Gaia, Centre The Gosh Darn Site!

Should GaiaOnline be centered?

Yes	40.7%	[ 79 ]
No	26.3%	[ 51 ]
Indifferent	33.0%	[ 64 ]
Total Votes:			[ 194 ]

[Freiflug]

That's one benefit of BetterGaia. Try it.

[Onicept]

Rasabon

No insult to your Photoshop skills, Valheita, but I think the site in the example is as ugly as hell. That is wasted space. It ruins the aesthetic of the site and makes nearly all of the screen empty grey. How is that supposed to be more appealing? (Again, it's the idea that I think is bad, not you or what you made.)

Oh, you want to talk about wasted space...

Mindset

panoptes

centering the site doesn't make less negative space, it just cuts in half

which is good from a composition point of view, but gaia is not a painting. if you want to maximise usable space, the solution would to make the forum widths a relative instead of a fixed value, to conform with any resolution that loads it

*nod* I generally prefer relative width sites when designing. The problem is that it just spreads out the content, and eyes traveling horizontally on high-resolution widescreens is a bit straining. A paragraph in the forums at 1024x768 could turn out to be one sentence half a page long at 2560x1600.

There should be some kind of happy medium. Mind you I always say users should fix their own content instead of waiting for something that may never come (and there are CSS adjusters for other browsers than Firefox), but... well.

You know, Gaia could just be text based? Why don't we just add everything else and not bug Gaia about it? Will that make the site any better? No.

Any site that uses a fixed width is usually centred, that includes the entire site, both when posting, viewing content and the forums, not both. I'm sitting here at a resolution of 1440x900 (I could be an a** and stretch the site across my dual monitors) with a blank space the size of the posting box itself on the right-hand side of my screen.

More or less, anything I set up in BB Code is NEVER going to look like it should do, because what is fixed when I post it, is stretched in the final submitted message.

When a site is stretched, it makes use of the space it has. It doesn't left align the whole thing.

[Lady_Threnody]

I remember when one of the old layouts centered the entire thing (and I didn't nor have a wide screen either). I loved it that part of it. Hopefully they do change it like that again.

"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent."
~Walt Kelly
[ No, you can't use my tribal images. ]

[Mr Bats Made of Bats]

Rasabon

I'm afraid I don't understand. Maybe it's because my monitor isn't fancy? Mine is 17 inches, which I thought was pretty big (for a laptop, at least). Gaia looks well-spaced to me, while the image you've linked to has huge gaps of wasted grey space on either side of the small, cramped box in the middle. That's what you want it to look like? Why?

I have to agree with Rasabon here. I have a 1600x900 monster and I don't notice a glaring amount of white space. On the centered layout, I notice a distracting amount of blank space so I don't think I'd like it.

Valheita is right when s/he says paragraphs look stupid when it looks like they only have one line, though.

[Onicept]

Captain Seto Kaiba

Rasabon

I'm afraid I don't understand. Maybe it's because my monitor isn't fancy? Mine is 17 inches, which I thought was pretty big (for a laptop, at least). Gaia looks well-spaced to me, while the image you've linked to has huge gaps of wasted grey space on either side of the small, cramped box in the middle. That's what you want it to look like? Why?

I have to agree with Rasabon here. I have a 1600x900 monster and I don't notice a glaring amount of white space. On the centered layout, I notice a distracting amount of blank space so I don't think I'd like it.

Oh, that's because most of the time it's a pinkish-white. Oh yeah, by the way, if you happened to look towards the right hand side, you'd notice even more blank space than you do on a centred site.

Doing it wrong.

Doing it right.

[Mr Bats Made of Bats]

Onicept

Captain Seto Kaiba

Rasabon

I'm afraid I don't understand. Maybe it's because my monitor isn't fancy? Mine is 17 inches, which I thought was pretty big (for a laptop, at least). Gaia looks well-spaced to me, while the image you've linked to has huge gaps of wasted grey space on either side of the small, cramped box in the middle. That's what you want it to look like? Why?

I have to agree with Rasabon here. I have a 1600x900 monster and I don't notice a glaring amount of white space. On the centered layout, I notice a distracting amount of blank space so I don't think I'd like it.

Oh, that's because most of the time it's a pinkish-white. Oh yeah, by the way, if you happened to look towards the right hand side, you'd notice even more blank space than you do on a centred site.

Doing it wrong.

Doing it right.

Ohhhh I see what you mean now. Centering it wouldn't be such a bad idea, I suppose.

[Onicept]

Captain Seto Kaiba

Onicept

Captain Seto Kaiba

Rasabon

I'm afraid I don't understand. Maybe it's because my monitor isn't fancy? Mine is 17 inches, which I thought was pretty big (for a laptop, at least). Gaia looks well-spaced to me, while the image you've linked to has huge gaps of wasted grey space on either side of the small, cramped box in the middle. That's what you want it to look like? Why?

I have to agree with Rasabon here. I have a 1600x900 monster and I don't notice a glaring amount of white space. On the centered layout, I notice a distracting amount of blank space so I don't think I'd like it.

Oh, that's because most of the time it's a pinkish-white. Oh yeah, by the way, if you happened to look towards the right hand side, you'd notice even more blank space than you do on a centred site.

Doing it wrong.

Doing it right.

Ohhhh I see what you mean now. Centering it wouldn't be such a bad idea, I suppose.

I think about 70% of the responders to this thread didn't see what I meant at all. I don't think they know what an alignment is either.

Oh yeah, on the whole "fancy" thing. I love how I can waltz in and buy a "fancy" monitor for $70. Don't you?

[Mr Bats Made of Bats]

Onicept

I think about 70% of the responders to this thread didn't see what I meant at all. I don't think they know what an alignment is either.

Oh yeah, on the whole "fancy" thing. I love how I can waltz in and buy a "fancy" monitor for $70. Don't you?

I bet many people would love that. :O

[Aerobe]

I had a issue with the white as well when I got a laptop.
My laptop is widescreen and the white really bothered me.
Especially since I have sensitivity to the brightness. (Even with my settings pretty low the white bothered me because there was so much of it.)
Luckily I use Firefox and the BetterGaia fixed my issue. Not only is everything in the center but the boxes aren't so big. So my posts, as well as others, don't look so retarded. BetterGaia is also darker. That helped me tons and I love how I get to choose a different background. As of right now this is what the Post a Reply page looks like for me. I love it. Absolutely love it.

I have been told that if you use Flock you can also use BetterGaia. I haven't tested this myself so I don't know if it's true.

It's quite pathetic that a lot of us are resorting to a add-on to make gaia look how it really should look.

[Mr Bats Made of Bats]

I noticed a lot of people have been recommending BetterGaia but when I downloaded it a couple minutes ago the menus would flicker, making it nearly impossible to navigate the site. It's definitely not an end-all solution, especially for people who don't use Firefox.

[Djubre]

I love it how the majority of people in this thread are totally set in their ignorant preferences all because "I have a small monitor, why would I want the layout to change when it fits perfectly now and would look exactly the same if it was centered on my machine?".

Idiocy, supreme idiocy.

Look, it's logic. Not everyone has a widescreen monitor at the present. Gaia loves to future-proof themselves. In the future, widescreen monitors will be cheaper and thus more people will buy widescreen monitors.

(Don't tell me the logic doesn't make sense, I recently upgraded from a 15.4" laptop to a 1920 X 1200 24" monitor and my productivity levels for assignments, commissions and just general work have shot through the roof in ways I thought I'd never see--other people surely know the benefits of working with a larger screen.)

So in order for Gaia to future-proof themselves, they will want to do something to the layout that makes it wider or centers it for the dozens of different screen resolutions available right now. On my monitor at the moment, this reply box takes up about half the page. The other half is white space, and the gaia-bar at the top of my screen that goes across the whole page.

I was experimenting with CSS on an assignment and found you can assign percentages to widths, so maybe Gaia should go about doing that so that things like reply boxes are decently-sized for those with better monitors. Like... 80% instead of my current 50% of screen real-estate being taken up. That way, it doesn't intrude that much on users with smaller resolutions, while it provides a big advantage to the users who are more up-to-date with things hardware-wise.

Just remember what Bill Gates said about main memory "back in the day" :
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, 1981

edit: I don't really care about the look of the forums, since it stretches out and that's good. But things like inboxes, reply boxes and so on.. Well, let's just say I've started to develop a kink in my spine from leaning so far left because I'm a Gaia addict and it's just more convenient to always be leaning left as I'm browsing through forums and replying lol

[muletokV2]

Aerobe

It's quite pathetic that a lot of us are resorting to a add-on to make gaia look how it really should look.

Everybody has a different opinion on how Gaia "should" look. Who are you to make that call? neutral

[Sentry Elite]

Onicept

Sentry Elite

Onicept

Doodle-Sama

..........Yes I am a COMPLETE idiot..........

✏I agree with MagicalMeowe...
I don't want the site centered...

..........I'm weird and proud of it! I have never licked a tree.......... >w>;

Yes, the 2 pics are links, links to the kind of stuff that makes me laugh. I have a sick sense of humor. ^w^

Yes, but for what reason?

Probably for a similar reason as yours: Personal preference or whatever you want to call it.

I wasn't aware some people preferred 20cm of white space on their monitor.

Wow, that's a self centered (lol) perspective.

[Mintea Drops]

I have a mac with a widescreen, but mac has the ability to zoom in on pages so I don't have a centering problem. That and I downloaded bettergaia. (Which I wholly recommend for customization purposes, not just centering.)

On the whole though I think Gaia would look better if they centered the site. Blank space is ugly, which is why I zoom in on all pages I go to on any site because I hate it so much. (a plus for mac users. <3)

[Breakability]

I'm amazed that people don't care about other peoples' opinions simply because the issue doesn't affect them. -_-

Anyway, I agree. I get a TON of white space and I only havea 15" monitor on my laptop. My desktop monitor is older and can't handle a higher resolution.

I'd love for the site to be centered. It wouldn't change a thing for the people who like it the way it is, and it'll make it look better for those of us with bigger monitors.