I hope the aim will be to preserve the beautiful simplicity (and color scheme) of the current site. Honestly I don’t think it needs a graphic redesign at all.
The banner must represent the map and the territory. I’m sure there’s other imagery from the sequences that could be represented, possibly in rotation.
I just thought that people would be interested in the first reaction of a non-LW person to the site.
Edit: I totally want to bring that thread back from the dead and suggest ‘intentional rationalist’, but since it was two years ago it’s probably lots too late.
So I’d like to suggest the graphic redesign make LW a little more visually compact. It doesn’t have to be optimized for cellphones or as compact as a random page on http://www.gwern.net , but it’d be nice if it didn’t take 2 screens to see one permalinked comment.
I agree that the single comment view has more boilerplate up top, but otherwise I’d say it usually fits on screens without any trouble.
I was curious about your comment so I took a look at the screenshot. You say in the bug report that you’re using a “fairly small font” setting but the font is being rendered much larger for you than I see using default IE9 and FF4 settings. Plus your picture shows the page with a serif font while the CSS specifies sans-serif. I’m not sure if it’s a browser issue or if you’re using custom settings, but in a 1600x900 view (as your screenshot size is), I can see the full comment without scrolling.
Mostly I’d like to know if other people “take 2 screens to see one permalinked comment” because I agree that reasonably short comments should be visible without scolling.
You don’t know the (physical) pixel size of gwern’s display.
Personally, I can see the first 2 lines of a comment without scrolling; over 2/3rds of the visible space below the site logo is haphazardly filled with links and buttons. It would be nice if it could be reduced to just the main site header, the “You are viewing a comment permalink...” line, then the comment itself.
I hope the aim will be to preserve the beautiful simplicity (and color scheme) of the current site. Honestly I don’t think it needs a graphic redesign at all.
One of my friends took a quick look at this site a while ago, and said that it looked like a cartographer community because of the banner.
Edit—please disregard this post
The banner must represent the map and the territory. I’m sure there’s other imagery from the sequences that could be represented, possibly in rotation.
“Cartographer” was at one time considered as a synonym or replacement for “rationalist”.
I just thought that people would be interested in the first reaction of a non-LW person to the site.
Edit: I totally want to bring that thread back from the dead and suggest ‘intentional rationalist’, but since it was two years ago it’s probably lots too late.
Edit—please disregard this post
I disagree; the current site design is decent enough, but falls over in terms of fitting on screens. See my comments and screenshot in http://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/detail?id=240#c4
So I’d like to suggest the graphic redesign make LW a little more visually compact. It doesn’t have to be optimized for cellphones or as compact as a random page on http://www.gwern.net , but it’d be nice if it didn’t take 2 screens to see one permalinked comment.
I agree that the single comment view has more boilerplate up top, but otherwise I’d say it usually fits on screens without any trouble.
I was curious about your comment so I took a look at the screenshot. You say in the bug report that you’re using a “fairly small font” setting but the font is being rendered much larger for you than I see using default IE9 and FF4 settings. Plus your picture shows the page with a serif font while the CSS specifies sans-serif. I’m not sure if it’s a browser issue or if you’re using custom settings, but in a 1600x900 view (as your screenshot size is), I can see the full comment without scrolling.
Mostly I’d like to know if other people “take 2 screens to see one permalinked comment” because I agree that reasonably short comments should be visible without scolling.
You don’t know the (physical) pixel size of gwern’s display.
Personally, I can see the first 2 lines of a comment without scrolling; over 2/3rds of the visible space below the site logo is haphazardly filled with links and buttons. It would be nice if it could be reduced to just the main site header, the “You are viewing a comment permalink...” line, then the comment itself.
Oh, certainly, but I was referring to the aesthetic, not the code/layout.
Whatever graphic design changes are performed, users should be able to revert to something resembling the old layout.