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Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug checks, for Cancer Connections

Terrafirma — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:27:28 GMT

A thread where we can float and discuss any ideas for improvements and fine tuning to Cancer Connections we may have, ask other members to check possible bugs we've encountered, etc. This thread is not designed to replace sending suggestions and bug reports to the administrators, but to shake out our ideas for improvements and clarify the source and nature of any problems we may experience with the site (eg whether the problem lies with the site or is at our end). Admins if you want to start an official thread on this topic maybe you could just transfer the posts here into it and delete this thread. Cheers, Ed.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Terrafirma — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:46:25 GMT

My preference would be for darker text in the forums and throughout the site - it's by a considerable margin too pale for my eyes. And the orange-colored text in the forums is also too pale for my eyes - I'd like to see a darker color used. If you have an opinion about text and font-related matters relating to Cancer Connections please do post it so we can (maybe) get a consensus. In today's world we need everything going for our eyes as they need to to an immense amount of reading and other close-in work over the course of our lives. I like the size of the text on the forums and throughout the site - I find it quite easy to read. Cheers, Ed.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

admin_one — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:12:33 GMT

Hi Ed, I am happy to use this thread as space for this type of comments. We will definitely have some things that might not work the best and can be improved and always bugs that we might have been missed during the user acceptance testing. Ed, Do you have a recommendation on the type of gray and/or orange that you think could work better?. Are you familiar with photoshop stuff? If you are able to tell me the hexadecimal code of the web safe colour you would prefer we can always give it a try. Look forward to hearing from you, Raul

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Nikki_YAC — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:10:42 GMT

good idea for changing the font colours you outlined, as these colours are a little hard to keep focused on for a period of time 🙂

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

jules_jp — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:43:14 GMT

Hi there everyone, I'm happy with the new look site. I am curious about the section in Profile/Personal info/About me, when I enter information there it doesn't seem to save. Unsure whether this is a bug or it is meant to be private and not visible to public. Let me know what you think.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Terrafirma — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:00:18 GMT

Hi Misti, I don't know the answer but here's a suggestion. Go to Profile/Personal info/About me and make a change to your About me, and click on Save. Then log out, go to the home page and log in and click on People at the top of the home page. On the new page that displays you should see among other things your "About me". If the change you made to your About me was successfully saved it should appear there. When I followed that sequence of events (at about 620am Thursday 19th Adelaide time) the change I made was successfully saved. Totocol will have a much better understanding of whether there's a problem and what the cause may be than I do. Cheers, Ed.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

admin_one — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:29:00 GMT

Hi Misti, Interesting. I have not heard to feedback from anyone else. Just also on Ed's question, have you pressed saved at the end of the page when you add your personal information?. You should get a message saying your changes have been saved. Then they should be visible on your profile and on the people tab. Let me know, Raul

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

jules_jp — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:02:27 GMT

Okay, I will try completing About me info & save again. I will let you know if its working for me. Can you see it in my profile (ie is it public)?

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

admin_one — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:04:29 GMT

Hi misti, The "about me" field is public.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

jules_jp — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:09:51 GMT

Thanks - I think one of the * fields was blank, the info is there now.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

admin_one — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:11:30 GMT

Hi Misti, Glad to hear it is working now. Take care.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Terrafirma — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:09:29 GMT

Raul and everyone hi, My impression is that the website generally, including the forum, is beautifully set out - spacious, not cluttered, easy to find items on the pages. It's a work of art! And I really like the font - I don't know what its name is as I don't seem to have one that matches it on my computer (by font I mean eg "Times New Roman" - I hope that's what the term font means to readers of this post). It's probably better than ANY font I have on my computer. It just needs darkening. I only have experience with simple webpage construction and free webpage editors such as Netscape Composer (and have never buit any website as complex as Cancer Connections). I'm not familiar with photoshop. The free webpage editors I use have facilities to choose the font colour from a rainbow spectrum, so I imagine photoshop has similar text colour selection. My suggestion to to experiment with dark navy blue or purple - something of that nature, or simply a darker version of the colour you are currently using. My feeling is that orange should be replaced as a text colour throughout the website, even if it's the team's favourite colour. It simply isn't dark enough against the pale background and I doubt if it can be made so, not for text anyway - it's not a colour that stands out sufficiently to the eye. I would replace it with a dark colour somewhere between dark blue, dark electric blue, dark navy blue or you could go round towards magenta, but not greens or reds or yellows. I test out text colours in an experimental file I open just for that purpose - I type or copy some text into it and then set the font to whatever I want my text font to be eg Arial and try out different colours, and when I find one that looks suitable I get the code for that colour by viewing the source code for the page. I emphasise again that I think the website including the forum is beautifully composed - I don't think you'll be needing to make many changes somehow :) These are my suggestions anyway. Cheers, Ed.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

admin_one — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:10:00 GMT

Hi Ed, Thanks for your nice comments. What do you think of this new darker gray?. Do you think it makes it easier to read and for longer periods? We are still debating a bit with the orange. Most links nowadays are either blue or orange but blue is one of the main colours in the background of the website (and one we cannot change)so there are areas where it might be an issue. At the moment the oranges are only present where there is a link. Orange is also on our branding guidelines. The other colour we can sue is yellow but I think that would be worst. What do you think Ed (Don't forget to click F5 to update the changes if the font colour looks the same next time you visit the site)?. Totocol

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Terrafirma — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:21:42 GMT

Hi Raul, Yes the new darker gray definitely makes it easier to read and for longer periods 🙂 That was really my chief concern, the orange being a secondary issue. I understand now about why the orange is there. Sounds like it would be best to stay with the orange and in the future it can always be changed if someone comes up with a suitable modification. A good thing about using orange is that it goes well with the blues in the pages whereas as you say there would be issues with using blue in place of orange. I hope others will post their opinions if they feel there are any eye or colour issues for them - we all have our preferences and I'm but one of the users. Cheers, Ed.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Terrafirma — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:53:16 GMT

I really like the "Our community Recently active community members" on the bottom of each page of Cancer Connections. This brings real people who are part of the Cancer Connections community onto every page of the site. I also like the groovy "your virtual face or picture" images one can choose when one is joining the community. Having those available for new members to select makes it really easy for people registering to choose an image quickly, and they can replace it with a photo of their choosing from their own computer at a later date if they wish. And on a lighter note, I haven't looked this cool for more years than I'd care to remember! Cheers, Ed.

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Nikki_YAC — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:42:52 GMT

Hi Raul, in the future, will there be a place on this website, or better still within our own profile that we can add and share things like our favourite photos, videos, music, books etc? if so how long before such features will be available? cheers nikki 🙂

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

admin_one — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:55:10 GMT

Hi Nikki, That is perfectly possible. The hard part is not the technical side but actually to decide how that could/would look like. Do you have a mental picture of how that could look like?. Maybe a page with an example of a site that does that very well?. For the videos own, I'd prefer not to host videos on our server so that it does not run slow but rather to embed youtube videos. What you need is to upload a video on Youtube and then you copy the code from it and post it in the appropriate place. For the music, where you thinking of having an actual link to the song or a review or what type of content? Look forward to hearing yours and everyone else's comments. Raul

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Nikki_YAC — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:17:59 GMT

Hi Raul, Its great that you think we can add some more creativey stuff and outlets for YACs. You tube sounds fine for the videos :) Maybe we could have a section on the YACs homepage that says 'Young Adult latest photos' and this could be a good place where any YAC can upload and share with the public images of themselves, or creative photos they might have taken, scanned art work etc etc. Planet Cancer.org have a pretty snazzy photo setup. They have a photo link on the main menu bar which opens into sections like 'All photos' 'My photos' 'All albumns etc'. Music i was thinking could be a more personal touch to be added to ones own profile... through a playlist application. Similar to what i have going on in my Planet Cancer homepage I hope some other YACs might have some better ideas on how these creative elements could look and work for us here 🙂

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

admin_one — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:03:06 GMT

Hello everyone, We have been having some discussions about how to best design the blogs homepage. At the moment, all the blog homepage is doing is listing the blog entries of the user. Have a look at my blog homepage http://www.cancerconnections.com.au/blog/totocol We want to make it much nicer than that as well as easier for everyone to find what they want and to do what you want. We would love to hear your ideas. My approach is that anything is possible so just let me know what would your ideal homepage would look like and then we can take it from there. Look forward to hearing your comments. Raul

Re: Suggestions for improvements and fine tuning, and bug ...

Terrafirma — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:52:33 GMT

Hi Raul, Re the blog home page, elsewhere I've seen the first half dozen or so lines of each blog entry displayed in addition to the title of the entry, eg see Nikki's home page on Planet Cancer at the link she's given in another post on this thread http://myplanet.planetcancer.org/profile/nikki This gives the blogger a chance to catch the eye of potential readers who might not otherwise visit the full blog entry, and potential readers a chance to assess whether it's a blog entry they may be interested in reading. I wonder if in our metric age "dozen" is fading from the language. "Fifteen to the dozen", "a baker's dozen", etc. Cheers, Ed.