Reforged Site: Too Narrow

morethanbob
morethanbob
edited October 2013 in Feature Requests
Hi There,

I have been an Ascent member for over a year now, and a member of OP as a regular member for over three years. What I like about Obsidian Portal, is it manages to provide a number of utilities as tools to a gaming table from an on-line presentation format. I am provided a number of tools that I can choose to dismiss, or choose to utilize. There is no ability to hide the tools you do not wish to use, but I can get around that easy enough through other ways.

This is going to be a post about a specific issue, but I did want to take the time to say that it doesn't cripple my Obsidian Portal experience. Though the reforge site is much prettier and far more intuitive, I find that the narrow window for wiki was a bit of an oversight on the developers part. Not only is the wiki essentially the backbone of the campaign tools, it likely has the most content other than characters within each respective campaign. By making considerable changes to the width, we are essentially required to reformat every wiki page to look 'clean'. If you view the new Characters section, the width is appropriate and allows for a better experience with modern wide screen monitors. But in the wiki, a huge chunk of what I consider usable width space is If I had the option of using the old structure with the re-purposed for a 'Last Update' header. While 'Last Update' is a useful retained tool, borrowing from the wiki width is far from ideal. I'd really like the OP wiki space to return to a reasonable width. Is anyone else bothered by this change, or is it just me?

I personally would rather use the old format if it means having usable wiki space. Other than that one very specific point, I am quite happy with what I'm seeing of the product. For now I am going to see if others around the world agree with this post.

Cheers

-Bobby
«1

Comments

  • crimsonknave
    crimsonknave
    Posts: 28
    In your campaign settings in the Style tab there is a "Collapse Front Page Menu" setting. If you check that all of the wiki pages will have more space, but the navigation menu will only be icons. Hope that helps!
  • morethanbob
    morethanbob
    Posts: 6
    That is quite a bit better. I notice it's still lacking just a slight bit of width that it used to have which will require reformatting...

    But it is better.
  • Davidb_S
    Davidb_S
    Posts: 13
    I noticed this right away as well and used the “Collapse Front Page Menu” setting, in the hopes of gaining more space. It did help some, but things still appear a bit tight, compared to before.
  • moorcrys
    Posts: 2
    Is there a way to reduce the default font size? That seems to be adding to the tight-looking feel of the new format.
  • wolfhound
    wolfhound
    Posts: 354
    From a different thread = added to CSS

    .main-content-container { width:990px !important; }
  • SkidAce
    SkidAce
    Posts: 830
    does that hide the other things that are normally on the right?
  • Langy
    Langy
    Posts: 364 edited October 2013
    Here's my tweak for fixing the 'too narrow' issue. It's a simple CSS mod that'll give you more space and not much else different. It also shrinks your fonts to 13px size rather than 16px by default, and makes it so images in tables will display as they should rather than shrinking.

    A 20 pixel wide gray bar will replace your right-hand sidebar; scroll over that with your mouse and you'll get all the normal stuff that should be in the sidebar.

    Make sure you also use the Collapse Front Page Menu setting, else this'll look silly!

    .main-content-container {
    width:990px !important;
    font-size:13px;
    }

    .character-avatar {
    overflow:hidden;
    }

    .sidebar-adventure-log-neighbors {
    overflow:hidden;
    }

    img {
    max-width:none;
    }

    #sidebar {
    width:20px;
    z-index:2;
    position:absolute;
    left:980px;
    background:#454545;
    height:100%;
    }

    #sidebar:hover {
    width:250px;
    z-index:2;
    position:absolute;
    left:760px;
    background:#202020;
    }

    .module {
    overflow:hidden;
    }

    .sidebar-last-updated {
    overflow:hidden;
    }
    Post edited by Langy on
  • Aenor
    Aenor
    Posts: 20
    Can anything be done by us who don't/cant use CSS?
  • GamingMegaverse
    GamingMegaverse
    Posts: 2,998
    @Langy- You are the best! Owe you a drink or 12...

    Just trying to help out.

  • Langy
    Langy
    Posts: 364
    Aside from collapsing the front page menu? Not that I know of, unless OP decides to adopt my mod or something like it as a general user base option.
  • moorcrys
    Posts: 2
    @Langy - Thanks so much, that's perfect.
  • valvorik
    valvorik
    Posts: 10
    The font displayed seems too light to me in many cases. Is there a way to revise that? Though I admit is seems worse on PC than on tablet - perhaps it's a bit tablet focused?

    I do like the new calendar set up feature, much more useable to create events. Though again the font display seems very light.

    I like the character lists being collapsed as well (just so it's not all gripes). Got the "see last time someone logged in" feature I requested too.
  • Belrathius
    Belrathius
    Posts: 206
    @valvorik: Indeed, it does seem exceedingly tablet and smart-phone oriented. Oddly, every gamer I know uses a full laptop for their gaming tools rather than a small screen device where real estate (ergo visible info) is painfully limited. I also don't recall a survey put forth to see what their actual customer base used most.
  • valvorik
    valvorik
    Posts: 10 edited October 2013
    Actually the wiki stuff displays less well for me on tablet, floating against the background oddly. Really really badly!

    Is posting here enough to count as reporting?
    Post edited by valvorik on
  • AquaMan
    AquaMan
    Posts: 8
    I'd like to add to the "too narrow" crowd. It's really out of proportion on a 24" monitor. Considering most people have widescreen monitors now, it makes for a lot of extra real estate on the sides with a teeny-tiny center column.

    Any chance we can get the option to set the width in the Style settings ?
  • saethone
    saethone
    Posts: 153
    If you, in the campaign settings (under style) check the box to collapse the navigation menu to just the icons, that will give you almost as much space as the original layout did
  • Ruhar
    Ruhar
    Posts: 27
    I am joining the "too narrow" crowd too. There is too much unused space on the sides while the content is squeezed in the middle. I have a 17" monitor and I would say that if I combined the empty space on the right and left side it would equal half the screen. I tried the "Collapse Front Page Menu" and it really didn't add anything. The middle section of the Dashboard is a good size. Why can't the rest of the pages be spread out like that?

    Michelle
  • goonalan
    goonalan
    Posts: 6
    I don't get this, I have a 19 inch monitor and the text, or at least the white stuff occupies a 6.5 inch strip, the text is actually only 6 inches wide- so I have 13 inches of nothing and a 6 inch strip of the actual stuff I want and need to use in game, and this is with the icons collapse as per above.

    This is broken.
  • Langy
    Langy
    Posts: 364
    Goon: Note that that's _almost_ exactly the same as it was prior to the update. Before, the text block was 730 pixels; with the icon collapse it's now 675 pixels. It's shorter, yes, but the previous design _also_ had ridiculous amounts of whitespace.

    Moving the left-hand sidebar and extending the main content area to where that bar starts would actually replicate almost exactly the width that we used to have available. That's not a particularly difficult tweak, actually.
  • morethanbob
    morethanbob
    Posts: 6
    Another issue in regard to this is the fact that the preview window is huge!

    So when you preview your content, you aren't really getting a reasonable indication of what it will actually look like when you apply the change.

    What might be interesting is if they extended the width back to 730 pixels, and then allowed you to click it to bring it up as a popup blob similar to using a preview window.
  • Langy
    Langy
    Posts: 364
    Ooh, that gave me an interesting idea, MoreThanBob. Nothing to do with the preview window or editing content, but...

    Check out "Edgerunner's new adventure logs":https://edgerunners.obsidianportal.com/adventure-log

    Explore with the mouse... and see if you like the change.

    Relevant code:

    .adventure-log-index .post-column {
    width: 800px;
    }

    .adventure-log-teasers .row {
    height:250px;
    }

    .adventure-log-teasers .row:hover {
    height:auto;
    }

    .adventure-log-teasers .row .post-column {
    height:auto;
    }

    .adventure-log-teasers .adventure-log-post .row:hover .post-content {
    height: auto;
    }

    .adventure-log-teasers .adventure-log-post {
    height: auto;
    }

    .adventure-log-teasers .adventure-log-post .post-date {
    width: 100px;
    height:100%;
    min-height:250px;
    }

    .row:hover .overflow-fade-out {
    display:none;
    }
  • goonalan
    goonalan
    Posts: 6
    Goon: Note that that’s almost exactly the same as it was prior to the update. Before, the text block was 730 pixels; with the icon collapse it’s now 675 pixels. It’s shorter, yes, but the previous design also had ridiculous amounts of whitespace.

    Moving the left-hand sidebar and extending the main content area to where that bar starts would actually replicate almost exactly the width that we used to have available. That’s not a particularly difficult tweak, actually.

    I get what your saying but I have no idea how to do that, I've been on the style page and... well, I've no idea.

    Can you tell me?
  • Langy
    Langy
    Posts: 364
    You can see the CSS for doing something very similar "here":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=3406&page=1
  • crimsonknave
    crimsonknave
    Posts: 28
    Langy, I really like the idea of the adventure log expanding! Though, it does suck if you have a long log post if you scroll down as you read it you can miss a post when it shrinks back down.
  • BearerOfTidings
    BearerOfTidings
    Posts: 28
    Slightly off topic, does anybody else have problems with the edit screen after the reforging? White characters on a light grey background? I don't know about the rest of you but it totally wrecks my ability to use OP. I'm a noob so I don't know how to fix it. Any suggestions would be welcome as I am trying to work with three campaigns and can't do anything with them right now.
  • Davidb_S
    Davidb_S
    Posts: 13
    Thanks, Langy! That text margin fix worked great! And Aenor, it's an easy copy/paste that goes right into your Dashboard Settings, in the Custom CSS window. Save your changes and you're ready to go!
  • Aenor
    Aenor
    Posts: 20
    Looks like the content max width can now be modified, and easily too! Although the font is still a bit too large, looks like there's light at the end of the tunnel.
  • Ruhar
    Ruhar
    Posts: 27
    I found a fix for the narrowness. Go to Settings under Dashboard then click on Advanced on the menu bar part way toward the top. Under Content Max Width you can change the current width of 1024 to anything between 1200 and 1600. That will widen the center column. I don't know if it does it for all of the players in the campaign, but at least it helps an individual. It would have been nice if someone in OP had told us this when the thread was started 7 days ago! Are they even watching what we post so they know where the problems are?

    If this fix only takes care of an individual's settings and not the whole campaign for all users then OP needs to permanently widen the contents.
  • crimsonknave
    crimsonknave
    Posts: 28
    Sigh, now I have to decide between an expandable content width or a banner that doesn't get clipped as everything resizes. Well, until I figure out how I want to enforce the banner setup with css. Not that the banner looks good when the width sizes down either...
  • Ruhar
    Ruhar
    Posts: 27
    I say make it readable then keep complaining until OP widens the content so the banner looks right.
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