Ars Technica’s redesign, summarized in two comments

The comments were posted at the same time.

Frank probably made his post in response, but it’s still kind of impressive he got it in when he did, given the article got over 40 pages of comments in about 24 hours.

Myself, I’m using List View now instead of the main Grid view. My issues reflect a lot of what others are saying:

  • Too much white space (and I see even less of it, since I subscribe and the design takes into account the now-unused ad space), which means a lot more scrolling and a lot less visible content.
  • Article headers are way too big, both font size and image.
  • The Grid view commits a huge faux pas by showing a large block of black with white text on it…when you select the Light theme. Not only is this illogical, it’s a legit accessibility issue. Light themes should be light.
  • Images in circles are small and not particularly easy to scan, which is overall minor.

I knew there would be griping a-plenty when the article about the redesign talked about updating to current design trends (which in many ways are bad and user-hostile). We’ll see where it ends up as they tweak, but history suggests it will be mostly as is and people will just get used to it.

Here’s the Grid view, as seen on the front page (click to see full-size):

That is a lot of dark for a light theme.

The headers on articles in Light view are still dark, too:

This is a 1780×1140 window.

Also, note that despite having my browser window set to 1780×1140 (not counting the address bar, etc.) I have to scroll just to start reading the article text. This seems suboptimal.

We’ll see how it evolves over the next few weeks. I’ll post an update if I remember!

I love and hate puzzles (database edition)

A few months ago the cherished if somewhat moribund forum for the Martian Cartel, the gaming group I’ve been part of since 1999 (!) went down with a database error. Since the forum gets little traffic these days it wasn’t a high priority for me to figure out what happened.

Tonight I finally decided to have a look. This is where the puzzle begins.

I am a database expert in the same way a doorstop is an excellent brain surgeon. My cursory appraisal confirmed the database was still there. Whether it was repairable or mangled beyond recognition I could not tell.

I had a Xenforo license kicking around so decided to install it and then attempt to import the vBulletin database from the old forum, a feature Xenforo handily supports.

Don’t be fooled into thinking I managed any of this with any sort of grace or intelligence. I bumbled around a fair bit, battling errors both obscure and infuriating. In the end the import completed without error. It also completed very quickly and with little data imported. I did a check and found the following:

  • 0 subforums imported
  • 0 messages imported
  • 3 users imported

Well, the three users was something, at least. I checked them out and found one of them was me (yay) and the other two were spam accounts from 2012.

The year seems appropriate, somehow.

As of now I have a functioning if spartan Xenforo forum with a bunch of non-existent data imported from the downed database. It doesn’t seem like much given the hours I spent on this.

It was kind of fun working on it when I solved one dilemma and moved onto the next. It’s less fun to have nothing useful at the end to show for it.

But I have not given up yet! I have merely gone to bed. For now.

Mysterious Adobe offering

After being prompted to update Adobe Flash Player (this is the patch that makes it fun slightly more secure), the Adobe website redirected me to this page:

Adobe mystery product
Like a polar bear in a snowstorm.

You know, I just can’t say if I am interested in this product. Seems a little spartan.