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[Ian @ un4seen]

As you've probably noticed, the forum is looking a bit niftier today! Some nice new things include searching within the current post (using the search box at the top of the page), post previews without reloading the page, and even post editting without reloading the page (click the icon on the right of the post).

Everything seems to be working fine, but it is an "RC" (not final) release of the forum software, so please report any problems you encounter.

[Sebastian_Mares]

Excellent news, I am glad we have an off-topic forum now.

[Torkell]

In one word: Shiny!

[Brian]

Couth, kempt and shevelled.

[raina]

It's chromed alright. Starts to feel a bit too crowded on 1024x768. Gotta hack my way out of these frames.

[Tsorovan]

I'm also stuck at 1024x768 on a stinky Dell 17" right now since my 19" DIED THE FINAL DEATH.

I am beginning to go madbonkingly bananas... I neeeeeed my 1600x1200...

And there aren't any good CRTs to buy anymore, and of course all TFTs will suck arse for another 3 years. Really shitty position to be in.

[Edit] This newfangled edit feature is nice, at least.

[Vesh]

This is the dumbest idea ever. Why is there general now?!!!!!!!!

THIS SITE IS ABOUT A MUSIC PLAYER!!!

(also... YAY! \o/ )

[Vesh]

And there aren't any good CRTs to buy anymore, and of course all TFTs will suck arse for another 3 years. Really shitty position to be in.

This... is annoyingly true. I settled kinda.

Originally I bought a big old 2405FPW. It was nice for the first night or so but after a while trying to do anything but browse on the thing, all those little inherent "differences" - I call em flaws - in LCD started showing up. It was impossible to work on. Everything, while crisp and clean, was also not it's true color.

So, now with the settling I have a Viewsonic G220f. It's a good monitor, I run it at 1600x1200 to work (higher resolutions are a little too blurry) and anywhere from 1280 to 1920 to game.

[Tsorovan]

Yeah, I can't stand TFTs. Flaws indeed. I can't understand how everyone loves them; they probably convince themselves it's OK considering how much money they paid for them. Sure, clueless computer users who previously ran their crappy HP and Compaq monitors at 60 Hz, I can understand. Of course flicker-free TFTs will look good to them. But to anyone who actually has a clue? Beats me.

The G220f isn't bad per se, but since I'm a resolution junkie, I'd have to run it at 1920x1440 since it's a 21" (1600x1200 is perfect for 19" for me), and it can only do what, 76 or 77 Hz at that res? That's not good enough for my eyes/brain, sadly. I need 85 at the very least. The P225f looks not bad, but the price is very high, plus I'm quite leery of ViewSonic of late. I know 4-5 people with recent ViewSonic monitors (purchased during the past 2-2.5 years), and of these, only one (1) hasn't got a bum monitor (and he's the only one with a budget class ViewSonic).

The P97f+ would probably work, but I can't find it. Samsung 959NF too, but it's also presently unavailable :\ Might have to save up for a Samsung 1100DF.

[Vesh]

Yeah, I was ready for the refresh, it's passable in actual use. I really only got this as an "until it explodes or until the people who are developing CNT stuff (or whatever tech might actually get manufactured) get thier shit straight" kinda solution.

If you're in the States, good luck finding those new. =/

I had the damnedest time finding even the expensive models in stock around here - barely found the moderate ones. And sure as hell wasn't about to import a damn CRT. Seriously, I'm a guy who was willing to drop a grand or more on a good display and there's just not one to be had. The truly good CRTs are old, used, discontinued models and on eBay, not even refurbished, no telling what kind of life they have.

*sigh*

You'd think companies would want to get the nanotube-level technologies out quicker given that it's a much more reliable manufacturing process than what they have to go through for TFT. And god knows they could sell em for top dollar given the kind of brightness and sharpness they'll be able to get out of it.

Not... a good time... for people with eyes.

[Torkell]

The frames do get a bit annoying with the forum - I seem to remember posting about this back when I was using 800x600 on one machine (and I found that, amongst other things, the box to subscribe for updates vanished at 800x600).

My current setup is a 17" HP M700 at 1280x960 (not 1280x1024, as that's not 4:3), and a 15" Sony CPD-100E (with Triniton tube) at 1024x768. Both at a refresh rate of 85Hz - I was running the Sony and a rather nice old Dell ("old" as in it had focus and screen controls on the back) at 75Hz for a while, but that turned out to be a tad low for me.

I've used a few LCDs, and there are some very nice ones out there. Laptop screens have always seemed to me to be above average, but then again they've been around for longer. Certainly the laptop makes for a good DVD player if you don't mind having to up the brightness/contrast settings a little, and it's a lot quieter than the desktop.

[raina]

To anybody who doesn't know this already: Accessing the forum directly with http://www.un4seen.com/forum/ and JavaScript turned off will keep the frames away. But this isn't a real solution as switching on/off in and out is too much hassle. Maybe there's an FF extension that'll allow turning JavaScript on/off per site..

[Sebastian_Mares]

I think some of the forum features require JS, like applying tags to the text (bold, italic) or the quick-edit feature that is AJAX driven.

[Sebastian_Mares]

By the way, the bottom frame is white here (using Firefox 1.5). I had some problems with the left menu page yesterday but it seems Ian fixed it (or at least it works now).

[Rah'Dick]

Yay! A general Discussion board

I have a Viewsonic P225f 22" monitor... I could easily run it at 2048x1536 but then things become too small for my eyes and I'd have to make EVEN BIGGER skins for XMPlay then.
I think the whole TFT hype is completely stupid. What about the professionals? We're more and more forced to use sub-standard technology for everything in our lives because THEY think it's sufficient to have 1024x768 @ 60 Hz on a flawed TFT screen... Idiots. I recently wanted to buy a new CRT for my girlfriend - have to order it now, because no shop nearby still has CRTs!! It's annoying - I'm thinking of founding a new Special Interest Group "Pro Professionalisation in Hardware and Software" because the trend seems to be going to soft- and hardware that is more expensive for less quality and functionality!

[Ian @ un4seen]

By the way, the bottom frame is white here (using Firefox 1.5). I had some problems with the left menu page yesterday but it seems Ian fixed it (or at least it works now).

That'll be an old version in your browser's cache - try refreshing the frame(s).

At the same time as the forum update, I made some other changes, including rewriting the CGI/perl scripts in PHP. So if download links aren't working, for example, try refreshing

[Sebastian_Mares]

Great, works now!

[Vesh]

The frames do get a bit annoying with the forum

Agreed. My current philosophy is that frames are always bad, especially ones in heavy designs that FORCE YOU BACK INTO THEM WHEN YOU TRY TO VIEW JUST A SINGLE PAGE like this site does.  =/

[Tsorovan]

OK, this update with the frames and whatnot is a huge step down... Because I can no longer open thread links in new windows/tabs; it'll send me to un4seen.com/ (but still mark the threads read)

See, I do this when I read forums:

I click (actually, I mouse gesture to open a new tab in the background) the "new" links on threads except for the last one, which I will click to open in the foreground. Voilà, all new threads open in tabs, which I can then deal with one at a time, without having to go back to the index all the time.

This doesn't work in Firefox now :| Is there anything I can do on my end to fix it?

[edit]

To anybody who doesn't know this already: Accessing the forum directly with http://www.un4seen.com/forum/ and JavaScript turned off will keep the frames away.

Thanks, accessing it via this url (interestingly, MUST be www.un4seen.com) makes it behave as it should. Still, I don't understand why it has to be so (I don't have Javascript turned off, so the frames will still be in effect, which is OK as long as the goddamn forum works properly).

[raina]

I remember the news in 199x where it was stated that you don't have to use www in front of URLs anymore, how simple and elegant. Yeah. Well, my proxy fails to deliver 90% of sites without the www prefix so I'm pretty used to tapping it in every time. Glad I could be of help anywho.