How do I get rid of the side bar that takes up half my screen? Sometimes it's there, sometimes not. I don't mind seeing it when I'm on the forum contents page, but now it's showing up seemingly randomly when I click on a thread. Except it's not always there. It would be nice to have some control when it shows up or not. Or at least I'd like to narrow it so it doesn't cover half the page.
Like just now it's not there, but when I replied to the thread about query letters I couldn't find the magic formula to have it not be there.
Yeah, it only seems to be in that particular subforum. I'm not getting that side bar thing anywhere else on the forum.
I see now it's in the publishing sub-forum and in PMs. Weird. Guess I can deal with it if it's only those two places (three counting the contents page) I was worried it was going to be everywhere.
I noticed this before as well. Went to the publishing forum and BAM! There it was... It's a bit annoying, and it'd be interesting to know why it's invaded Publishing and PMs and not other sub-forums.
For PMs, the side bar only shows Conversation Info and Participants, which isn't a big deal. Are you guys seeing other stuff as well?
Not in on the conversation page, no. But in the publishing sub-forum the same side bar as on the main page/content page is present (listing recent resources, articles, posts, etc.).
Maybe it's because of the part of the side bar labelled as "Threads tagged with Publishing" (which, strangely enough, is almost at the bottom). I can't find an equivalent in any other sub-forum. EDIT: Just noticed the titles of the other parts of the side bar as well: "Recent Publishing Articles" "Recent Publishing Resources" "Recent Publishing Posts" I suppose those are there to make it easier to find information and resources when browsing the Publisher forum, though it would be nice to see the side bar a bit more organised. Right now it holds a mix of "Recent Publishing XXX" stuff and other more global things.
That's what shows on mine as well. I think you have the answer. For whatever reason "tagged posts" is on the publishing sub-forum sidebar and that makes it open when we're in that forum.
The sidebar only shows for some forums. It would be added more if there was forum-relevant information to include. As Komposten pointed out, the idea is to highlighted related information and to make it easier to find. If including the sidebar on forum threads is something most people don't want, breaks the site, or is simply annoying it can possibly be removed or an alternative style developed without it. The publishing tag shouldn't make the sidebar show up per forum, it's probably designed to show up on specific forums to highlight info. It is possible the tag block is causing the design issue for you, almost certainly if you see the sidebar in other forums and it doesn't break when there's no tag blog. @GingerCofee, are you saying the tagged posts block is what makes the sidebar take up half your screen? Are you're only having this issue on the publishing forum with the tagged block? If that's the case I would happily remove the block - it shouldn't break the forum. The design is supposed to be dynamic and resize based on screen size without issues like this.
In the publishing sub forum and in PM conversations, the side bar takes up half the screen. It doesn't show up in any other forums. It shows up in the table of contents page but it's less of an issue there because there isn't an avatar column taking up another couple inches on the other side. On my 11 inch wide notebook screen, the avatar column takes up just shy of 2 inches, and the sidebar with information I don't need to see in a thread takes up 4 inches, leaving 4.5 inches for the posts. It's very annoying. On the contents page, the side bar makes sense. That's the only place the information has some usefulness. On the PM Conversation sub-forum the side bar has useless information telling me who's in the conversation which 99% of the time is just me and one other person. I can't speak for everyone but I'd rather not have it wasting half the screen there. It's especially troublesome when I get short story submissions because they are relatively long. It's like reading one long newspaper column. In the publishing sub-forum, it needlessly takes up space. I can go to the contents page to see that information, I don't need it in a sub-forum. If you want to be sure people see it, put it on the "new posts" page and take it off the publishing sub-forum and PMs pages.
To be clear, you're not seeing the sidebar actually overlap, but instead the sidebar squishing the rest of the content, like this: Is that correct? Try resizing your browser and make it smaller; it should push the sidebar out of view and to the bottom of the page once the browser reaches a certain width, giving the important content the space. Can you confirm that happens on your end? What I can do is instead of removing it entirely, I can adjust the width at which it's pushed to the bottom page and is effectively not there so that it doesn't affect the important content. This way only those with larger screen sizes will see it. As for the PM section, the above change might make it a non-issue. I don't really mind getting rid of the sidebar on PMs except that it might be harder to tell the participants, namely when there's more than one. This could be a privacy issue.
Yes, that is what it looks like. Yep, resizing my browser did the trick, pushing the sidebar to the bottom. I'm pretty sure the side bar in the PM sub-forum is not information anyone uses, but perhaps others should be asked. I take it what you are worried about is, if someone doesn't realize who else was invited to a conversation. I can see that being an issue once in a dozen blue moons. I'm content to just resize the page.
Could you make it possible to "hide" the side bar? I'm thinking something like a right-arrow at its top and when you press it the sidebar slides out of the screen (only leaving showing the arrow). That way all users who like the side bar (or need to see PM participants) can have it visible if they wish, while other users can open it when needed and have it closed at all other times. Not sure if this would be easy to do, if it's even possible, but it could work.
Right now I don't have the capacity to do this, but maybe in the future. There's an add-on that allows this for 15EU, but since we have server cost issues it'll have to wait.
