Well, I may try and learn GreaseMonkey this week. I'd like to make the actions column capable of disappearing until you actually needed it.

Also, maybe replicate the bread crumbs an the "Up to Discussions ..." to the bottom of the page.

I have no idea how easy/hard that is though. One reason I like Stylish is that it was a piece of cake by comparison to what a GM script looks like!

GreaseMonkey script to allow Show/Hide of ACTIONS sidebar is up!

Instructions

1. Download & install GreaseMonkey if you haven't done so already.
   
2. Get the script from userscripts.org. (Click the Install button once you're there.)
3. That's it, you should now see a little bit of text over the Actions Sidebar that says "Show|Hide ACTIONS". Click as desired.

Caveats

• It only works with FF3.
• You have to install GreaseMonkey to use it.
• You can enable/disable it using the little monkey icon in the bottom right corner of the window.
• It does remember your current state, but on some pages it can take a while to activate (it runs only after the page is fully loaded, alas.)

Hope this helps others,

Eric. (aka heavyboots)

I'm all for usability tweaks.  The problem with them is they tend to be VERY browser-centric.

It's the Jive Geniuses that need to fix what I still consider a space-wasting monstrosity.

OOPS! An apology and a correction:  I stated above that Firefox users will have to restart their browsers to have Eric's GreaseMonkey scripts fully take effect.  I was wrong. The scripts Eric has written work right away. I was basing my statement on limited experience I'd had with a couple other scripts awhile back that DID require a quit & relaunch to work.  And sorry, I don't have a clue why there would be a difference in behaviors.

FYI everyone,

New Stylish style to expand the "Where" selection list area in the "More Options" of Search.

http://userstyles.org/styles/17180

This one is courtesy of Mark A Boyd. I'm just hosting it for him.

Thanks, Mark!

Thanks Eric & you're welcome, Ramón

I thought about creating an account and uploading my versions, but decided it would be easier for all if they're all in one place. And gool ole heavyboots already has a good collection going

I've not tried the tweaks, and I think it's great that you guys are working on them, BUT ...

why do we users have to go through so much just to *use* this forum?

Well, I totally agree that the situation is not optimum!

But when they went through the beta and relaunch with almost the exact same design elements (plus some feedback during the beta indicating the designers were against full-width browsing), my spidey sense started tingling and I realized it could be a looooong time before the Official Fix got released by Adobe.

Since it is nigh on impossible to read code crushed into the tiny fixed width + I had some time + I wanted to learn GreaseMonkey + I had just been doing CSS for a couple weeks so it was fresh in my head, I carpe'd some diem and wrote what I did. And others have joined in too, so now we've got quite the little collection going.

But you're right, this behavior is more in line with constructing a camp site out of bits of wreckage while you wait for rescue than the smooth sailing we were all hoping for.

Eric @ MCA posted another Stylish for me. This one expands the Private Message text editor to 300px height instead of the tiny 116px.

http://userstyles.org/styles/17577

I know many of you prefer a smaller editor here in the forums, but I found the PM version too small. (I don't really want to mess with the regular editor since they're supposedly working on getting the "sticky" feature to stick.)

[Edit]

Just a friendly reminder to to turn off all of these tweaks before giving feedback on the appearance or performance of the forum.

Not sure about tweaks, but this post is about usability.

What moron decided that the little X to close an attachement should go in the upper left corner, when every other Windows application puts it into upper right? Is that a Mac thing?

D. McCahill wrote:

 

Not sure about tweaks, but this post is about usability.

 

What moron decided that the little X to close an attachement should go in the upper left corner, when every other Windows application puts it into upper right? Is that a Mac thing?

We're in a Windows application? That would explain a lot. Positioning the close button top left is one of the few things this forum gets right I'd be very unhappy to see it on the wrong side.

So you're fine with it on the left and you think Don's a big silly billy for making a fuss, is that what you're saying?

@Bob & Don - Yes.

Zeno Bokor wrote:

 

who cares where it is? just click in the image and it closes it. My problem with that popup is that it takes longer to load than just opening the image in a new tab and on large images you don't get a 100% view but it still loads the whole image

Agreed.

Zeno Bokor wrote:

 

who cares where it is?

I care. I started in computers when every application was different, and you had to manually think about how to save, print, edit, copy, etc., with every program. Lotus was different than WordPerfect, and so on, and so on. Sure, it only takes me a half second to move my mouse from the top right, where it instinctively goes to the top left, once I realize I am in a brain-dead piece of software. But multiply that half second by the number of times in a day it happens, and by the number of users, and the time lost becomes sufficient.

Apple invented (or popularized, they didn't invent much) the concept of consistent user interfaces, and were making big inroads into Microsoft, causing Gates to move to the Windows platform, which also had a consistent user interface. Which makes me glad, because I don't want to go back to the myriad of different ways to do common tasks.

Kath-H wrote:

 

Some of us are Mac users. Deal with it.

Yup, about 50-60% of the users and buyers of the applications in the Creative Suites, as a matter of fact.

Zeno Bokor wrote:

 

care to give a link to prove that?

Recent statement by John Nack on his blog*, and Microsoft's own numbers.

*[Hang on: no one talked about the Mac representing 1/10th of Adobe's business. Last time I checked, Creative Suite sales were roughly 50/50 Mac/Win. … --J.]      —March 4, 2009.

*  http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/02/optional_plugin.html

Ramón G Castañeda wrote:

 

Kath-H wrote:

 

Some of us are Mac users. Deal with it.

 

 

Yup, about 50-60% of the users and buyers of the applications in the Creative Suites, as a matter of fact.

Totally OT to this thread, but if this is true then why the heck did they move all the stupid panel close buttons to the right-hand side in CS3?!? Now *that* is something that annoys me (and which would seem imminently fixable).

I predict no attempt will ever be made to fix Don's issue because it's too much of a pain for the web designer to try and figure out what OS you are on and spawn a different close box position based on that.

I didn't make it into the ID/PS/AI testing until something like 5 days before CS4 testing closed up and went golden master so I don't think I ever managed to get around to bug reporting that one...