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Welcome to Workspace!

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by Jay Garmon 1 view

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136 replies

by beth blakely

That's so interesting to hear. I never would have thought about it that way... (Mostly because I yak more than I link.)

I have noticed that many TR members use their blog space as a sort of "link storage with notes". If that's what you're after, then Workspace and Projects is going to be far more efficient for that purpose. It will save you research time (by showing you lots of offerings that meet your interests) and it's designed to help you save the link with notes. Voila!

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

by charliespencer

This children's magazine was published in black ink on pastel green paper. Each issue included a paragraph below the table of contents. It described how research had been done showing these colors were the most comfortable for long-term reading.

I believe the same publisher had a couple other publications printed the same way.

by oz_media

MacDonalds uses red and yellow because they are the most appealing to small children, could you imagine WORKING there though?

Too much blue, ick!

by hal 9000

They tried to get me to sign up for a 200 MEG download to which I just replied that I get more e-mail that that a month. :^O

Of course they didn't mention anything about the 10 GIG ceiling when I setup the account here but even then I only got that because of the Election last year as I offered the Communications Minister to tell just how great the phone service was here. It was a major election issue at the time and I'm in the heart of the city and couldn't get anything better than a split phone line with half speed Dial Up. :(

It was so painfully slow I was going nuts and while the 512 KBS is a marked improvement I still go into some of the places that I do work for and use their Cable connection to download the bigger files it's just so much faster. :D

Actually they no longer send me warnings e-mails that I've exceeded 8 GIG as I do that in the first week or so normally I've just had a look at my net usage and there hasn't been a single month where I've downloaded less that 20 GIG and it's normally up around the 30 GIG mark. ;)

Just the 15 Cd's for Debian pushes me well over the 10 GIG mark and that is without any e-mail or web browsing not to mention playing at TR. But on the upside I've never actually uploaded more than 500 MEG. :D

Col ]:)

by Jay Garmon

You're getting white papers on improving your presentation skills. Since you guys mentioned it, we've been seeing these show up everywhere for reasons unknown. Something about our algorithm is making them match...well...everything.

On the off chance something else is showing up, let me know.

by jaqui

5 3d graphics community users will use that a day.
thier hosted sites will have 30 gigs of data transfer per day, so 30 a month is nothing.

and yup col, a lot of these people are down under. thier sites are us based though, where getting higher data transfer is easier.
( wholesale oc3 connections require a minimum of 200 gigs a month. )
:D

by jaqui

I'm not getting those.

I'm getting suggestions where, while they might not fit perfectly, aren't far off the interests. ~g~

by Jay Garmon

If we really are able to pull of a full CSS revision of TR next year, we've toyed with the idea of multiple available stylesheets, so you can select different color schemes and adjust font sizes. I doubt we'd go so far as a user-designed stylesheet, but we'd certainly let trusted users submit and suggest stylesheets for us to consider. If you guys reallya re passionate about this kind of option, let us know, so we can factor that into our planning.

by jaqui

as being for it.

I even preffer what poser pros has done for halloween this year, black gold and orange, to thier phpbb site over the blinding, eye searing white background.

by oz_media

While I have also designed several dozen black themed sites, this isn't heavy metal or gothic dreams, in all fairness we need colour and some clarity, there's just TOO MUCH damn colour on the new pages and it's all the SAME colour.

by jamesrl

in their head after seeing that colour scheme? "Paint it Black" ran through my head.

I find black backgrounds challenging to read.

James

by oz_media

I agree that many black themed sites are horrendous to read, sometimes it's easier to just highlight all the copy and read white text on a green highlighted background. The worst has got to be BLUE text on black, White and red work well, but the font size has to be big enough. I think with the font size of TR articles and posts it would be awful to have black backgrounds.

I think the white panels work here because there are grey borders, but all that blue in the new title bars and buttons is just too much I think.

by charliespencer

I almost clicked on that link, then my little voice screamed, "DON'T DO THAT!!!!".

I'm positive the results would have caused me to claw my eyes from my head with the nearest available ice cream scoop.

by wayne m.

I may be showing my age, but I found the terminology confusing. Consider replacing the terms "Interests" in Profile, "Projects", and "Tags" in Project with "Search Criteria."

I don't know if this is how the current, public interface works, but I never drew the connection that the phrases I entered in Interests would affect what I see in the main displays. This may explain some of the frustration I feel with the existing interface when trying to find new articles.

If the user interface is going to be driven by key terms or tags, I would recommend that a standard list of terms be presented. This provides a known baseline to organize articles and means for searching for a genre of articles.

If my understanding of what the new interface provides is correct, then simply replacing some labels would add a great deal of clarity.

by charliespencer

Until I read the response to master3bs, I didn't know the Interests and Current Tech entries did anything but provide information to someone checking out my profile. A "starter set" of tags would be helpful.

I reread the FAQ on tags this week, but I still don't have a grasp on tag entries that will effectively tailor information to my preferences. I don't want a laundry list in my profile and wind up getting articles I'm not interested in. Some of the links in Suggestions show tags (why not all?), but they rarely match the entries in either my Projects or my Profile. It would be helpful for any entry in Suggestions to show exactly what caused it to appear: a Project tag, Profile Interest, discussion joined, blog tag, question answered, etc. That way we'd know why an uninteresting suggestion appeared, and we could make changes to prevent future irrelevant entries.

by smorty71

Perhaps a list of "Tags matched" under each item. Or maybe the matching tags are highlighted from within the list of all tags for that item.

by smorty71

You make a great point. I definitely think we could do more to clarify how the functionality works. In addition to labels, it may be as easy as adding a line of explanatory text in a few places.

For example:

"Suggestions are powered by the interests in your profile and content you consume on the site"

Maybe that would clear up how it works and how you can influence the results?

by oz_media

Many ISP's offer "Unlimited Access" now, Unlimited Access does not mean unlimited up & down traffic, just that there is no restriction (time of day for example) on your acessibility to the internet. In the days where ISDN was fast, unlimited access was a novelty, many businesses got access during business hours and on weekdays, after that there was a surcharge. When digital took into the residential market too, they advertised unlimited access to compete with other dial up restrictions, it dosn't mean unlimited monthly traffic though.

I use SHAW extreme speed at home now, 7MB down, they give me 50 gigs and start to bitch after that. TECHNICALLY, it is unlimited access because I can go online any time any day.

As for business, my t-1 costs a mint and is quite limited as far as traffic is concerned, with hefty surcharges for additional bandwidth, as do most business class ISP's in BC now.

by oz_media

Who misposted? Sorry, just popped in for a few minutes while waiting for lunch to turn up, don't have time to run aroud the site right now.

by oz_media

Finally someone else agrees that there is too much damn blue on TR. It's like Intel's Blue Men have taken over design duties or something.

The current site as a mix of gradient shaded blue grey barsm which isn't too badm but the BLUE everywhere is just nasty.

by hal 9000

I really need to improve my presentations skills as I just tend to walk into a place and tell what is wrong and how to fix it perhaps I need to learn to Sugar Coat it a bit. :)

Col ]:)

by jardinier

but on my own websites I largely use black text with red headings on a cream (or very pale yellow) background.

I find this very appealing visually, and very easy to read.

For a contrast I sometimes use white text and heading on a deep tan background. It is easy to read, but you wouldn't want too much of it.

Black text on a pale green background is also very appealing, as mentioned in another post in this discussion.

I am not making any "official" suggestions here, but perhaps a background of a very pastel shade (of whatever colour) would strain the eyes less than the glaring white of TR.

by jardinier

Now how did that happen?

I just opened my Firefox browser and there at the top was direct access to my Workspace.

However I later learnt that this is some feature of Firefox (tabs) but I have no idea how or why it set itself up in this fashion. So now I will have to study Firefox tabs.

by oz_media

You're gonna like tabs. The curve for me was about two weeks, not so much a larning curve but a using curve.

Then when IE brings out THIER tabbed browser you can go back to IE again, not!

I am sure we'll have a zillion MS junkies claiming FireFox stole IE's tabbed browsing to keep up with them. Then again, by that time, MS would have branded the concept and sued Mozilla for incorporating it in thier browsers. :)

by jardinier

Isn't that some superseded crappy browser?

But I may be wrong. My memory is not accurate that far back.

by surflover

This sounds like a good idea overall... (I'm going to give you several disjointed thoughts as I read through this and the "radical ideas" thread and just made some notes based on a lot of the other's comments)...

I like the idea of the "project" as best as I understand it to this point.

The ratings are obtuse, who counts someone as a contact means a lot more than the ratings...

I don't mind the occasional e-mail, which is misdirected (but I'm not #1, I don't have tht much free time :^O

... and I assume that projects are not ready to beta test yet... but I'll beglad to wing it with the beta level if y'all get to that point...

Surf

by hal 9000

And I don't have that much free time either. I think that Jay and Smorty have got together and fixed the site ratings to punish me for some perceived snub that I've given them. :)

I honestly do not know what's happening here as the usual protagonists don't seem to be currently active. They must be catching the last rays of the Autumn Sun before winter sets in. :^O

And while I don't mind the genuine questions that I'm asked I can not answer them straight away either so that's even less time that I have to spend at TR! But the ones that do get me are the people who Peer Mail me without even looking at my profile and ask me to come to their house/Business to fix a problem out of the kindness of my heart. It's a very long walk from this side of the pond. :D

Col ]:)

by oz_media

At first I just started getting emails for help from people who didn't want to post in Tech Q&A.

After a while I was getting people asking me to comment no their threads or set people straight because being number 1 meant they'd listen to me...yeah...and i mean th emos absurd threads that I had NO idea about whatsoever.

After getting a bunch of TR emails each day, I started getting tired of people thinking that being number 1 meant you were free to take care of their problems.

I'll tell you, it's definitely lonely at the top and it sure as hell isn't worth it.

I'm glad I'm too busy to creep up the list again, it sucked being number one! It really did!

by jardinier

That's an easy one, Col. Say you would be eager to come, and that you will expect in the mail very shortly a return first-class airfare; five star accommodation for the duration of your visit, and compensation for time lost at your own business.

by hal 9000

Perhaps you could sort out Maxwell for me. :^O

He upset me once a long time ago and I hold a Grudge! :p

But someone must be being nice to me as I haven't received anything at all from TR for over 24 hours now so no one must be using the site right? Of course the tampering with the site wouldn't have anything at all to do with it would it? :D

Col ]:)

by charliespencer

I need to revisit the old "What music do you play in the computer room at night?" discussion and add Blue Man Group's "Audio" and "The Complex".

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