Ranger

at the bottom of every page... Is this a new thing? I still really think that the forum is bloated with them. I mean I always have to scroll down a whole page to read a thread and now this. But hey, its your site.

Adam Tyner

The banner ad and 'Featured...' table combined only take up a third or so of my screen. Maybe you should bump your resolution up from 640x480 to something a little less 1993.

No, I definitely disagree about the forum being 'bloated' with banner ads. First, I don't think the single standard-size banner ad is unreasonable at all. Second, the 'Featured...' table is, at least in my opinion, a pretty inventive way to remind people that there's more to DVD Talk than just the forum, and it gives people an idea of what sort of content the site offers without having to hit several individual pages. If I just saw a link that said "Coming Soon" or "Reviews" at the top of the page, I wouldn't bother clicking, or at least I wouldn't bother clicking frequently. I also have bookmarked the forum directly, so I never see what's listed on the front page. I'd imagine I'm hardly the only member of DVD Talk to do this, and the 'Featured...' table is appreciated. The rotating reviews link has definitely given that section of the site a much higher profile, and it's gotten positive feedback from several members in at least one previous thread in Forum Feedback that I can think of off the top of my head.

The 'Featured...' table is a reasonable height, and I think the thumbnails of the cover art is as small as they could be and remain fully discernable. BTW, the top of the first banner ad to the bottom of the 'Featured...' table spans only 277 pixels in height.

There are other forums I read where, on the forum index page, I have to scroll down 2.5 screen-lengths (1152x864; 17" CRT monitor) for the real content to begin, and I can't see any links to threads without whacking the 'Page Down' key first since they're pushed down a full screen-length by ads and related links. If you think DVD Talk has too many banner ads, you must not frequent many similarly trafficked forums.

The graphics on the bottom of the screen don't bother me because I don't always scroll down that far , and I'd imagine the reason Geoff put them there was to avoid pushing down the meat of each page any further than necessary.

GeoffK

The items at the bottom of each page are links to our columns, not banners. They don't rotate so you should cache them the first page load and they shouldn't effect the speed of the other pages you load.

I didn't want to put them up top, as the main area of the forum and messages has been pushed down enough already.

And like everything we do... I'm testing it out over a weekend to see how it goes