Dean's World

Okay, once again.

The Dean's New World (DNW) works good again, like (Dean's Old World (DOW) always did. But DNW, the way you have these columns stacked, is never ever going to be as easy to read as DOW was, so long as you have the articles squeezed between the housekeeping crap on the left and the ads on the right.

And mostly you are wasting two-thirds of your screen space, because the ads on the right take up only about a single page length, and the housekeeping crap on the left about three page lengths. Compared with the articles, which as you accumulate them in narrow column format, go on, and on, and on, and on.....

Log onto DNW yourself some time. Scroll down a ways, and see if you don't notice the same thing.

Moreover, this is entirely unnecessary to achieve the effect that you now want, which is for people to see your ads in a prominent place.
Leave the ads where they are, on top of the right column. But then move the housekeeping crap (contact, subscribe, google, archives, old archives, we support, blogroll) to the right side underneath the ads.

Then, if you want, you can shrink the column width of the articles to about half your screen, and expand the width of the advertising boxes (or double them up two per row) and you will have more space for the housekeeping crap underneath the ads.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

One more suggestion. I'm sure I'm not the only commenter who scrolls down the comments looking for someone in particular, either to boost him, give him the hook, or use one of his good ideas as the basis for another comment. So why don't you make it easier for us by bolding up the commenters' names slightly in the top right just above each comment box after these are posted?

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I miss the wide text area. Everyone seems to go for the narrow format, and since I don't have a blog I guess I don't know the ramifications involved. So there may be a good reason. The previous page was much easier to read, though, and the page was less "busy".
I'll still read "Dean's World" regardless.

the comment date thingie...I hate thinking I'm commenting on something that is so eight hours ago.

only

The only moving part I'd replace is the nut behind the wheel.

*ducks and runs*

My mistake is leaving comments box open at times and then move on to other posts in the same site and hit the comments link. My request is putting a "Leave your comments on: (Title of Post Here)" as a reminder and inspiration when you want to gather thoughts for commenting.

The date thing is a great idea too.

Arnold,

I don't understand what you mean. Do you really find it difficult to locate a commenter's name as it is? All you need to do is look at the very left of the page as you scroll, and read only in the grey boxes which are the first thing in each comment.

Have I completely misunderstood what you were talking about?

Btw, I could easily bold the commenter's name, would other people like that (as opposed to finding it visually distracting)?

Ok, make sure to reload the comment page (if you're using mozilla, hold shift while you do right click -> reload, if you're in IE, restart your browser (by default IE is very stubborn about caching)), then take a look and tell me what you think.

(Hint: look at the title of the page and the lower right-hand cornder of every comment.)

:-)

Say! You've done it! You put the titles of the posts we're commenting on on top of the comments window -- and the dates and times of our comments, too. Thank you!

You're making the new Dean's World better and better all the time. Thank you!