I altered my view of Buy&Sell listings, and thought people might like to see it. Changes made to the main table: item/seller columns swapped for tighter proximity, tweaked text alignment, changed cell padding so content looks good at any font size, used the longer form of item description, made table wider. I also dropped the "LED" status display, but that's just me.
Click HERE for the full (canned) HTML. The effects are implemented via CSS statements starting on line 713.
Hmmm, not for me. While I'm very open to changes, I don't really like your particular version ...the single biggest issue for me is that I really rather have the ad listings on the left hand column (with or without the LED display). I read (as most people) from left to right first. The way you have it set up, the number of posts, views, and member info is all very distracting when scanning for the actual equipment. Your version may work better as a general data table but that''s NOT what the B&S forum is...it's a listing of ads and the ad info is the primary item that should be on the left (where a reader's eyes will naturally gravitate to)
omarlyn wrote:
Hmmm, not for me. While I'm very open to changes, I don't really like your particular version ...the single biggest issue for me is that I really rather have the ad listings on the left hand column (with or without the LED display). I read (as most people) from left to right first. The way you have it set up, the number of posts, views, and member info is all very distracting when scanning for the actual equipment. Your version may work better as a general data table but that''s NOT what the B&S forum is...it's a listing of ads and the ad info is the primary item that should be on the left (where a reader's eyes will naturally gravitate to)
So, the number of posts and the views are more important than the item selling??
I feel a little sad you removed the "LED" status. That was a lot of work!
Hi, Fred! Yes, that article goes back a few years. The fish is still on my shelf, but I haven't shot it recently.
Thanks for the feedback, folks. The LED display is less useful to me because I have a database-driven filter to select all items of interest for display (database has 86000 entries covering the last six months). In matters of layout, the left edge is a natural starting point - for occidental readers at least. When scanning vertically, however, the most efficient scheme is placing the leading edge of interest in the middle of the page. This allows two primary columns of information, one on the right of the leading edge, and one on the left. For me, those primary columns are item description and item seller. While both columns are commonly aligned to the leading edge for maximum compactness, I chose to leave the seller left-adjusted because it is fairly short in length. The LED display, being fixed-width and even shorter, could be injected right into the leading edge with insignificant loss of scanning efficiency. So speaks the pedant.
P.S. I can construct such a demo if interest exists.
YMMV, but given that I read this on a full-sized display,
the "text efficiency" has no value to me;
whereas having the key info (what's for sale/trade/...)
at the left, with those neat bright status indicators (!),
is helpful.
But, hmmm, for someone reading on a compact device,
would they care to have such left-side info as you put
there, anyway (more efficient, but still what will be first
displayed pending a scroll rightwards) ?!
