Upgrade Starts Today

This is a test.

This is not a test, it's serious.

This is just a test. If this was your real life, you would have been given instructions on what to do.

First, some general remarks about “design”. I’ll start by saying that I don’t know exactly what he means by “designed”.

Dan Hocson: This is just a test. If this was your real life, you would have been given instructions on what to do.

Gotta say, the old desing was better, IMNHO.

bump

Hmmm. I'm not a big fan of this format for comments. I find it hard to keep track of who the comment author is. Is this the final set-up or is there more to come?

The front page stuff is okay, though.

To be fair, it looks like the formatting has already improved since my previous comment.

Very, very intelligently designed, or should I have created...

I have to say I miss the 'recent comments' menu.

Lookin' good, though. Kudos

Well It is "nicer" looking and faster loading. I like the pics on the left.

There seems to be some sort of tabbed menubar at the top just under the panda. Mostly all I see of that is a purple line. If I hover my mouse along it I get something popping up but I can only see the top third of the word in the tab.

I am using Firefox-2.0.0.5 on Fedora 7 Linux.

-DU-

Hah!! For some reason it is now "fixed" (never mind).

-DU-

so how long till someone fleshes out the rest of the lines for the parody:

"I am Panda, hear me roar"

seriously though, it's a definite improvement IMO.

In keeping with the site overhaul, I suppose it's time I overhauled my handle for this site to be consistent with everywhere else.

only extra coment:

i rather liked that the old PT didn't have a pure white background for the text; helped rest my eyes from all the other scienceblogs that already do.

did you try it with the pale yellow background?

maybe a very pale sea-green?

It needs that recent comments section; without that the only ways to find which threads have new comments is either open all of them one at a time or remember the reply count for all of them. Either of those methods is a nuisance.

At present the page does not fit in the horizontal width of my screen. Having to scroll horizontally is annoying.

As somebody already pointed out, this format at this point makes it hard to attach poster name and post date with each reply; the replies used to be distinctly separated from each other.

Is the spellchecker coming back? There's no button for it on screen at the moment.

Henry

First, some general remarks about “design”. I’ll start by saying that I don’t know exactly what he means by “designed”.

First, some general remarks about “design”. I’ll start by saying that I don’t know exactly what he means by “designed”.

bump

Ditto the annoyance at horizontal width. I'm at 1024 x 768, and the right-hand column ("Recent Entries", etc.) is off-screen right. Horizontal scrolling is a pain.

Digging the column of photos on the left, though. What kind of bird is that third from the top?

Thought I'd bring it up in what perhaps much of your non-academic target audience may be using - IE7 under WinXP.
In the top banner, the Search box and CONTACT US is justified beyond the left, so you see:

arch... GO

NTACT US

And I see single returns in the comments don't create a new line.

I'm still tweaking the style. Once I have something working in Firefox, I check it out in IE7, Opera, and Safari on my Vista laptop. I'm not done yet with the top right corner.

and this is just a tet how blockquote looks like

I must say that I prefer the old framed blockquote appearance.

I'm not finished working on PT 2.0. Lots of stuff that is missing is going to be added.

2004.03.23: You Missed a Spot, Dr. Dembski 2004.03.23: Welcome to the Panda's Thumb!

2004.03.23: You Missed a Spot, Dr. Dembski 2004.03.23: Welcome to the Panda's Thumb!

At least on firefox for mac, the tabs up top behave very strangely. If you mouse over or click them there's a noticeable lag before there is any response. And wouldn't it be a good idea to anti-alias those tab images or something?

The old layout was no jewel but I have to admit I preferred it.

Coin: And wouldn't it be a good idea to anti-alias those tab images or something?

bump

What tab images?

Format test.

Add "Removes line breaks" to the complaint list.

Sorry. To be specific, normal LF/CR character handles well in Preview, but were removed during Submit.

No, should have checked. Preview removed them too, I just didn't notice. Blank lines works, fortunately.

As a usability and design specialist....you need to add either some more white space at the end of each comment or perhaps a bold on the authors name. Comments need more visual organization.

Oh, where are and how do I get to The Bathroom Wall and such?

Oh, one more this...and this is just me being anal....remove the heavy dashed line from the header/masthead. This dashed line give the appearance of a progress meter and not an graphical highlight.

Panda's only WHAT?

What kind of bird is that third from the top?

It's a Harris's hawk, this one. The same bird is in the rock arch picture.

Torbjörn Larsson, OM: - Can't find format specification. (MT web site isn't helpful.)

I really think that one of the pictures down the side should include the flagellum, especially as UD seem to have abandoned the use of it since Bill's spanking by a biology professor on stage yesterday.

So far I liked the previous format a lot better than this one.

Henry

bump

I also dislike this format for comments. It is quite difficult to separate one comment from the next.

I'll add a complaint about the comments. The format is hard to digest and a bit confusing.

A change to the display format for comments is in the works.

With all the lines of text left justified and no other visual highlighting, it makes it difficult to visually distinguish one comment from another.

Other than that, the upgrade looks good. Thanks.

Is it merely a coincidence that both PT and UD overhauled their sites at the same time?

As far as I know, yes, it is merely happenstance that web site overhauling seems to be popular right now.

They certainly didn't send us any notices, and we didn't send them any signals that haven't been stated through our posts. If you look back, you'll see that we've been talking about this for a year or so.

PShop out the apostrophe in the "Panda's Only" sign. Either that or post a pic of a "No Pedant's" sign with me standing next to it.

Hi. Lurker here.

For the most part I think the changes are ok. Some are even good. There are just a couple of comments I wish to make.

1. I miss the old "Panda's Thumb" title banner. It was too cute.

2. I was hoping that there'd be some improved way of indicating new comments. Sure, there was/will be the recent comments box, but that only keeps track of the last dozen messages or so. It doesn't do much good if you only visit once every day or three. There's still no way of knowing at a glance if new comments have been added to any specific topic, other than remembering what the post count was the last time you visited.

I'd love to at least have a "last comment posted on Sept. 19th at 3:21pm" message or something appear in the header of each topic, so I don't have to waste time double-checking all the threads that have had no activity since my last visit. If you don't want to devote screen space to it, perhaps you could set it up as a pop-up tooltip.

Other than that, please keep up the good work.

PS: This is strange. I've been trying to post this comment, but I keep getting an error saying to effect that this was "too many posts too quickly. Please try again later". But I haven't actually posted anything yet (if this finally goes through it will be my first post in months). I did make liberal use of the preview function, though. Is this some bug that needs fixing?

Gya. My post finally went through, but I didn't see it show up. (I refreshed the page and checked between each attempt, honest!). Sorry for the multiple posts.

Oh, where are and how do I get to The Bathroom Wall and such?

We’re still using KwickXML

Well, at the moment I can't seem to post

the KwickXML doesn’t seem to be working properly at the moment

The forum is linked from the tab in the top banner, cryptically labeled, “forum”.

This is the error message I keep receiving:

Movable Type
An error occurred
close Connection error: FATAL: connection limit exceeded for non-superusers at /usr/local/www/vhosts/pandasthumb/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/lib/MT/ObjectDriver/Driver/DBD/Pg.pm line 91 at /usr/local/www/vhosts/pandasthumb/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/lib/MT/ObjectDriver/Driver/DBD/Pg.pm line 91

The posts do seem to be appearing eventually

Peter, what browser are you using?

Why is there an apostrophe in the "Pandas Only" sign? It makes us look illiterate.

Flint: Why is there an apostrophe in the "Pandas Only" sign? It makes us look illiterate.

Just a note to say that I definitely like the new look better. I guess the commenting format change has already been implemented, because I'm having no problem differentiating comments.

Also, the menu up top in the title bar (main archive forum links about) doesn't show up properly in IE6.

You’ll have to ask the Alaska DOT why a sign in the middle of nowhere has the apostrophe.

hmm, i was also wondering what happened to the banner panda's canines?

it might send the wrong message...

maybe photoshop those back in?

A little photoshopping seems called for.

I'm torn on between someone thinking it was just bad spelling skills on the part of PT, vs. it being an interesting presentation of an actual sign.

meh, it takes effort; leave it the way it is, or pull it entirely would be my opinion.

The spell checker is back for those whose browsers don't yet do that.

What's this dg.specificlick.net thing that times out a few seconds after a PT thread page loads? The cursor indicates that it thinks something is still loading, even though the page is already on the screen, then that time-out box pops up.

Henry

Henry J: What's this dg.specificlick.net thing that times out a few seconds after a PT thread page loads? The cursor indicates that it thinks something is still loading, even though the page is already on the screen, then that time-out box pops up.

It seems to have stopped doing that now.