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Gc.com's New Look


sbell111

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People, people, people.  ;)  The answer to the backgrounds is staring you in the face!  This one popped up in our local forums and seems an excellent solution:  all done with SPAN, DIV and CSS elements.  Really just as simple as the old body background trick.

There is no background on this cache page, just a broader frame within the cache description.

This leads to two comments:

1. For me, this cache page doesn't invoke any "feelings";

2. If printed out, I would have to print out this strange border as well.

 

BS/2

 

Edit: 2 typos

Edited by BalkanSabranje
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The cache pages that people labor for hours over tend to be very poorly designed and, quite frankly, ugly.

How about this one? ;)

 

I really like the new site layout and I think hiders can easily manage to get all the graphic elements they need in the cache description. Jeremy has given us our sandbox and we should let him do what he wants in his. ;)

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I am really, really disappointed that the little icon showing up when moving over the "my account" menu item doesn't look like "me" at all! ;)

c89507e0-32ca-4131-8567-28c406950ecb.jpg See what I mean?

 

;) To be honest, I really like the new look as well as the new features. The bookmarks concept looks very promising! Thank you Jeremy for all the work!

[GTL]S.

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the new look is GREAT. it's a cleaner, more "streamlined" look and is definitely impressive.

 

i'll throw my vote in for leaving the borders the way they are now, they were too big before.

 

edit: the bookmarks feature is perfect for me! will save your servers some time not having to send out all those watchlist emails. ;)

Edited by robert
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I would like to add my vote to the bring back the borders camp. Having out a lot of effort into designing my cache pages, I am disappointed that this has now all been wasted. Just a thought, would be at all possible to have a preferences setting including such things as border width, sound on or off, that sort of thing?

 

Apart from that, I am glad the bright green has gone and I like the new features. I am off to play with them now...

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I never was crazy about the old big borders; since they were so big I myself used them in some of my caches. The new look is cleaner and neat. I do understand everyone who is upset and will have to revamp some or all of their caches, but we were utilizing an already non-supported function anyway so if this border had always been this size this would never had been an issue. My vote is for the new look even though I will have to spend a good part of the weekend revamping a few dozen of my caches.

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Shared bookmark lists: are these supposed to show up when I look at someone's profile page, or what? How do I see shared lists that other people have created? Is there a global "list of lists" somewhere that I can browse to see what other people have found worth bookmarking?  ;)

This is from Jeremy's first post in the pinned topic "Bookmark and Ignore Lists, FAQ on New Features":

 

How do I find Shared Lists?

 

Unless you have a URL you cannot see a shared list (yet).  However, we will be adding functionality to show shared lists on a cache listing so you know someone bookmarked it for whatever reason. Also we will add a tab on the profile page so you can see a user's shared list.

 

We had to stop implementation somewhere. so these features haven't been added (yet).

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I am not bothered about whether customizable backgrounds exist or not, can be seen or not or whatever. I like the changes to the cache pages. The new buttons on the right are very clear and easy on the eye - and seem much better designed than the old style.

 

I am less keen on the Homepage though. On my 1280x1076 monitor it looks very strange. About 50% of the page is that boring dull green, and the text is all crammed into a strip down the middle 50% of the page.

 

The navigation buttons on the left seem unnecessarily small - with so much wasted space, it would be nice to see the text a more readable size.

Edited by Learned Gerbil
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The loss of background image is mostly because of the dk. grey empty rectangle below the advertising...  If that grey background is reverted back to none, I think it would be a win-win.

 

Thank you for a productive compromising suggestion! ;)

 

Cachers are so great to meet in person -- yet on the forums it seems to be a contest of who is right instead of if the majority is happy. If you don't like my borders, put my cache page on your ignore list and forget about it. I was just asking ;) (And for the record, I like to think my caches are more creative than my borders.)

 

But as I said before, I will continue to redecorate my doghouse in sterile white, removing all Chewees. A cache like "Walk the Plank" has more of a sanitarium feel anyway. I now see the error of my thinking.

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Backgrounds shouldn't be used for important info for solving cache puzzes

 

Well, darn, I missed the memo where you listed what should and shouldn't be used for solving puzzle caches. Please copy me next time.

 

Thanks for taking the time to appreciate one of my backgrounds (for The Night Country geocache). It's a book-themed cache, and that was the book cover. Didn't occur to me that anyone might miss the fine reading material at the bottom of the page.

 

Ok, so you don't like backgrounds. I do; so do others. I like them on my hides, I like them on my finds. This reminds me of the debates I've seen elsewhere about urban micros, and puzzle caches, and rough-terrain ("dangerous") caches. Some people like them, some people don't, but geocaching has always supported a diversity of tastes. Even when it's not my thing (e.g., urban micros), I'll defend people's right, within law and reason, to do what they want with their caches.

 

Anyway, it may be water under the bridge, and I'm prepared to work with the new look -- I just need to know that this is settled, so I'm not wasting my effort.

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Backgrounds shouldn't be used for important info for solving cache puzzes

 

>>>clip<<<Anyway, it may be water under the bridge, and I'm prepared to work with the new look -- I just need to know that this is settled, so I'm not wasting my effort.

I agree with Alethiometrists, however it is going to be, we need to know.

There's really only ONE opinion that matters here, (here=at geocaching.com) and he needs to address this background issue and tell us which way it is going to be, so we can act according to the decision in whatever ways we feel necessary.

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Well, darn, I missed the memo where you listed what should and shouldn't be used for solving puzzle caches. ...

 

Didn't occur to me that anyone might miss the fine reading material at the bottom of the page.

Your post dealt with two issues that probably should be discussed more.

 

First, whether the background 'should be used' for solving puzzle caches. The problem with using the background in this manner is that a person will not have this information 'in the field'. As stated previously, the background does not get loaded to your pda via plucker or cachemate. It also never printed on the print-friendly pages.

 

Interestingly, I just printed Secret Garden Runaround (the cache referenced above) on my office inkjet. I printed the regular (not print-friendly) page. It looks great. All the pics look great. Incidently, the border did not print, nor did the purple prettiness.

 

Regarding your second point that it didn't occur to you that anyone might miss the material at the bottom of the page. Jeremy (or his team of hard-working attorneys) might wish that this material is left viewable:

 

Copyright © 2000-2005 Groundspeak Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.

Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of the

Groundspeak Terms of Use. Read our Geocaching Logo Usage Guidelines

 

edited for grammar.

Edited by sbell111
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I wasn't referring to the cache you mentioned, nor to one of mine. It was someone else's, but I'm not saying whose or where lest I give it away. In any event, it was irrelevant that you couldn't see the background in the field, because you couldn't get the correct coordinates without solving the puzzle first.

 

As long as puzzle caches are properly indicated as such, you know - as with multis - that there is an offset in the coordinates. I love puzzle caches, myself, and one of the great things is the incredible creativity people have shown in coming up with new ones. I can't begin to tell you some of the things you may have to do to solve some of them, because that would be giving too much away. If you don't like these sorts of caches, you can filter them out in your queries, or simply choose the new "ignore" feature.

 

Which reminds me of what I said in my first post on this thread -- on the whole, I like the new look and functionality. And I'll certainly work with it, as I just noted above. Let's put this to rest.

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First, whether the background 'should be used' for solving puzzle caches. The problem with using the background in this manner is that a person will not have this information 'in the field'. As stated previously, the background does not get loaded to your pda via plucker or cachemate. It also never printed on the print-friendly pages.

 

Interestingly, I just printed Secret Garden Runaround (the cache referenced above) on my office inkjet. I printed the regular (not print-friendly) page. It looks great. All the pics look great. Incidently, the border did not print, nor did the purple prettiness.

The background printing behavior you observed may have been determined by this setting, which many people have in IE:

 

bgprint.jpg

 

I'm sure there's a similar setting in Firefox and Netscape but don't have access to those right now.

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The cache pages that people labor for hours over tend to be very poorly designed and, quite frankly, ugly.

How about this one? ;)

 

I really like the new site layout and I think hiders can easily manage to get all the graphic elements they need in the cache description. Jeremy has given us our sandbox and we should let him do what he wants in his. ;)

Ugh...nasty purplish blotchy background under the text. That's one cache page I'll never read.

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Shared bookmark lists: are these supposed to show up when I look at someone's profile page, or what? How do I see shared lists that other people have created? Is there a global "list of lists" somewhere that I can browse to see what other people have found worth bookmarking?  ;)

This is from Jeremy's first post in the pinned topic "Bookmark and Ignore Lists, FAQ on New Features":

 

How do I find Shared Lists?

 

Unless you have a URL you cannot see a shared list (yet).  However, we will be adding functionality to show shared lists on a cache listing so you know someone bookmarked it for whatever reason. Also we will add a tab on the profile page so you can see a user's shared list.

 

We had to stop implementation somewhere. so these features haven't been added (yet).

<WHACK!! to forehead>

 

Thanks. My eyes skipped over that in the topic list. ;)

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Backgrounds shouldn't be used for important info for solving cache puzzes

 

Well, darn, I missed the memo where you listed what should and shouldn't be used for solving puzzle caches. Please copy me next time.

Well gee whiz, how am I supposed to solve your puzzle when I download the GPX files to my PDA and never see the secret message hidden in your background image?

 

Backgrounds don't show up when I use GSAK either. Just a plain, printer friendly, white background with black text! What a novel concept, only the important info on the cache page. The rest is unneccessary and shouldn't be "encouraged" to be back there, but not neccessarily be banned.

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As site redesigns go, this is going surprisingly well.

 

Regarding the background colors I'm getting a lot more yeahs than naahs about leaving it the way it is now. Though I understand the desire for the background images there are still a bunch of folks using very small monitors. I need to keep a happy medium which makes this difficult.

 

I do hear you about the grey background farther down the page. I'm really not sure what to do about that since the old design had its own problems. For example the login text was completely obliterated by many of the background images.

What about a different happy medium. What about a larger border above? One that is similar to the border below? It would allow the background image to set the tone for the cache while not interfering with the text density and other viewer issues in the main body of the page.

 

Just a thought. I am in the school of "likes the backgrounds," but I understand the benefit of the new layout. The larger top border would address most of the reasons I enjoy the backgrounds.

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As site redesigns go, this is going surprisingly well.

 

Regarding the background colors I'm getting a lot more yeahs than naahs about leaving it the way it is now. Though I understand the desire for the background images there are still a bunch of folks using very small monitors. I need to keep a happy medium which makes this difficult.

 

I do hear you about the grey background farther down the page. I'm really not sure what to do about that since the old design had its own problems. For example the login text was completely obliterated by many of the background images.

What about a different happy medium. What about a larger border above? One that is similar to the border below? It would allow the background image to set the tone for the cache while not interfering with the text density and other viewer issues in the main body of the page.

 

Just a thought. I am in the school of "likes the backgrounds," but I understand the benefit of the new layout. The larger top border would address most of the reasons I enjoy the backgrounds.

Interesting thought...

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The larger top border would address most of the reasons I enjoy the backgrounds.

 

Absolutely! Or let me use the big grey area on the left side only -- under the advertising block. Or how about a really small picture near the cache name like an avatar or something? One little picture in the corner of my cache page "room"...it's all I ask, border-adversaries. I can seek a compromise-really!

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Ugh...nasty purplish blotchy background under the text. That's one cache page I'll never read.

Ha! Made you look! :ph34r:

 

On edit: FWIW, I did the background that way to avoid having to address the issue once the site changed. Thanks for pointing out the problem with the print-friendly version of the page.

Edited by ahimsa
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Personally, I really like the new design. It looks sharp, is easy on the eyes, and is more open to future enhancements. I understand that people liked to customize their pages to give the cache a certain feeling. I've done the same, especially on the TB pages, where I go out of my way to irritate people with '97-esque javascript.

 

However, from the perspective of someone that understands web architecture in general and also the way that various applications use the information pulled from the cache pages, I can say that putting information vital to finding a cache in the background is a bad move. Don't get me wrong - there's a time and place for subtlety and misdirection, and many good cache puzzles make use of both. However, by putting anything of significance in the background of a cache page, you are limiting the ways people can use your page. For example, I like to use the "print-friendly" page for printouts, which has no background. GPX and .loc files don't include that information. You're essentially breaking the intended design of the document.

 

I know it's a change, and it affects the way your old pages look. Instead of looking at it as a bad thing, consider the fact that you now have more white space on the cache page to play with. More important, now your additions will be where they belong - in the content block.

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As site redesigns go, this is going surprisingly well.

 

Regarding the background colors I'm getting a lot more yeahs than naahs about leaving it the way it is now. Though I understand the desire for the background images there are still a bunch of folks using very small monitors. I need to keep a happy medium which makes this difficult.

 

I do hear you about the grey background farther down the page. I'm really not sure what to do about that since the old design had its own problems. For example the login text was completely obliterated by many of the background images.

What about a different happy medium. What about a larger border above? One that is similar to the border below? It would allow the background image to set the tone for the cache while not interfering with the text density and other viewer issues in the main body of the page.

 

Just a thought. I am in the school of "likes the backgrounds," but I understand the benefit of the new layout. The larger top border would address most of the reasons I enjoy the backgrounds.

Interesting thought...

That pushes all the useful information down the page. I want the important stuff at the top, not background pictures. :ph34r:

 

And anyone who embeds sound in their web page with it automatically turned on ought to be shot, by the way. If you want to have sound, fine -- tell me it's there and give me a way to turn it on if I want to hear it. :P

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However, from the perspective of someone that understands web architecture in general and also the way that various applications use the information pulled from the cache pages, I can say that putting information vital to finding a cache in the background is a bad move.

Thanks for the considerate tone -- That's all we can ask for, eh?

 

In practice, though, we'd be greatly limiting the range of puzzle caches if all the essential information had to be contained in a printout. A number of puzzle caches I've done have required web searches for clues, and not just in terms of finding answers to questions using Google, though that is one common way. Other puzzle caches I've done -- and there are some great (and popular) ones like this in the Kansas City area -- require the use of Java applets you get to through the cache page. Really, the creativity is amazing, when you start looking at the puzzle caches out there, and I'd hate to limit them in any way.

 

However, that's just a side issue, since I know of only one cache with the puzzle clue in the background.

 

In broader terms, a lot of folks have just lost a lot of work, and if a fellow cacher doesn't care about that, well, that is a shame.

 

But, again, we're beating a dead horse here. The only useful thing that can be said further on the issue of backgrounds is some final word from Jeremy. Once we know what's final, we can work with that. As soon as we get that word, I'll get out of the Forums and back to work on my hides and finds.

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Type size is now much smaller and harder to read.

 

Links ie; make this page print friendly, are unreadable and distorted.

 

Background images were a plus, but now there is an ugly gray strip down the left side.

 

New features; ignore, bookmark, are ok, thanks for adding them.

 

Dislike the new look more than like it.

 

Just my two cents worth.

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Type size is now much smaller and harder to read.

Menubar --> View --> Text Size --> Medium is the default setting, and works great on my setup.

 

Smallest makes it very hard to read.

 

Note this setting is easy to change accidentally by holding down the ctrl key and rotating that middle wheel thingy on your mouse.

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Type size is now much smaller and harder to read.

 

Links ie; make this page print friendly, are unreadable and distorted.

 

Background images were a plus, but now there is an ugly gray strip down the left side.

 

New features; ignore, bookmark, are ok, thanks for adding them.

 

Dislike the new look more than like it.

 

Just my two cents worth.

Type size is just fine on my screen layout. I suppose others may have mini-font as the default and the smaller fonts end up being micro-font.

 

I LOVE the ignore list. I have been eagerly waiting for this one.

 

Give it a few days. You'll forget what the old layout looked like :laughing:

 

I used a background image a few times on my caches, but I sure won't miss them.

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LOG from other posting...

 

Message to Jeremy

I understand that you finally got rid of the awful green background on the pages but you took away some of the little pleasures we get by setting up interesting log-pages.

..By narrowing the side panels you removed a lot of background that I and others have uploaded to enhance our pages.

In the past I have updated the pages as the seasons change... like fall, winter .Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentines and location backgrounds.

.Viewers have complimented me for keeping them interesting and changing them, which makes them come back to view them at later dates.

I like to make my pages as informative as possible and try to chose my locations carefully to place my caches for interest sake not to hide them only.

 

.....I would love to hear from others that would like to see us get our wider pages back.

 

:laughing: Sorry! This was started as a separate link before I was guided to this posting!!

Edited by Jake39
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Here's something that I bet Jeremy could do fairly easily - let us upload a background image and "hook" it into the table cell on the left side - like this:

 

Sample Cache Listing

I agree with other posters who have noted this as a best possible solution to the "background" problem that should satisfy everyone. Real estate is conserved (Jeremy's need), as are background images. The site preserves the ability to have space for placed ads, and as a bonus, the "ugly gray sidebar" that has also fueled dissent is also done away with.

 

Jeremy -- what would it take to implement this ASAP?

 

brightfish

Edited by brightfish
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  Jeremy, I do not know if you've been reading this thread, wherein I discussed problems that the new look has caused with pages being displayed under iCab.  In short, extended unicode characters are not being displayed correctly.  For example:

 

BadUnicode.gif

 

  The problem, it turns out, is in this tag:

 

     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

 

  It needs to be changed to this:

 

     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

 

  Would you please fix this some time soon?

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It needs to be changed to this:

 

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

 

Would you please fix this some time soon?

Changed it. Thanks for finding the issue and recommending a fix! Fortunately I had some forethought and only had to change it in a couple places. Whew!

 

iCab is a browser I never heard of until yesterday. It comes up at the top of a web search.

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Here's something that I bet Jeremy could do fairly easily - let us upload a background image and "hook" it into the table cell on the left side - like this:

 

Sample Cache Listing

Something like that wouldn't be hard to implement with CSS. All GC.com would have to do is add a unique ID= to each HTML element that they are willing to allow us to change. Then we could use style sheet commands from within the cache page to change the style (add backgrounds, larger borders, etc) of those elements that have CSS IDs.

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It needs to be changed to this:

 

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">

 

  Would you please fix this some time soon?

Changed it. Thanks for finding the issue and recommending a fix! Fortunately I had some forethought and only had to change it in a couple places. Whew!

  Thanks, Jeremy.  Much better!

 

 

iCab is a browser I never heard of until yesterday. It comes up at the top of a web search.

  It's definitely my favorite browser.  I think what I like most about it is that it gives me a great deal of control over what sites are allowed to do what to me.  It lets me specify (using GREP patterns to match on URLs) what any given site, or any given part of any site, is allowed to do regarding cookies, Java, Javashi^H^H^Hcript, embedded objects, and such.  I don't think I've ever seen any other browser that offers such fine and detailed control of such things.

 

  It's also one of the faster and smaller browsers available for the Macintosh.

 

  Its downside is that it can be very picky, some times, and if any browser is going to break because a web site wasn't done exactly right, iCab is probably the one that'll break.  It's less tolerant of bad HTML than most other browsers are.  It's for this reason that I earlier said something to the effect that if you can get a web page to render correctly on iCab, and if it shows a green smiley face (meaning that it believes there are no errors in the HTML) then it will probably render correctly on just about any browser.

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Second comment:

It's a pity that visible background is now far less - this had contributed a lot to the cache "feeling"...

 

BS/2

Hmm... Good point. I may reduce the width to a lower percentage to allow more greenspace to show up. I was just trying to maximize the viewing area for smaller browsers.

Hope you go through with this soon. I know some people just have no taste when it comes to adding brackgrounds but I have used them as part of a puzzle cache and also kept the colour the same as the standard background so it blends in with the colour scheme used by gc.com. I don't mind fixing the colour but would like to see this changed back.

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