Trip Report Previews!
 

I imagine everyone has seen the changes to the Trip Report Forums by now.

What do you think?

I like it!
Being a visual person I like to see pictures.

Pretty cool, but it does take up a bit of real estate on the page... not sure how that's going to look when we have a bunch of active TR's.

How do you/we choose the pics? Author's choice? Most popular pic in the TR?

-Ryan

The real estate issue is the key trade-off... if it becomes an issue, let me know.

It chooses the most popular image for each TR. 90% of the time it's a pretty good pic, so it works well.

Real estate may be a trade off, but if it`s the most popular pic that gets displayed, I think you just killed the fine tradition of `CT members drop their gear`

I was just gonna say .... but Sam beat me to it [:p] We all know how popular bare skin pics get, lol.

it's a cool idea, but I prefer the old way without the pic. I like all my titles tight together, without the distractions of appetizing images inside.

That's the main problem for me too... I don't so much mind the pics to the left, but the amount of white space in each TR line it creates really breaks things up (in a bad way).

-Ryan

Is it just the whitespace, or the fact you can't "scan" titles as easy?

In all honesty I have plans for that whitespace - the idea would be to allow Trip Reports to be categorized by specific region and/or trail and display the information there. Another option would be to show the first, say, 40 words of the TR there to get people's interest.

I have no clue where half of the TRs are, and as a result I find myself skipping many of them. My hope was that the photos (and other content?) would make the site a bit more fun and interesting.

One thing I played with on the development server was a variant that removed all of the columns completely. Each Trip Report item was composed of a photo, title, poster, and date - but all in the same box. Sort of like:
[-----] My Really Cool Stein Trip
[Photo] July 1, 2009 - Fraser Canyon, British Columbia
[-----] Participants: ShadowChaser, LongShadow

Each "TR item" is about "50% wide" and tossed into a large two column stack. LongShadow and I tested the idea but it was a very early prototype at the time. Obviously we would need to program "region linking", "trail linking", and "participant" metadata for Trip Reports.

Current layout isn't right though, but I'm definitely open to ideas. Should I rip out the icons for the photo entries? Does anyone care if it doesn't show "stickies" or "locks" for Trip Reports?

Again I really like the visuals, and it looks nice and tidy on the "trip report forums", but kinda odd on the active topics page because my eye tends to want all the titles to look the same (continuity).

Maybe make the pictures smaller?

I'm not impressed, but then who am I ???

(like pictures of what food looks like in a restaurant, but then the taste is nothing like the same)...

What's wrong with them?

We're open to suggestions for how to make the TR area better and more interesting to look at.

The active topics has been reverted.

Well... like Seawall says... "I prefer the old way"...

Why change just for the sake of it ???

Just my 2 cents Jim...

[ps: love the revert to just the Active Topics]...

C'Jack...

Now you know I'm colour blind, but did the colours change on the :headings" page too ??? [B)]

I think your monitor must be starting to go.... hehe