UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Suggestions and Feedback Wanna play?

I hate to be a wet blanket, especially with all of the work that MTO has put into this, but here is my $0.02 (perhaps worth far less than that).

First, I think this sudden effort to move everything along the "top" instead of the "side" is misguided. Reasons:
1) Narrow screen users have far bigger problems than W3T
I use a relatively narrow browser window--narrow enough that I am often irritated by having to scroll horizontally to read text on many popular sites that use fixed-width tables for formatting []/w3timages/icons/frown.gif[/]. I've never felt that there was any need for more room horizontally in W3T's side view. People who feel W3T is too cramped horizontally probably have no hope of tolerating half of the pages on the web. It's time to give up and buy new hardware (sorry to be harsh).
2) Most sites have dead space in the left margin
Many sites have some sort of navigation bar on the left which eats a column of space similar in size to the "side heading" in W3T. If people find the "side heading" leaves too little space to the right they are (again) probably dissatisfied with most of the pages on the web.
3) It is more comfortable to read text that isn't too wide.
People have done studies that show humans can read text best if it isn't too wide or too narrow. To me, these "top" headings leave the body text looking too wide, and hence less readable than the "side" headings.
4) Top headings create a large gap between messages.
To me, the headings seem to disrupt the flow when you are reading. They take far too much vertical space (especially with user pics).

Regarding MTO's B8 which people seem to like, the fact that there is no horizontal line or color variation between the "Posted by" section and the body makes it hard for my eye to find the beginning of the body text. I think MTO's samples show some improvement over the current "top" headings, but I like the current "side" better than all of them (maybe I am whacked).

Now, to try and be more constructive... If people really want to avoid the space waste along the left side width "side" headings, here is my suggestion. Instead of creating a heading that has large vertical size (mostly needed to accomodate the user pic), how about a smaller heading and move the user pic inside the body. Use the usual <img> alignment settings to push it to the upper right corner and let the text flow around it (instead of getting dead or hard to use space to the left). Put the post icons along the lower right of the body and the signature to the lower left (i.e. limit the width of the signature and put the sig and icons into different columns of the same table). Most signatures are pretty small anyway, so icons should be able to fit to the right.

Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free feeds for your site.