ALL of our notes, how about just on our profile. So many folks put up psuedophotos anyway...why take up the space?
I run in both worlds, so now I know how to do it in Preview. I hadn't even looked at what changes had been made.
Re avatars, we discussed leaving them off and decided that people recognize each other by their avatar, even if it is pseudo. We use that visual clue to quickly know who is writing and responding. We have discussed moving them though.
Thanks!
please don't leave them off. Make them smaller or move ;Even if they are pseudos they make it easier to remember who's who.
I thought I would reawaken this question now that we are past the 2nd reload of the system.....see 1st message above. To repeat, there is so much screen real estate that is blank that could be used for words so that more shows up on a page. Deb Mc
You are correct, we could make better use of the real estate we have here. At this time, the techno team is working on a list of the improvements including those our users have suggested. The Admin team (Alison, Claudia and the Advisory Board) will look at this list and make suggestions for what can be accomplished within our budget. I have learned that sometimes the items that look simple, like reorganizing the comments, are often quite costly.
Thanks for the diagram and the ideas. You are being heard and your suggestions will be considered.
Claudia
Hi Deb,
You brought up a number of good suggestions. As Claudia indicated, some of these ideas are do-able but we'll have to prioritize them along with all other features and ideas we want to see addressed, and see what makes the cut for our future plans.
One point I wanted to address specifically:
On the sidebars of the site, I don't expect we'll be making much of a change anytime soon. Our site width is fixed to a size selected so that Weavolution may be enjoyed by our community members using older, lower-resolution computer screens without requiring sideways scrolling. On high-resolution and widescreen monitors, this means there will be a lot of space on the sides of our site that won't be used for much. Someday in the future we might re-evaluate this decision but for now we are happy to be more accessible at the expense of a little "wasted space."
I have ensured that the general issue, along with a link to this thread with the detailed discussion, is now in our issues log. Thank you for bringing your concerns back to light so that they are not missed!
