Board is nice... layout needs a 2nd look, tho...

[x-wing]

Is it possible to have the additional message boards / forums in a vertical orientation on the left or right side of the page, rather than take up half the screen horizontally with them?

I'm looking at this page on a 21" monitor @ 1280x1024 and I still have to scroll about halfway down the screen before I can see the first message due to all the empty table space.

The new board looks great, but making it a bit more user-friendly would help a lot, too.

Thanks PJ for the work you've done setting up the boards, and hopefully making a few improvements like this would be a fairly minor task, and also make life a bit easier on the regulars who are wearing out their scrolling finger while reading this board.  

[planetjay]

That's really odd. I have 1024x768 on  both of my 19" monitors, driving them with an ATI Radeon VE Dual Display Edition and I have half of your message on the bottom of my screen. So I am curious, Which OS and Browser? (and versions)

Is it possible? SURE! Anything IS! But it's a matter of Saint wanting to. You should note that I did setup the board, but Saint made all of the layout and color decisions. He did the board this way because it mocks the previous layout for those of us that have been using his site for years.

His intention by placing the menu at the top was to make it easyier for all of us to find the other boards and to HELP prevent off topic posting. However, I still PERSONNALLY move 2 or 3 topics a day to the correct folders. This is why on other message boards I have setup I don't have a "main" folder. It was hoped that people would use the Ultimarc site for I-PAC/J-PAC messages, and the HotRod forum for HotRod messages, etc. But that too, has failed. It has been noticed that alot of off topic posting is by non-members. So one concideration is to stop allowing posts by non-members. Perhaps only let them read.

We are supposed to discuss the new board soon after having lived with it for a while and start making some changes such as look and feel and maybe adding more features (or removing some). When this happens we will take every message posted in this area into account.

You also may want to check/change your scroll settings. I have mine set to about 6 lines at a time. I also have a relatively small font. In the case small is 96dpi. You should also realize that the header is a trivial amount of space compared to area below it.

Thanks PJ for the work you've done setting up the boards

I believe that this board is one of the greatest websites on the net! I am VERY proud to be a small part of it. The amount of work I do on Saint's site is in my opinion trivial. But it does take some load off Saint, who does this not as a job or even a second job. In fact it started as a hobby for him, but it has grown well beyond that. Just hosting of the site costs him alot of money per month! Last I heard, around $80/month[/u]!!! And you should know that he pays for this 99% himself! There are a few banner ads on the main page. But even those are limited by Saint to on-topic ads. For a while people were making donations to the site but that seems to have stopped.  (You can do so from the main menu by clicking $Donate$ which is at the bottom) I personnally have decided to make a continued donation in my time. And also in hosting, I now provide Hosting of this message board and all other parts that are on arcadecontrols.org. Which isn't a website itself but is there to seperate the message board and other bandwith heavy files from the main site. In addition to thanking me you should thank everyone on the donation list. Without them this site may not be here today. Also speedhost.com should be thanked! They have been hosting the main site for many years. All in all there are many more people that deserve thanks than I do, I just jumped on the bandwagon.