A navigation tweak is coming!

Terry yes thats one of mine. I got the seed from Johnny's it's name is Orange Blossom. I have grown it for several years and it has allways given me some beauties now I must replnish my seed supply.

If I get more seed I can share some with you.

My tomatoes are still small and green, and so looking forward for a BLT. Hope I don't have to wait much longer.

Ernie, I might just have to take you up on that...this year my "garden" consists of two elevated beds. (We moved this spring so there wasn't any time to put in a garden before summer was upon us. But next year I'm sure we'll have something that more closely resembles a traditional vegetable garden again :-)

You guys are VERRRY off topic!

I love it. That's the way it has been since the beginning. Once friends connect, well, there you go.......

One of the things I appreciated about Daves was the option to choose where to put items on the page. I strongly dislike having that info on the left and never use it and never had any problem whatsoever finding my way around with the way I had it set up. I suspect that despite the many voices requesting the option to have that removed at choice we won't get that choice but wanted to register my dislike of it.

Kyla

I still often have to move the thread to the left to be able to read it. Very annoying.

katie

Today's article was especially hard. Had to scroll from left to right, right to left.

Well, I have my DG renewal notice. Quite frankly, my response may be dependent on what news we hear from the Admin team. I don't like it at all.

Ann

Like LouC, I had trouble with today's article; like it was formatted wrong. I had to scroll left-right to read it. It should fit on the page... This isn't the first article that was messed up like that, but I have given up reporting them since it is now (I am guessing) a 'known issue'.

I, too, find the new looks very disconcerting. I've been a member here for a very long time and am not usually one to complain, but this time I just had to add my name to the "hated it" list. I will adjust and cope, but I doubt I will ever be truly comfortable with this layout. It's just too visually unbalanced to be comfortable to the eye.

The layout of the forums with the distracting band of white space on far left is bad enough, but the journal is particularly bad. The TOC for my journal is comprised of mostly 1 and 2 word labels such as 'roses' and 'bearded iris'. Now that narrow TOC runs almost dead center down the page or did when I last viewed it, and the other journal pages are equally unbalanced. Even with a wide screen laptop, I have to use the scroll bar to go back and forth across each row, something that was not previously necessary.

Photos are also problematic to view with the new layout. Even with a wide screen monitor, I have to stop to scroll over some 3 or more inches to the right to view the rest of the photo. When done, I have to scroll back to far left to click on the 'Home' button. It can be quite maddening to view a number of photos in succession.

I realize there were reasons for the change, but I do hope you will be able to find a better solution. I'm pretty sure this layout would come under the 'what not to do' chapter in any book on web design. If nothing else, I think it would help a little if you would clip that 1/2" or so of white space off the right side of the navigation panel and another 1/2" off the right side of the name/address box. That would shift the reading space over another 1in to the left making it a little less off kilter.

All that said, I do appreciate that you at least listen to our comments and allow us to have our say. On many if not most websites, there is no forum such as this through which members may speak directly to Admin and hold group discussion of this sort.

This may have been discussed,,, but I have a blank white part on the lowerr
er right side of page (covers 1/2 of reply area) I have become nauseus just tr
just trying to read through the comments so don't know if anyone else ha
s it.
Please fix..wasn't that way yesterday and I did not change anything!

Surely the retweak is not far away now. I hope the tech team has made it a priority.

I have been on DG 10 years as of the 15th. of this month. I do hope This is changed back soon. At least give us a choice.

Patrob...Actions speak louder than words and while I like to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, it does not appear this has been made a priority. It's amazing watching the number of complaints climb and things still have not changed. I'd be out of business if I ran my business this way.

Well put Chocolatemoose!!

It has been just over two weeks and I don't think any of the 216 replies have been in favor of the change. Is anyone paying attention? Reminds me of parents/teachers who ask what the child/student wants and then ignores what they are told to do what they had already decided to do.

katie

I agree, Chocolatemoose!

PLEASE GIVE US THE OPTION/OUT OF THE NAVAGATION BAR, DELETE IT, OR IF YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT, PUT IT BACK WHERE IT WAS....PLEASE!!!

(Weighing in from another mild-mannered Ms. Milquetoast) Everyone on our forum is upset about it. Should we just all leave? It shouldn't matter so much to the ADMIN...??? It isn't APRIL FOOL'S DAY!!

Both Terry & Talia have mentioned that they've heard the concerns/complaints and are working on fixing it.

From Terry on 6/25:

Patience people... Give them a little time to work on it. Change doesn't happen overnight and fixing it to please us won't either. They have heard our comments, shouting won't make it happen any sooner.

Well, I'm going to weigh in on this issue too, finally.

I really dislike the off-balance feel when reading the forums, but I especially hate that the Navigation bar opens across the top of the screen when I open a new page, click a photo, etc. I never look at the stupid thing anyway (the nav bar), it's completely useless in my opinion, and now it's all I can see for the first few seconds of a page view. This doesn't happen every time, but often enough to feel like it's really wasting my time.

I'm surprised I haven't seen more comments about this, I can't be the only one it's happening to.

We understand change takes time, but it was 2-3 days from when they announced they'd be making the change until it was actually done. Now we are 12ish days after the change with many members who paid for a product they are now dissatisfied with and all we are hearing is that they are working on it...When our membership renewal is due, we can't "work on" making our payment and still expect to continue to access Dave's.
I built a website for my home-business (which includes many links, pages and e-commerce) and know that even if you make a change that affects other parts of the site, it only takes me applying my time to repair or undo a change.

Again...actions speak louder than words....I'll be quiet now...or I'll try...

Very true, Ann. :)

I think I get it, now. The first thing my eye goes to on the page is the "featured company". I would guess that's a plus for revenue, so unlikely to change.

If you don't want to see the "featured company" you can turn off the ads in your preferences.

Thanks for the tip.Truth is, I don't want to see any of it where it is now. Just trying to figure out why this change is beneficial, and to whom. Not going to bother to change one thing if the other is still there, I just find it all annoying enough to be elsewhere :)

TRose -

Please make time, and provide an update, stating if things will be restored, changed yet again, or left the way they are.

I agree yesterday's article is/was a little hard to follow without scrolling; that was most likely my fault. I uploaded the text from the author into our editing tool and I think something didn't sync up properly when I did that. My apologies.

I found the change only mildly annoying.

However, now that you mention it, that "Navigation Box" certainly is wasted space for me! maybe some people use it, but if so, a context-sensitive pull-down would seem to be a better use of screen real estate.

I would generaly ssay that the DG website is easier to use than 80% or 90 of most websites.

Considering how much content there is, and how many different kinds of features there are, it is better than 90% or 95% of websites.

And the admins here do try hard, and are MUCH more responsive than webmasters on 99.9% of websites!

And the courtesy and kindness and sensitiviety of DG members is far above average for the Internet ... USUALLY!

But I would say that "Navigation" is a weak point. I keep a folder full of links into any part of DG that I want to get back to.

"Favorite forums" and "watched threads" are usefull and convenient.
I should probably learn to use "tagged pages".

Corey

Ok, what I see is not only the wide wasted space on the left, but the same size space for the name and date. And then, when I want to write, I have to use this little box. If I come near the end of a line with a long word it moves down and there is another wasted space. Once I hit send end get out of this little box, it kicks it up to at least let my post spread out somewhat , or maybe the lines of the little box just disappear.

Ok, I'm going to try it. What it appear to me, is that after I hit send, the space for the name and date will take up some of this room plus the space to the right of this little box I am writing in and my post will be made narrower and longer.

little box? I find the msg box to be larger than most web sites. It's 3/4 of the width of the screen left to right and half the screen top to bottom.

Jnette, what browser are you using?
We'll see if we can help you get things in better shape, as kooger said, the text box is still quite large. It sounds like something is off in your settings.

Using Firefox. There are about 3 or 4 inches on the lefthand side like probably everyone has and then 2 more inches on the righthand side. What's that one for? (now these are not using a tape measure. Strictly by sight.

However, the message area itself after hitting send is about 1 inch over half the screen. Now that is not counting the area for name and date, which I think is really too much. If people are using a name that takes up that much room they should be made to cut it down. I have no idea what Kooger is looking at.

It sounds as if this layout is causing different problems among the membership. Problem here, problem there, problem problem everywhere! But I'm sure Terry is trying to correct this.

Do you have ads turned on? That might take up space on the right. I also use Firefox and my message box is probably 6in or so wide. It does sound like something is wrong with your settings.

my firefox is the same as DOS