Some site changes

[Ken Puls]

Hi everyone,

Over the past few months I've been working on converting my site from an older software package and porting all the content into the same package that the forum is running. I'm hoping that, once I'm all done with this, that I'll end up having one less software package to support and maintain, and that I'll get some better integration features across the site.

I'm pleased to say that, effective a few minutes ago, I've opened up the new portion to the masses. It still has some bugs I need to work through, but you'll be able to see it start shaping up.

Probably the biggest issue I'm dealing with right now is that there is no way to get to the homepage for the Knowledgebase. (I think I need to kill the old software first.) But you can get to the upgraded look by going to any of the pages in the Services/Resources/About menus. Once you get there you'll see the KnowledgeBase categories listing at left.

Some cool abilities that the new look brings are:

• Single user id required to access content on both the KB and the forum
• Logged in users can comment on the KB articles (long overdue... I couldn't prohibit spam in the old software)
• I can post XML code in my articles, which I couldn't do in the old software (so now I can port my blog posts and have them as part of the KB)

Just for reference, the URL's on the new pages will change by the time I'm finished, so you may not want to bookmark them. I do plan on pointing all of the classic links (that end in NODE/##) to the new content once I've got it worked out.

I'm also hoping that, over time, I may be able to start letting other users contibute KB entries to the site, and maybe even also integrate the blog into the same software. Time will tell on both of those however.

I'm curious to see what you all think of the new look. Please have a browse around and give me your feedback.

Thanks!

 

[maninweb]

Hi Ken...

I like the layout, very nice and clearly and well organized/structurated

I have observed that, when the page loads, the blue background is visible (Firefox 8 and Chrome) for a small amount
of time before the article appears and this leads to a short flicker. Perhaps this due to the transparency background
set in the article_width CSS style...

.article_width {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 transparent;
    clear: both;
    margin-bottom: 5px;
    padding: 0 0 0 5px;
    width: 98%;
}

So I suggest to remove or comment out the line "background...", perhaps this will avoid the flicker effect (can not test).

Best Regards

 

[Ken Puls]

Thanks Mourad!

Yeah, I noticed that same flicker in IE9 as well. I'll dig into it and see if I can remove that.

 

[Ken Puls]

Grrr... got closer, but there's still a background variable that I can't find. I can change the one that seems to be at issue, but it gets everything up the sides of the header as well.

 

[Ken Puls]

Should mention... I shortened up the Nav Bar a bit, grouping the "What's new", "Subscribed Threads", etc... under "Forum Tools"

 

[maninweb]

Hi Ken...

it seems that the div class="body_wrapper" resizes itself only after or while the content div's below is loaded. As this takes some time, the blue background is visible.
You can perhaps try to add a percentual height to the class...

.body_wrapper {

    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #FFFFFF;
    border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
    height: 100%; /* added */

    padding: 10px 20px;


}

However, my experience is that especially the IE in older versions has problems width percentual heights, so I don't know the effect this change will have.

Best Regards