Please do implement webfonts. It’s boring to watch websafe fonts here.

And please don’t mix up the archives, so that we can search for older threads.

Picture upload isn’t working: I just see code like this

I’d like to see the red clour retained in the branding. Isn’t it a kind of iconic element already?
And: what about altnating headers? [ – Typophile – – – – – – ] in different type, each week. You could grant the place to interesting people (honour) or sell it (income).

Ah, the ›insert image‹ has vanished now completely, at last ;-)

Please no webfonts for text (someone's still on XP here).
Text on replies and especially in textareas could do a bit bigger.
Good thing that now Google search retains the search term from "regular" search.

Oh, and "TEMP" looks fuzzy.
And something classier (and possibly spelled out in its entirety) would be nice.

+ Hide the subforums somehow. The overview is quite unusable with all the tiny subforums littered in between.
+ Up the size of text in the post form, it's way too small.

So nice to see Typophile get an update! I wonder—what brought this on?

Yes, I believe you have a large database of filed bugs.

Now remember, this is from a print guy, so apologies in advance...

Can there be a way to allow entering any Unicode character, & selecting, just temporarily, a font that will display it to all? The people with XP will see nothing I suppose, but always having to use a picture is hard on some of us.

And yes, the forum menu is pretty rough now, but you knew that...

Glad to see the care is still there.

hhp

A filter would be nice.

Please make the background white.

There's nothing more permanent than something temporary.

:)

To put this in perspective for new users: Typophile has been around a while, and the last few years the number of bugs have grown steadily while Punchcut have seemingly "forgot" all about running and maintaining the site. The lack of moderating coupled with the recent type hype have resulted in a lot of spam, a lot of"do my homework" traffic and a lot of derailed conversations. Many of the true professionals have left Typophile, which is apparent in the critique forum where amateurs voice their opinion loudy, no-one sets them straight and newcomers follow blindly. As a result, Typeboard -- the small seed of what may become a new and better forum (?) -- was launched just a few days ago.

And now this new initative from Typophile. Should we understand this as a response to the competition? Have the financial situation suddenly changed? Who will be in charge? Do you have a serious plan now?

one small step...

Since this particular subforum is apparently using WordPress (notwithstanding the /node in the URL), note that one element that is finally available is BLOCKQUOTE.

Also, I guess it is now OK to talk about Typophile’s deficiencies. Basically it never was before.

Well, it was never not OK. In fact some people seem to
feel things have been too hands-off here. But I certainly
agree that Typophile has suffered "technical neglect".
On the other hand since I personally focus on content
I didn't mind that too much myself; the only thing that
has been annoying to me is the periodic deluges of spam.*
That said, of course it would be great if things (like the
posting of images/PDFs) worked better.

* And I guess you were right that captchas aren't secure.

hhp

I'm in agreement with Frode. This site used to be really buzzing with interesting professional interactions. With no moderators (removing spam is not moderation), this site has become a place for egos to misbehave. I also see considerably fewer women participating these days. The recent antagonistic threads will only put off new members — a lot of the Reading people I talk to now are completely put off visiting the site at all, despite knowing there's a vast amount of useful content here — and will make sponsors very unlikely to be interested in supporting the site.

I'm not switching to TypeBoard, as I strongly disagree with the principle of excluding people with different ideas; closing your ears to others doesn't validate your opinions. Following on from what Nina said over on TypeBoard, it's really not about who has worked in this industry for longest, it's about treating each other with humility, listening and encouraging the sparks of collaboration that lead to fresh thinking.

Thank goodness something's happening here finally. I'd hate to see this site simply get archived. Good luck to Punchcut in sorting it all out.

Good stuff Jared! Need any help moderating just let me know.

I personally would like to see a forum (with indexed names) dedicated to type designer's and their work. They show some visuals and linkages to where their stuff could be purchased. I know The Blog could handle that, but it is only a fleeting announcement/record.

And where can I buy some merch?

http://typeboard.vanillaforums.com/discussion/12/public-or-invite-only-r...

Thanks Bendy. I'd also like to second Nina's opinion. I've posted a link to the Typeboard discussion above.

I'm not switching to TypeBoard, as I strongly disagree with the principle of excluding people with different ideas…

Nobody is being excluded for having different ideas. They’re being excluded for being habitually disruptive. “listening and encouraging the sparks of collaboration” is much easier when Hrant is not stirring up arguments and then emailing inactive forum members in an attempt to further fan the flames.

Hrant, you are complaining about deluges?
I fail to believe what I read.

There's no obligation to let Hrant's posts disrupt anything, or even to listen to him at all, and it's insane to contribute to an argument with him if you don't want to listen.

What bothers me most about the drifting of Typophile in to "Typonotsomuch" is the content. Sure, there was always some "what is your favorite" and "do my homework for me" threads, but today, it is rare to see a thread with content that you actually wanted to read. I am not talking about the reality TV pisßing matches that were too plentiful for me. I am talking about real discussions that used to happen. There was plenty of good material in "Build" but now it looks more like "foreclosure" than build.
It seems as though everyone in the industry from the most renowned type designer or executive to the young, beaming-with- zeal, ernest neophyte was posting here. Now, it seems as though many of these people have either been annoyed enough to leave or got just plain fed up with the nothingness and just moved on.
I also have concerns about hints of possible censorship but will not go into detail here because it would be unfair to all parties.
Yes, the spam protection is sorely lacking, the upload of files is maddening, the Flash screw-ups are annoying, but. The main thing is that content and meaningful dialogue have diminished markedly. Is this a case of Typophile just running its course and achieving entropy or is it something that can be fixed? I don't know. There was a good run there for several years. Was that just by chance or were we all doing something different then?
Nowadays, the hosts don't even show up for the party. What has caused the circle of stalwart and gifted forum moderators to fade into the distance? Typophile used to be a fine Espresso made by real people and now it is yesterday's Instant Sanka reheated by automation.

> I strongly disagree with the principle of excluding people with different ideas

I’d say this is not what the initiators of Typeboard intend to achieve: excluding people of different ideas. I am rather under the impression that they try to establish a certain standard of communication and behaviour. Which aim I can’t blame at first hand, though delicate it may seem. I’m a bit sceptic but rather curious about that model. There’s no reason to talk in hostility against it.
There are problems on this site we all know about, for a rather long time. Now someone tries to get over it, well, respect. There may be an alternative or not. There may evolve competition or not. However, things will not remain in status quo forever. “Change is hard” - oh yes.

The whole business gives me to think about “community–communication–common sense”.
Maybe, a club is a kind of community too. If some people like to go clubbing, why shouldn’t they? They’re unlikely to harm others by this.

On Chris's comment. I think a few things have happened. One is that a lot of typographic discussion has moved to twitter. The other is that because there are now circles associated with Reading and KABK, and it seems like they are interacting in other ways. KABK are taking up a lot of 'new blood' who would have enlivened typophile, but they are now using twitter a lot. How to be welcoming to new designers, and how to relate to twitter are things worth thinking about, to keep Typophile vital. I love Typophile. It has its ups and downs, but I think the changed educational situation and social media situation is worth thinking about.

Twitter is not really a discussion place, though. The question is, what caused the migration to Twitter, Facebook, etc.? Yes, there are now other options but they each have their drawbacks. Competition works when the competitors offer a better solution. Twitter is not a better solution, it is a different path. Twitter works best when you already know the others you interact with so it is more closed circle. Typophile used to be an open circle with fuzzy borders that was somehow inviting. Something may have happened to put the "don't bother" signs up at all perimeter points?

> emailing inactive forum members in
> an attempt to further fan the flames.

What are you talking about?

> I fail to believe what I read.

I was referring to spam, like about leather bags...

And one person's deluge might be another's trickle.
To me such differences are not something anybody
should want to control.

Just because we disagree about the role of chirography in
type does not make either you or me a bad person; it does
not even mean that either one of us needs to change how
often they post, or how fervently they express themselves.

--

It should be obvious I know that I can be antagonistic, and sometimes
I do regret what I write, but: I don't censor myself because you can't
solve a problem by hiding it; and often I'm basically trying to defend
myself against personal attacks that boil over from disagreements that
involve the craft, or the nature of Typophile itself. For better or worse,
I only get emotional when it comes to true friends and close family, and
I don't see Typophile as a sort of social grounds for people to either
prove themselves or leave in a fit. To me, it's about content.

That said, this might be a good opportunity to bring
up something that's been in play for over 9 years:
http://typophile.com/node/6268
Tellingly, in all these years only one person has taken it
up - although there might be some more shortly, which
I don't mind - it's part and parcel of somebody like me
getting so much out of such an incredible place.

As an aside, in May of 2004 I willingly left Typo-L, essentially to prove
that I wasn't the real problem. I just checked: there were ~250 posts in
the month before I left (~20 were mine); in February of 2012, 13 posts.

So I'd rather not keep talking about this (at least not in this
thread). I can't stop others from talking about it, but I won't.

hhp

Hrant, it is not about you. A healthy organism can withstand some disagreement. I hate to see this become a finger pointing venue. That might be all of our problems. The easiest thing to do is point at someone else to shield blame from ourself. Finger pointing is only helpful when it is self-directed. Making this a rehash of mutual urination gets us nowhere.

> One is that a lot of typographic discussion has moved to twitter.

Hmm. I am not on Twitter, but I would not have thought that it made a suitable environment for real discussion.

> Is this a case of Typophile just running its course and achieving entropy

Call me a cynic, or perhaps a fatalist, but I wonder if this isn’t perhaps the case. Nothing lasts forever; and in my experience, ten years for this sort of thing is about par for the course. I’ve seen my share of similar communities/gatherings come and go in my lifetime.

I, too, miss the old days — the heyday of Typophile — and I would welcome them back again. But I also recognize that I am not the same as I was then. My interest is not piqued by as many topics, and I find myself less interested or willing to spend the time I once did in earnest discussion, explanation, or debate.

Perhaps it is the greater proportion of inanity or the cyclic rehash of the perennial topics.

On the other hand, who knows? Perhaps the cycle has hit bottom and quality will rise again. Perhaps even just this meta conversation will turn a tide.

> "TEMP" looks fuzzy.

Would you guys like it in Mana? :-)
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/manademo/

hhp

It's easy to lose perspective of how awesome this forum is when you've constantly participated over a long period of time. But, what keeps things fresh are the young bloods and vibrant debates.

I was a moderator of a chess community - and believe me guys like Hrant pale in comparison to ego driven competitive chess players (no offense Hrant) - what we did is a slow sterilization and began to ignore the new bloods ever active noob questions. Sooner rather than later we ended up with whole chunks of blocked IPs, a sterile aging environment, no new bloods, and after almost a decade of coolio discussions it dyed.

Typophile can always be fresh - if you want it to be. Dynamic, heated, and dissenting view points can always give colour to an environment. New bloods questions are a sign that this forum matters.

To me, Life is a vibrant dirty journey ...questioning your purpose is always beneficial.

imho of course

I think the new design is an improvement already :)

Some more wishes that I would have:

• Links are still nearly undiscernible. Give them an underline, or a colour that stands out more (what about the old red colour?).
• That the type is much bigger in the first post than in the following posts is irritating me. In a discussion, the first post is nearly never the most important one. The size difference creates an hierarchy of importance that shouldn't be there. I find the first size too big and the second one too small, so something in between would be nice. But don't make the text columns wider when increasing the font size, they are nearly too wide already and could benefit from more line-spacing.
• I'm one of the – apparently – few who occasionally read TP on my mobile phone. The column layout really wastes a lot of space on a mobile screen. Also the avatars next to the text column make the text too small if zoomed in to a level so that you can still see who said what.
• The font size in the comment text input is also too small, and the use of a proportional typeface is unusual.

Chris, interesting.
I have participated with the other old farts in discussions about the science of readability, and not so much about web fonts.
Neither of which I find particularly interesting.
Don’t get me start on Google fonts.
Business, technics, science, ethics—all these are aspects of typography and font production and I do have some interest in them.
Now can we please talk about art and design?

Because there are so many new threads each day,
we need ways to customize browsing/bookmarking.
For example personally I would like to save time
not looking at the ID Board, but the only way is to
laboriously click on every other board. Also, I have
to resort to putting a visible "hook" into threads I'd
like to follow without immediately (or ever) posting,
which is not ideal.

hhp

Please, let's keep this conversation here focused on how we can band together toward a revitalized Typophile - and not devolve into a Hrant-centric thread.

Please, let's keep this conversation here focused on how we can band together toward a revitalized Typophile [–] and not devolve into a Hrant-centric thread.

In other words, let’s not talk about Typophile’s near-invisble owners and their years of neglect, or the fact that “changes” are being made within and without Typophile in very large part to minimize the harm Hrant causes. (Hrant causes a lot of harm.)

I filed a bug years ago on a method to handle discussions like these.

apankrat, Hrant, Dunwich Type, Kent Lew, Andreas Stötzner: Start using BLOCKQUOTE, not half-assed italicization and E-mail quoting.

One of my favorite features is the "recent posts" page (the "tracker"), which shows all active discussions, most recent at the top. But I wish it was customizable, so I could filter out topic areas I'm not all that interested in.

Also, what's the deal with the "type" column on the left of the topic listings? It uselessly says "forum topic" in most cases.

Typophile merchandise.

> BLOCKQUOTE

What does that do exactly?

Mark, I myself use the tracker exclusively. When time is tight
I limit myself to my own tracker, and when time allows I simply
broaden it to all threads (I'd just like to exclude the ID area).

hhp

There is a surprising amount of professional sharing on Twitter. But I agree it's not as informative as a typophile discussion.
It's clear that significant type people want to take discussions off typophile. FontLab people have participated in the build thread all along, but authors of new software seem to prefer their own forums only. And I know for a fact that gifted designers just avoid Typophile because of the pointless rudeness that happens pretty regularly.

Other social media are definitely competition. I think that in principle Typophile has an edge on these, but I think the new edition needs to respond to the competition. Should there be an optional link or tie in to twitter posts?

I think addressing the rudeness issue would help a lot. An 'abusive comment' button, with an admin available within few hours of when it is pushed, would help. And it should be pushable not just by the person attacked.

If you want stuff to grow and prosper, pruning once in a while is necessary. Maybe in the case of Typophile a bit more is needed, e.g. getting rid of the Type ID-Forum (spin that off to another site), tightening up the registration process (with only registered users allowed to contribute), getting some personalizable filtering in place, and a couple of things that have been suggested years ago by users.

On the other hand, from personal experience I know that sites and forums can come to an end, and that the natural way of things is that a void will always be filled. Could be that Typophile has fulfilled its purpose and the new kids in town are going to usurp it. Hence: Sic gloria transit mundi…

(The type in this box is so small that I had to zoom in four times!)

Bill,
I mostly agree with you. But I don't think being gifted and
being rude are mutually exclusive. To me anybody -talent
or no- who can handle aspects of an environment that are
unpleasant to him will derive more benefit from it, and will
allow others to learn more from him as well.

For better or worse somebody who's good at one thing (like
making display type) isn't necessarily good at another (like
tolerating offense). People who refuse to realize their own
limitations often expect unreasonable levels of compromise
from others.

hhp

> Other social media are definitely competition.....

Bill Gates was right. Is right. Content is king!

note that one element that is finally available is BLOCKQUOTE

Joe, it had been available since 2010: http://typophile.com/node/76613

I quite like the “New” addition on the comments, and I understand we aren’t even close to a final design, but trendy grey text instead of black? Really? I seriously hope that one is already on the chopping block. Deliberately choosing to lower the contrast on the text would probably be an instant deal breaker for someone with poor vision (like me). Has anyone even seen the “edit” button (rhetorical question)? I could cite that APA style into the middle of next week. #grumpyoldman

Most importantly however, “But the Flash home page had to go.”

T H A N K Y O U ! Can I get an “Amen!”

(can’t seem to double space between those two words, but you get the point)

I think an option to individually highlight or block contributions by selected fellows would appeal to many of us.

I had no actual complaints about the former design (apart from the Flash homepage, unaccessible from my iPad), but nevertheless I think it's great to give it a complete overhaul and a totally new look.

But I agree with what has been mentioned above: the staggered 'contents' is not as clear as the previous 5-part one. Now it will take people forever to locate the Type ID board! Maybe Jared could solve that eternal problem by putting it on top; after all the "regulars" know to post their general discussion topics in the forum called "General Discussion", wherever it may be located.

Hey, things are happening - awesome!

What about making ALL links open in a new tab or new window? I personally prefer this.

I don't. I hate it when sites do that, because most don't. Just learn the key modifier. (And there is no modifier key to suppress it for sites that implement that behavior for people who don't want it.)

Hm. The new color scheme seems familiar.

I hate tab windows.

Too much red now on list views.

I do like the "Mark-The Hippie-Simonson" retro photo, though :-)

Art school days, Spring 1976.

@Mark,
Grad school days, 1970:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dezcom/5970720635/in/set-72157612029318174/...

"are websafe colors still relevant in any way?"

It's extremely rare to find a screen that can only handle 256 colors anymore. So it's mostly irrelevant now.

OK, thanks for the confirmation.

BTW, does a non-websafe color snap to the closest
one "below" or "above" (for each of R,G and B?) or
what? And does this depend on the application or
is it an OS thing?

hhp

When a website is unreadable on my iPad, I click the "Reader" button at the top. That works for most text-oriented web pages. Unfortunately not so for Typophile, as all it brings up is Jared's initial post.

I'm pretty sure that's not something that can be fixed in "seconds".

Fixed (or semi-fixed) center column width is an eye-sore in portrait mode. (I can live with it in landscape -- just.)

Oh well, if it's just a question of screen resolution: a new 'Pad ought to arrive soon in the office.

I thought web-safe color was really more about browsers than monitors. I believe 24 bit color computer monitors and the dawn of the web (at least in terms of popularity) happened at about the same time--early 1990's.

24-bit graphics on computers were still fairly high-end in the early '90s. The only ones who had it were people running Photoshop and other graphics stuff. 24-bit color didn't start to become common until the late '90s. Even then, you couldn't count on it when designing a web page.

The problem lay with the video cards, not the monitors. Some had 'only' 4 MB or less of memory for the frame buffer. If you wanted a high resolution, you'd have to forgo such niceties as TrueColor or even HighColor and make do with a 256-colour palette mode.

It's been years since I;ve been involved—and I used to be involved quite a bit.

Happy to see this transition, and hopefully this will spur me to get back into the community and contribute.

Thanks, Joe, Jared, Zara and all.

I've removed the left sidebar and made the main column wider. For those using Stylish or something similar:

div#sidebar-left {
display: none;
}
div#wrapper div#container div#sidebar-right {
float: right;
width: 25%;
}
body.sidebars div#container div#center div#squeeze {
width: 74%;
}
html body.sidebars div#wrapper div#container.clear-block {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

Really liking this redesign so far, temporary or not. Sorry, as one of the amateurs, that I haven't been more involved in asking 'good questions' but digging through the archives often reveals that many good questions have already been answered. Hoping to resurrect my long-dormant font projects and get good feedback from you all. But most important right now is taking care of my family, which is a long story not at all relevant to this forum. Cheers to all!

Progress may be slow, but at least it’s there… But changing the type in the Comments-box is a bad idea. Please make it it the same type and size as the posts, so Hrant can type shorter lines (a real simple way of WYSIWYG).

On my iPad the lines in the posts are truncated in a strange way. Also the sides take up too much space. [Edit: Sorry, that’s just Hrants posts…}

I do not like or understand the use of orange for ‘New’.

I like having back the "first" etc navigation (didn’t that disappear somewhere around 2008?).

[Edit: typing two left-pointers after each other is a bad idea, I experienced. Or even one.]

:-/

Ideally of course you'd have a mechanism for
implementing an automatic max line length
depending on the viewing device. It would
result in a funny right rag* but to me at least
that's an acceptable compromise.

* Although good auto-hyphenation would help...

hhp

Which is precisely another reason Markdown would be great.

Note: refraining from manually inserting line breaks to adjust the measure would also correct that particular problem. There is only one person still doing this, as far as I know. Judging by the earliest posts here, just about everyone used to.

> refraining from manually inserting line breaks to adjust
> the measure would also correct that particular problem.

Reminiscent of the last sentence here:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/ss_uniglyph1.html

hhp

YAY! Black text! Next up, black text in the comments box. That, and I don’t think there’s a need for a 2nd font. There’s no need change the font and colour. It’s already distinct in that its in a box, at the bottom, and underneath a giant “Post new comment.”

And, black text here is quite important given that it is here where one spends their most important (and often lengthy) amount of time.

But thank-you, thank-you, THANK-YOU for the black text so far.

For those of you playing the home game, I believe I've gotten Image Uploads working again. Please give it a try and prove me wrong.

http://typophile.com/node/91491

For what it’s worth: the Insert image uploader for comments doesn’t seem to be liking .PNGs anymore. I keep getting a “Could not copy image. Error” message.

Larger .PDFs can now be attached to first posts. Glad to see this fixed!

This is like having Christmas every day! All our wishes coming true!

Glad to see that orange gone, but the grey ‘New’ is a tad too light. I for one would not mind that being red.

Bert — How would you feel about #cc0000, the hover color on standard links? Too bright?

How about green for the "new" label?

One other thing: Would it be possible to use the "viewport" metatag so the pages don't display so narrow on iOS devices? As it is, the sidebars take up 50% of the screen width, even in landscape orientation. Info about this here:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/AppleApplications/...

As I understand it, other mobile devices use this metatag the same way, so it would benefit users of Android and Windows Metro devices, too.

+ for green, on list view too.

That 's a bit too fire brigade red. I prefer a more burgundish red (in other words a bit more dirty).

As an explanation: I think the color scheme should be a reflection of the book printing tradition, where black, white and red are the principle colors. Gray is ok, too. Warm or cool is a choice depending on taste.

I second this. I am on an iPad now and the ‘lost' real estate hurts.

(In reply to Mark S. maybe staggered reactions/reply's are a thing to consider?)

I prefer a more burgundish red […] the color scheme should be a reflection of the book printing tradition, where black, white and red are the principle colors.

I agree. But books don’t have hyperlinks. So it will be necessary to distinguish between an accent colour (such as the one used for “new”) and a mean to visually mark hyperlinks. Especially since the two are very close in list views like the tracker.

Well, if one wants to adhere to web protocol, the colour for links should be blue or purple or anything in between these. But, writing that, I had this brain flash: underlined! All sincere designers posting here would refrain from using links because these underlined links would hurt their esthetic personae, right?

Type would look good!

Re mobile, I’m going to guess that this redesign is an effort to cater to this new market.

Question: How many Typophiles who read and post more than once a day do so from a mobile device?

Rhetorical question: Do any of the top 10 posters ever do so?

And thanks for the black serif text in the comments window. The new design is coming along nicely. Next up, line length.

http://typophile.com/node/88554

FWIW (not much) I don't own a cellphone.
I do have my eye on this though:
http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxynote/note/index.html?type=...

hhp

Well, I'm in the 99% (not in the top 10 posters) and I read Typophile at least once a day on a mobile device.

I never use any mobile device.

Mind you, it would be foolish not to pay heed to developing markets (while being mindful of the analytics). Reading yes, posting, possibly not so much. Perhaps we are moving towards a “social network” where quick and easy posts a-la-twitter will become more commonplace? Lord knows we are seeing an alarmingly increasing amount of posts to the tune of “what’s this font?” and “can you help me with my work?” Just watch /tracker.

I look forward to seeing how our community evolves.

(~65 cpl)

I think it's pretty clear that mobile devices (smart phones, iPads, etc) are rapidly increasing in popularity, especially with younger users, and within a few years the majority of computing will be done on them, with desktop computers used mostly for more heavy-duty tasks that require a mouse and physical keyboard.

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, desktop computers are like trucks and mobile devices are like cars. Some folks need trucks, but most folks will prefer to drive cars.

Personally I don't like reading or writing anything lengthy on my phone, but I know some younger folks who are typing on them constantly. However I do find myself using my iPad more and more.

Hrant, the Galaxy Note is pretty cool. As a phone, it is a bit too big, but as a kind of subtablet it looks excellent. I have one of the Galaxy phones, which I think is about the maximum practical size for a phone -- unless you happen to have small hands -- the HD display is excellent.

Of course, I'm not writing this on my phone. I'm writing this on my 18-wheeler.

Breaker, breaker 1, 9, this is iPeterbuiltMac 27 giving the Hudson 18 Wheeler a roger that! ;-)

Reading typophile on my phone hurts so much that I repeat my offer of helping create the css to make the site more mobile friendly.

John, although I don't like the thought of something hanging
off my ear* to me almost anything is better than using a hand
to hold up anything up to my head for any length of time, plus
I don't have a penchant for tight jeans** so I imagine being able
to leave the device stowed for phone calls (of which I would hope
to make as few as possible anyway). The question is how good
has voice-control become?

* Ideally the audio in/out device should
be hovering around your head on its own.

** Or any jeans at all actually.

hhp

I know this may seem arbitrary, but i've gotten used to it on another forum I frequent, and that's having a bit of a bottom nav. A simple "Back of Discussions" link at the bottom of the page would be nice. When you're bumped down a long page after a post it's nice to have a handy 1-click option to go back the general categories.

A bit of colour separation in either the fonts or the div backgrounds for main categories VS sub cats would be helpful. Or even if there were alternating colour schemes between different main categories. Makes skimming faster and easier.

edit: I realize there's already alternating colour schemes, perhaps a simple line rule or white space.

Now it seems there's a display problem on Mozilla-based browsers:
In the main posts, images appear pushed all the way to the right edge of the centre column, covering the rightmost one.

Could we please have the navigation links both at the top and the bottom of pages (to avoid the endless dreadful scrolling to move on and to come back):

Images in the temp layout seem to be getting scaled. This is Bad, especially in the case of screenshots intended to show pixel rendering. For example.

Images in the temp layout seem to be getting scaled

I don’t see it. Maybe it’s browser-specific?

How about a way of sorting by the number of new replies?

I really don't want to wade through six pages of replies to see if this comment is redundant, but you have some serious issues with your imageWrap class.

I'd love to not have to drill down a level to get to "track" my threads I am involved in. You already display the "my blog" link on the main page under "My profile," why not put "track" under there? I think it gets used a lot.

T

Just go to this URL then bookmark it:

http://typophile.com/tracker/(yourTypophileMemberNumber)

Note: Use your Typophile member number instead of that parenthetical thing.

On some posts (example: http://typophile.com/node/91091) anchors like #new or #comment- don't work.

I'm still seeing this and hoping it gets fixed!

Me, too. And I’ve even tried to figure out what could be causing it, but I haven’t yet uncovered the culprit.

The anchors look to be properly set in the html. But for some reason, on certain nodes, after loading the page, it immediately returns to the top, overriding the named anchors.

Actually, I think I might have just figured out the culprit. I believe that this behavior only happens on threads with attachments. And I believe the culprit is the "sticky-enabled" class that is written on the table that presents any attachments. The class itself doesn’t seem to have rules in the CSS, but it is triggering some Javascript which then rewrites an invisible "sticky-header" table, which forces the pageload back to the top.

I believe that the "sticky-enabled" class is a mistake and shouldn’t be enabled by default on those threads.

I’ll write to Jared and have him investigate the template.

Ahem... with regards to tracking and/or following (bookmarking, etc).

There should really be a simple per-thread flag called "track", and all flagged threads will go onto the list on the /track page. The flag should be automatically set when one adds a comment to a thread, and it should be possible to toggle it manually.

This way if I want to follow particular thread without participating, I'd click on "track" button on thread's page and it will do it. Alternatively, if I commented on a thread, but no longer interested in it, I'd click on "track" the same way and it will remove thread from /track.

If anyone knows a simpler way to organize this, do speak out.

Sounds just right.

hhp

@Thomas: I've added "My posts" under "My profile" which links to your personal tracker.

@apankrat: We've tried a few methods for this in the past, but none have quite delivered the results we had wanted. I'd like to see this feature happen too, and will keep looking into it.

Jared: Thanks!

Yes, @pankrat's suggestion would be ideal. This was just the low-hanging fruit.

Feature request: sort by unread. What I mean is a way to see the threads that have a new post (and/or threads that have never been visited) no matter how old they are (but sorted reverse-chronologically).

hhp

I agree with Hrant's comment. It's easy enough to sort by number of replies, and that's almost useless. Sorting by unread replies is what is needed.

If you’re not going to axe the the various “Solved IDs” subsections, you could at least remove the “Solved IDs” part and leave them for the good willing posters.

For the record, assuming anybody cares: I've come to terms with no longer doing manual linebreaks*. I do have to think however that Typophile's new narrow and leaded layout has been key to that. Anyway, thank you.

* Although I'm still doing them in email, because I'm assuming the more important something is the less likely it will be viewed on a small screen.

hhp

Hrant, I think your email thinking may be inverted. In the Always-Connected World of Commerce and Communication©, the important emails are read when they arrive, regardless of location, and often on a mobile device.

I agree that their receipt is usually on-the-go, but if important emails are being read when focus is in short supply, that's pretty sad. But it would explain a lot, so maybe you're right. :-/

I guess I'm just not in sync with this mess that passes for society. Actually I was never in sync, even before mobile browsing, or even (personal) computers. It's a good thing I make text fonts and not Hollywood movies.

--

So what's it gonna take for the web to implement a max-column-width feature?

hhp

I agree with Marcox.

I read at least half my email on my cell phone the first time. If it warrants response, and I don't feel like doing that from the phone, I flag it or mark it unread so I will look at it again when I have a proper keyboard.

And, in any case, e-mail softwares do have a “max-column-width feature”.
Outllook even has a “remove excessive line breaks” “feature” on by default, which, of course, wreaks havoc on manually formatted e-mails.

Since the beginning of word processing, I have always been driven mad by the use of hard returns. In those days, people were used to the typewriter where a carriage return, multiple tabs or spaces all had the same effect. It was printed on paper and then re-typed by a type house so what the customer did formatting meant little. Along comes the transition to electronically captured word processing being sent via tape or disk to the type house which then was bound to absorb the tedious labor of taking away all the problematic typing done by his clients. Now comes the all-in-one process where the page layout person and type house are the same individual. Even much worse, today comes the multiple device viewing of a single digital flow of text. Bunches of browsers, bunches of hand-held devices, bunches of resolutions, bunches of default typefaces, different platforms and versions of the software, some subpixel rendering and some not, some greyscale and some not. The odds of what the enduser sees on his device looking exactly like it did on the original authors source device is quite slim. The only prayer of workable shifts in devices is if everyone strictly avoids hard returns or multiple tabs or spaces to push a line break that only looks good on their screen. The end user at least knows where a paragraph ends. This is one heck of a lot better than trying to mind read the original author or guess what system they used to write the darn thing. What you may think you are fixing for 2% of your readers, you are totally fuchking up for 98% of your readers.

The scaling here is funky. Its hard for me to articulate as I don’t make internets, but:

If I make the type smaller, the column width stays the same so my character count goes up.

But, there appears to be a max column width (or min char count?). When I increase the type size to what I find comfortable, it maxes out at about 30 cpl, which is far too short (it just means a shit-ton of return-saccades which results in fatigue). If I try to make it bigger, the column width and the type get bigger at the same time.

I’m really happy to see black type, but if increasing the size of the type so I can read it results in me having to read 35 character lines, I simply won’t bother reading.

And you can check my metrics on that. Since the redesign, I have gone from ~1 visit an hour to ~1 visit/day.

Perhaps we can have a no comments thread for admins to provide status updates? Given the afore mentioned typographic problems, I simply am quite simply physically incapable of sifting through 6 pages of comments to find relevant updates.

I've been having a HELL of a time searching Typophile, I mean even through Google... Stuff that I used to be able to find immediately simply won't show up any more no matter how smartly I search. Is there some kind of blocking going on? Maybe due to that stupid FontQueen phishing site?

hhp

Totally agree w hrant. Same problems for me just the other day.

I experienced the same from some time now. I’m not sure it’s just the result of Google rebuilding its indexes or a more general problem.

I had not noticed, but you are right. I get nothing after April 17. Bing seems to work fine.

Any progress on the line length? As it stands, I simply can’t read long posts without getting tired/frustrated.

Here's how a long paragraph currently looks on my system:

I think it's relatively easy on the eyes and brain (although more paragraph breaks would help). But to be fair I'm using a very old OS. :->

hhp

Hrant,
What you posted above is about 30% longer, 50% lighter, and 25% smaller than what I see on my system. Mine is less than a year old, if that matters.

Ouch Hrant, that is unbelievably wretched… Hurts the eyes. Must take years of the sustainability of your eyesight.

Are you serious? I would like it more with some judicious anti-alaising (which would additionally put some nice extra weight on it) but to me it's worlds better than the rendering on Chris's system: dark , blurry, too tight.

Might there be a gamma issue at play?

BTW, I've been looking at forms like this since 1977, and my eyesight is still 20/15.

hhp

Well, good thing hrant didn't post a photo of a green-on-black monochrome CRT screen :)

Not green dude!
http://oldcomputers.net/pics/pet2001.jpg
But we got the high-end model: 8K of RAM! The floppy drive though was too expensive - I remember it was such a hot thing to daydream about...

BTW, you try making Armenian and Arabic fonts on an 8×7 grid! :-)
(Actually though that was on my C64.)

hhp

It's clear by now that Google has stopped indexing Typophile.
Typophile's own search function is notoriously pretty useless. And now the internal Google search is too.
Searching for something using "site:typophile.com" yields only useless list views results. The few single posts hits are from improbable subdomains such as, among others, "ww.typophile.com", "dev.typophile.com", and my favourite so far "area51.academy.typophile.com".
I don't know if this situation is the result of some setting not being adjusted once the new version went live, or if it's the rel="nofollow" applied to RSS, or some misconfiguration of robots.txt.

All I know is that not trying to address this problem is suicidal.

More girls.

There's certainly something fishy (phishy?) going on and I wish the Typophile boys would give us a clue... It's pretty frustrating (when you have to look for something). Those 3rd+ level domains are of course under Typophile's control, so it seems to be a sort of effort at protection. Recently thefontqueen.com was indexing everything, but then anti-phishing message started popping up... In any case, it's a mess.

hhp

I used to see thousands of hits on Typophile when searching typographic material via Google. It seems Google has blackballed Typophile for some unexplained reason?

I've just made a search on Google for Typophile material and to me it's still working.

It seems Google has blackballed Typophile for some unexplained reason?

Possibly because of all the SEO spam. There’s tons of it in the database, even if pages/nodes are unpublished. (you don’t even want to know how much ends up in the profile fields of bogus accounts — it’s impossible to stay on top of). I don’t know if these end up getting harvested by Google bots and result in blacklisting or not, but I worry about it.

You are right, Kent. The spam barrage is just maddening.

Anonymous posting welcome? Typophile gets what it deserves ...

The spam would end immediately if a new person's first post had to be approved by a moderator before appearing.

It's a procedure that's used at many forums to prevent spam.

James, would that prevent it or just delay it until the second post?

If the first post contains spam, the account gets deleted. Now if a spammer takes the time to post a legitimate, on-topic message about typography, and then comes back later to make a 2nd post that is spam, I suppose that's conceivable, but I doubt if that would happen. They use a hit-and-run strategy.

Then it just becomes a labor problem for Punchcut

It's easy for me to give advice since I'm not the one who'd have to do the work. ;)

Has Typophile enabled e-mail verification as a requirement before posting? Does that reduce spam?

Typophile has a captcha on the registration form and requires a valid e-mail account to receive an activation link with a system-generated password. No, it does not reduce spam. (Or rather, there seems to be plenty in spite of this; who knows how much worse it could be.)

There is no e-mail verification required to post (and no way to require it, within the current setup), since it’s assumed that that was handled at account registration.

James, as you must realize, your suggestion is labor-intensive at this point. That’s not to say that Punchcut couldn’t revamp the back-end and maybe find some Drupal plug-ins to manage something along those lines. (Or pay someone to manage the site ;-) But history would suggest that this is not likely.

And you might be surprised at how many spam accounts already post seemingly innocuous comments initially (as well as other strategies) in an attempt to validate their presence.

> your suggestion is labor-intensive at this point

Actually I'm not sure that it would be. Does anyone know how many new accounts are set up per day? If there are, say, 4 new accounts one day that make a 1st post, and a moderator takes 15 seconds to glance at each and click an "approved" button, then it takes 1 minute.

If a 1st post is spam and the account needs to be deleted, then no more time is spent than it takes under the current system to delete a spam account.

(This assumes that the software is set up to present a moderator with a list of 1st posts from new accounts that need to be approved, so that he/she can review them efficiently.)

> And you might be surprised at how many spam accounts already
> post seemingly innocuous comments initially

OK. I'm not saying the system would be perfect, but I think it would weed out a lot of the spam.

Just a thought. I know it's unlikely to be tried.

We're at ~200,000 users, divided by ~12 years = almost 50 new users a day.

That's the price of being important (but there must be ways to reduce abuse).

Besides spam, one thing we can/should do is exterminate the ID parasites.

hhp

> almost 50 new users a day.

Wow, that's way more than I expected! Although my guess is that the majority of them are readers rather than posters.