[Canadaka]

The news on the homepage by default doesn't show the description and image on the page. Its visible if you hover over the title. Last year sometime I made it so if a story gets enough votes or hits the description and image is shown. The problem with that is often this doesn't happen until the story is a day old or late in the day.

In contrast the dedicated news page http://www.canadaka.net/news_links always shows the description and image.

I original only showed the news title, to save horizontal space, allowing for the most amount of stories without scrolling. But peoples monitors and resolutions has increased over the past few years.

My question is, which do people prefer?

[Canadaka]

bump. I should stop posting these things in the middle of the night.

[Hyack]

Canadaka wrote:

bump. I should stop posting these things in the middle of the night.

Yep

[Canadaka]

today is a good example, right now none of today's stories are showing the descriptions or images. Here are 2 screenshots comparing

[DerbyX]

Does having pictures and/or descriptions have any adverse affects on the system? Does it load faster and with fewer problems with or without or is there no real difference at all?

[TattoodGirl]

I like the pics and the description. Now if I could figure out how sometimes I can post a pic with the link and sometimes I just bomb...would be nice

[Canadaka]

one of the problems with only showing the descriptions and images on certain storys is that the length/height of the news is never fixed, it always changes. So there often is this large white gap that drives me nuts. If I always show the descriptions the height of the news links will always be the same. I could also just change the layout so there are 2 columns the entire length of the page.

[TattoodGirl]

hmmmm...ya that does look off. Do what ever you think would work the best and whatever is the easiest for you.

[Canadaka]

DerbyX wrote:

Does having pictures and/or descriptions have any adverse affects on the system? Does it load faster and with fewer problems with or without or is there no real difference at all?

No it doesn't put any extra load on the system or your load time, since they are being loaded in the RED popup window anyways.

TattoodGirl wrote:

I like the pics and the description. Now if I could figure out how sometimes I can post a pic with the link and sometimes I just bomb...would be nice

This is something I'm going to try and fix with the overhaul i'm doing. The image upload is very picky. the URL has to END with .jpg or .png

Often news images from sites have crap after the extension. I'm going to make it more intelligent in determining if its a valid image, not based on the file extention ni the URL.

[Canadaka]

TattoodGirl wrote:

hmmmm...ya that does look off. Do what ever you think would work the best and whatever is the easiest for you.

heh, well I wanna do what people like or will use the most.

[Canadaka]

I wish I could make the site wider to fit more in. But still 30% of visits in the last month are using 1024x768 resolution. 3% are using 800x600, WTF are these people thinking! lol most sites look like ass at 800x600 and will have to scroll horizontaly.

[DerbyX]

I think most people wouldn't care if it didn't display any photos or descriptions at all unless you cursor hover. Would that eliminate that spacing problem or is that a consequence of any photo being inserted regardless of hovering?

[TattoodGirl]

Canadaka wrote:

TattoodGirl wrote:

hmmmm...ya that does look off. Do what ever you think would work the best and whatever is the easiest for you.

heh, well I wanna do what people like or will use the most.

Ok...well I am torn now that you showed me the blank white space. I like the pics and the description but that white space doesnt work so well for me. I am cool with whatever you pick...works all the same just have to click on the link.

[DerbyX]

Canadaka wrote:

I wish I could make the site wider to fit more in. But still 30% of visits in the last month are using 1024x768 resolution. 3% are using 800x600, WTF are these people thinking! lol most sites look like ass at 800x600 and will have to scroll horizontaly.

How do you know what screen resolution people are using?

[ridenrain]

Pictures just take up space.