Get a glimpse of the future (grm.com sneak peek)

For a while we have been saying, Hey, an update for the GRM website is coming.

First, though, we wanted to get the Classic Motorsports redone. It also needed a facelift. While no website can ever be considered complete, the Classic Motorsports site cleared one of the big hurdles today: mobile optimization. As you shrink your browser window, the site automatically resizes to fit. Cool, huh? With all of the tablets and phones on today's market, we figured that we needed to accommodate them with more than a stripped-down mobile site. Unfortunately that step required a ton of work on the back end.

That means our next big project is the GRM site. The redo is in the early stages, but a lot of the features found on the Classic site will migrate here. Hopefully that makes it easier to find content and stuff.

And yes, the Classic redo includes several anti-spam measures.

Very, very nice on both a normal PC and an Android smartphone. I like the menu bar thing kind of looking like a classic bar speedometer.

Nice work - responsive design is the way to go these days. Maintaining two different sites is a PITA.

I'll be honest, the new CM website LOOKS GREAT, in a cosmetic sense. But 2 inches of blank space on the left, and another 3 inches of the sidebar of a few article links and sponsor logos, and then blank all the way to the bottom below that. So for most of the page, the left 40% of the screen has....nothing on it. The forum (the part where I want to read things and look at photos) is so narrow and off-center on the page, if feels un-natural to look at, like I have my browser on split-screen or something (yeah, I still do computer things on a laptop)...

I know you guys have to make it work for smartphones and stuff, but wouldn't there be a way to have a couple different screen settings? I haven't seen this problem on the many other forums (mostly vBulletin) I'm on, and they work fine on both smartphones and computers.

There was some debate here, too, but we found the narrower column simply easier to read.

irish44j wrote: I'll be honest, the new CM website LOOKS GREAT, in a cosmetic sense. But 2 inches of blank space on the left, and another 3 inches of the sidebar of a few article links and sponsor logos, and then blank all the way to the bottom below that. So for most of the page, the left 40% of the screen has....nothing on it. The forum (the part where I want to read things and look at photos) is so narrow and off-center on the page, if feels un-natural to look at, like I have my browser on split-screen or something (yeah, I still do computer things on a laptop)... Granted the screen can be zoomed to center the forum text, but then it's in print big enough for my blind grandmother to read :) I know you guys have to make it work for smartphones and stuff, but wouldn't there be a way to have a couple different screen settings? I haven't seen this problem on the many other forums (mostly vBulletin) I'm on, and they work fine on both smartphones and computers.

I'm with this guy. Each thread is like 1.5 inchs tall for me. That means everytime I click latest topics I'm going to have 414 pages of new topics. I love GRM and all, but my attention span wont last that long (says the guys who has gone through 80 pages of the hotlink thread in one sitting).

Hmmm. It shouldn't look that weird. Our IT guys are coming to visit tomorrow. The more specifics you can give me, the better an answer I can get from them.

ok, here's the index view and a random thread view. Screen settings are standard Chrome (looks the same on IE and Firefox, btw), and all my other forums look normal.

Looks like that on Safari too, and I'm not loving it either. Seems like a waste of space. On this forum it's almost full screen width. The rest of the site looks pretty clean though.

Does not work on my Safari- stuff overlaps other stuff- especially headers. On the iphone it looks fantastic.

In reply to irish44j:

Yup, same on my latest Firefox on PC. Reminds me of sites that decided to format for the lowest common denominator of screen sizes years ago, so you got 640x480 no matter what size monitor you had. Welcome to 1999.

I never understood the difference with the stretching of the forum text here (GRM) and no stretching on CM. I figured the CM guys are old farts and are still using 4:3 CRT.

Chrome doesn't like it. If I knew how to do a screen print, I would.

The masthead is blank, the links are hard to see and oddly placed, lots of empty space, etc.

That's my complaint, too.....the narrow forum causes all the pictures to be tiny, and leaves a lot of wasted space on the right. I'm so used to using chrome that it never occurred to me that this could be browser specific

I just sent this to Joey via e-mail but figured I'd share it here, too:

True, the photos are a little smaller. But the text is easier to read--much easier. That's why magazine and newspaper columns are only so wide. There's a limit to how much width is considered to be comfortable. Go too wide, and the page becomes tiring to read. Look at cnn.com, and you'll see similar column widths.

Bludroptop, our web guys will be here shortly. I'll ask about Chrome.

I'm sure we'll discuss column width, too, but based on what we saw during the development stages, we're happier with the narrower format.

Thanks for the feedback.

bludroptop wrote: Chrome doesn't like it. If I knew how to do a screen print, I would. The masthead is blank, the links are hard to see and oddly placed, lots of empty space, etc.

If you're on a PC hit the Print Screen button top right of your keyboard, it copies the whole screen to the clipboard. Go into any photo editor and paste it to a new photo.

Just to add: the current GRM screens are already much narrower than most of the other forums out there, it seems to me. I've never heard anyone complain that any of the biggest car forums out there are tiring to read due to the screen width (mostly, they are tiring because of the stupidity...).

I think the current GRM format is pretty good in that respect. YMMV.

Look, stop complaining about a free service. You've made your recommendations, let them decide whether to act upon them or you know maybe post in the Feedback forum where it belongs.

Sheesh, some of you would complain if you were hung with a new rope.

turboswede wrote: Look, stop complaining about a free service. You've made your recommendations, let them decide whether to act upon them or you know maybe post in the Feedback forum where it belongs. Sheesh, some of you would complain if you were hung with a new rope.

Look, stop complaining about other people posting their polite opinions and constructive comments on an internet discussion forum, especially if you're just going to post cliche' internet memes as your contribution.

What's cool is right now the GRM forums are showing up on the Classic Motorsport side. Or maybe they always do that. This is what I get:

1920x1080

It looks nice. Please make the left panel stick to the left and the content stretch with the right side of the browser window. We are not all reading this at 1024x768. I'd like to use the whole 36" display, not just the middle third.

If you must reinvent the wheel by rolling your own forum software for the love of all that's holy... please don't hard code widths in your stylesheets just to make it easy on the template/image guys.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: I'd like to use the whole 36" display,

you = baller

irish44j wrote:

turboswede wrote: Look, stop complaining about a free service. You've made your recommendations, let them decide whether to act upon them or you know maybe post in the Feedback forum where it belongs. Sheesh, some of you would complain if you were hung with a new rope.

Look, stop complaining about other people posting their polite opinions and constructive comments on an internet discussion forum, especially if you're just going to post cliche' internet memes as your contribution.

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