Ship of Fools: All the content on the site is put into a column of fixed width??

Thread: All the content on the site is put into a column of fixed width?? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by scuffleball (# 16480) on :

This isn't specific to the chatroom, it happens on Mystery Worshipper too. As a consequence, if you use a very big screen, most of the space is wasted (with the content squished into the left-hand side of the screen) and if you are using a very small screen (eg a phone) you have to scrool to see everything.

A cursory glance at the source HTML suggests this is something to do with a lot of elements having explicit widths set to '960' (ie 960px), rather than using relative widths in CSS (like 67%). The table width attribute is deprecated in HTML5 (and really this should use something like flexbox anyway; tables are for tabular data, not layout).

The following "Java-Script" seems to help a bit, at least on the Chatroom page -

code:

marginPercent = 3;

Array.prototype.forEach.call(document.querySelectorAll('[width="960"]'), function(element) {
    element.removeAttribute('width');
    element.style.width = '100%';
});
document.querySelector('body').style.marginLeft = marginPercent + "%";
document.querySelector('table').style.width = (100 - marginPercent) + "%";

But a similar change from absolute widths to relative widths would have to be made to subcolumns, especially on the front page where the columns all also have magic widths.

[ 01. September 2015, 19:15: Message edited by: scuffleball ]

Posted by RooK (# 1852) on :

Quite.

My long-standing aesthetic horror at the fixed-width formatting has over the years slowly eroded my sanity such that I am now a craven caricature of my former self who seeks mostly to inflict metaphysical suffering on others to make them share in my own personal hell.

Flee! Flee, while you can! Before you too are reduced to only run-on sentences and badly-misjudged inside jokes.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Rook--

Oh, so *that* was the cause! [Biased]

Posted by Paul. (# 37) on :

I used a tampermonkey (greasemonkey) script called 'flex_layout'. Google it if you're interested. I just tested it against the Ship's main page and it works there too.

Posted by scuffleball (# 16480) on :

I googled both tampermonkey flex_layout and greasemonkey flex_layout, the only results were this page.

Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :

I'd say from my vast experience of this kind of stuff [Biased]

that the internet is out to get you Scuffleball.

Huia

Posted by RooK (# 1852) on :

Or perhaps just widen the googling to just "tampermonkey", which seemed quite effective.

Or even easier: just give in. Give in to the decade-old formatting that was already future-doomed the day it appeared and mired in misconceptions about the extrapolation of paper to screens as mediums. Give into a metaphorical straightjacket that They assure you is For The Best™ even as you're sure that no, actually, you like things better your own way, and hey I don't want to have my perceptions limited, and no I don't need electroconvulsive therapy to readjust my thinking. Because you're not crazy, yet, but fighting the crazy is how crazy reproduces in unwilling hosts. Just fake fitting in, and mumbling that things are fine, so that nobody notices that You're Not Supposed To Be Here - and thereby makes it so that you end up needing to be here after all.

Think of it as time travel! Except, instead of zipping around visiting various excitingly different eras you get to go back through a portal in your screen to visit 2005 over and over and over. Which is actually kind of nice, considering how many of the people here have opinions largely un-evolved past 1805.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

1805 AD, BC/BCE, Stardate,...or that many billions of years ago? [Biased]

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

RooK:

quote:
Think of it as time travel! Except, instead of zipping around visiting various excitingly different eras you get to go back through a portal in your screen to visit 2005 over and over and over. Which is actually kind of nice, considering how many of the people here have opinions largely un-evolved past 1805.

1805? That recent?

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

This is perhaps only mildly related, but it's a lovely error message I doubt many people have seen on Ship. For your pleasure, then:

quote:
We cannot post because the subject you entered contained at least one word that is 30 characters long. Run-on words just aren't allowed. Neither is German. Use your back button, correct the problem and try again.

Posted by luvanddaisies (# 5761) on :

I was wondering if there might ever be a plan to have an Ship of Fools app. I have no idea at all whatsoever even slightly about whether this is practicable, whether it would be expensive, or whether it would be a technical nightmare, I'm just interested.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

luvanddaisies - I'm sure it isn't technically impossible, but what would you gain from a SoF app? I'd think a better option might be a mobile ready version of the website/forum, but that might involve completely rewriting the whole thing in HTML5.

Posted by Tubbs (# 440) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
luvanddaisies - I'm sure it isn't technically impossible, but what would you gain from a SoF app? I'd think a better option might be a mobile ready version of the website/forum, but that might involve completely rewriting the whole thing in HTML5.

Making the website mobile enabled would, if I've understood it correctly, involve a complete redo. If the software is ever upgraded, then hopefully that would be one of the features.

Tubbs

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Tubbs:
Making the website mobile enabled would, if I've understood it correctly, involve a complete redo. If the software is ever upgraded, then hopefully that would be one of the features.

Tubbs

That's correct, the whole thing would need to be rewritten. It'd no doubt be easier to start again rather than try to upgrade what is already there.

It might be possible to write different versions of the page(s) to appear on different sizes of screen, but a) that'd need some extensive fiddling with the CSS and b) that probably isn't worth doing until the whole thing is upgraded.

Either way, you'd probably either need to pay quite a lot to have someone rewrite it all, buy something you like off the shelf or have volunteers spend a lot of time working out how to do it and test it over an extended period.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Tubbs: If the software is ever upgraded

It won't be.

Posted by Tubbs (# 440) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
Tubbs: If the software is ever upgraded
It won't be.

It might ... I'll add it my bucket list somewhere in between hot date with actor hottie of my choice and Doctor Who companion. [Biased]

Tubbs

Posted by Organ Builder (# 12478) on :

In that case, Tubbs, we will look for the new razzle-dazzle Ship software after we see you with the Doctor on BBC America.

Posted by Tubbs (# 440) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
In that case, Tubbs, we will look for the new razzle-dazzle Ship software after we see you with the Doctor on BBC America.

It'll be difficult to know which one of us will be more surprised ...! [Biased]

Tubbs

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