Roadfood.com Update

FYI - I just updated the proximity search results to give you a distance approximation to each of the restaurants from the specified city/state.  Check it out:

http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurants/SearchResults.aspx?st=latlong&latlongid=795

Stephen Rushmore Jr.


FYI - I just updated the proximity search results to give you a distance approximation to each of the restaurants from the specified city/state.  Check it out:

http://www.roadfood.com/Restaurants/SearchResults.aspx?st=latlong&latlongid=795

Most excellent. When I first tried it I said great...if only it could give miles away info!

Now it is there.

NOw...I wish it could also give winning lottery numbers! 

Well, I think I can stop bitching now and live with this new format.

I was caught completely off guard by this change, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. There are a couple of issues I'd like to see resolved or discussed:

1. I have a lot of white space showing. That makes the page seem pretty stark; would some kind of unobtrusively colored background be possible?
2. The photographs no longer have captions or a list of other photos in the same review. That forces readers to return to the review to view a different picture.
3. The quick search for a town returns lots of restaurant images, but there's no option for sorting by distance from the town once you've found it. That would be a great addition.
4. What's happened to the photographs I uploaded?

Getting better all the time.  Thanks for the effort Stephen!
 
QFan
Bonita Springs, FL

I agree with Rick F...there is a lot of blank white space on the front page. Looks like a novice 10 year old with no talent for art designed it. Interior pages look good for the most part, I don't know...but for me the jury is still out on the new format.
 
So y'all paid someone to do this? I hope it was not too much. Hopefully you only paid for the technical part and not for the graphics. I am sure many Roadfooders and their children would have been happy to design a front page with good design principles.
 
What happened to the blank picture frames in the forum section?  I guess it looked lame to you as well.

Love the new look.  The logo is so cool; very retro.  Great job!!

Rick F.


I was caught completely off guard by this change, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. There are a couple of issues I'd like to see resolved or discussed:

1. I have a lot of white space showing. That makes the page seem pretty stark; would some kind of unobtrusively colored background be possible?
2. The photographs no longer have captions or a list of other photos in the same review. That forces readers to return to the review to view a different picture.
3. The quick search for a town returns lots of restaurant images, but there's no option for sorting by distance from the town once you've found it. That would be a great addition.
4. What's happened to the photographs I uploaded?

Rick, I am not experiencing any of the things you are talking about.  Are you talking about the forums or the main part of the site?  The photos haven't changed...The captions are still there...No photos have been deleted.  You can access your Insider photos by clicking on "My Roadfood"

THIS LOOKS GOOD, AND I HATE CHANGE TOO! 

Greyghost


I agree with Rick F...there is a lot of blank white space on the front page. Looks like a novice 10 year old with no talent for art designed it. Interior pages look good for the most part, I don't know...but for me the jury is still out on the new format.
 
So y'all paid someone to do this? I hope it was not too much. Hopefully you only paid for the technical part and not for the graphics. I am sure many Roadfooders and their children would have been happy to design a front page with good design principles.
 
What happened to the blank picture frames in the forum section?  I guess it looked lame to you as well.

 
I am glad you liked it.  Thanks for posting on this free site.
 
Respectfully and sincerely
 
Paul E. Smith
Moderator
Knoxville, TN

Sundancer,
 
The interior pages are good, and the technical advancements are good, but the front page is a design mess.
Perhaps it has not been finished yet...I hope that is the case

Rick F.


I was caught completely off guard by this change, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. There are a couple of issues I'd like to see resolved or discussed:

1. I have a lot of white space showing. That makes the page seem pretty stark; would some kind of unobtrusively colored background be possible?
2. The photographs no longer have captions or a list of other photos in the same review. That forces readers to return to the review to view a different picture.
3. The quick search for a town returns lots of restaurant images, but there's no option for sorting by distance from the town once you've found it. That would be a great addition.
4. What's happened to the photographs I uploaded?

Hitting CTRL F5 helps....  But you also need to clear cookies and cache from your internet browser.

I had the same problems....  No worries!

I don't understand, Greyghost.  Could you give an example of where the front page is a mess?  I'm not seeing it.

Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle


I don't understand, Greyghost.  Could you give an example of where the front page is a mess?  I'm not seeing it.

I'm with you BB & SB- I think the front page is terrific. Maybe I'm not as astute or Tech Savvy as the grey ghost

Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle


I don't understand, Greyghost.  Could you give an example of where the front page is a mess?  I'm not seeing it.

Neither am I.  I believe this is a comment from a friend of roadfood that does not understand the mission of Roadfood.
 
Like you Bruce, I believe the home page has been major league updated
 
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Stephen, love the new look!!  I was wondering if there is a way to pull up a member's profile and click on an "all posts" option as there was before.  I liked how the posts were sorted by forums in the style that the "All Forums" page is laid out.  Hope that makes sense.  Just makes it easier if I want to find old Trip Reports and such that go back further than the most recent 100.

Also, I seem to be having problems with formatting when trying to do Trip Reports.  My pics and text look fine in the preview mode, but when I post them, they seem to be justified all the way to the left and/or right.  The text seems to be wrapped around the photos.  Even though the text is displayed on the top of the photo in preview mode (as I would like it to be), when I post it, it gets all wonky and looks weird.  Any suggestions??  

Thanks!!

Greyghost


Sundancer,
 
The interior pages are good, and the technical advancements are good, but the front page is a design mess.
Perhaps it has not been finished yet...I hope that is the case

What browser are you using? It looks good to me on everything I have except Safari, where much of formatting appears missing..

Here is what I see with Safari...

 

Stephen,

THANK YOU!!

The new layout is awesome, I love the caramel color and the new logo.

I know you have taken a lot of flack about the changes, but you should know how much we do appreciate ALL your hard work over the past months, getting us ready for the changes.

THANK YOU

Stephen Rushmore Jr.

• Home page searches - You can now search restaurants, forums and recipes directly from the home page
• Proximity searches - You can now type in a city/state and it will show you the 30 closest Roadfood eateries
  

The site looks great, overall. 

The above-named upgrades are wonderful enhancements.  I cannot tell you how often I've looked at a state listing of reviewed restaurants for an area that I do not know well and wondered how far a certain town was from where I would be traveling.  It usually required a number of clicks to pull up the map, and then adjust the map to a wide enough view to get the proper perspective, etc.  This is fantastic.

Also, the new search navigation from the home page is a nice feature for new users, I think.  It is also towards the top of the page and emphasized, so that folks know to check it out.

One new feature that you don't seem to mention is that the dates on reviews seem to be back - at least on user-submitted reviews.  It was never a huge issue for me, but I sure understood why other people thought that this was useful (and missing information).  I am sure that there are a few more things you are working on - and tweaks will continue, but if you are building a wish list for future enhancements, perhaps on each review, you can add a link to other reviews submitted by the same reviewer - or maybe something could be added to their profile page (with a direct link).  I don't want to belabor the oft-discussed point of people trusting/not trusting user-submitted reviews, but, perhaps readers might be able to make a more balanced decision on the value of the review if they can put things into perspective of other places the same reviewer enjoyed/didn't like?  Along the same line, I do like the easy distinction that one can make between a review done by a member of the editorial staff and user-submitted reviews.  In my mind, there is a distinct difference.

Thanks, again, for all the hard work you've put into this project. 

Tony--that is also what I saw first thing this morning but I leave Safari open, so I cleared the history, quit Safari, reopened it, and it looks more like the IE version--not exactly the same but very close.  Greyghost if that's your problem, give that a try.

If you are seeing all white, then it means the browser isn't loading the style sheets.  Hitting ctrl+f5 will solve the problem in most browsers.  I haven't used safari, but clearing the cache will accomplish the same thing.

but if you are building a wish list for future enhancements, perhaps on each review, you can add a link to other reviews submitted by the same reviewer - or maybe something could be added to their profile page (with a direct link). I don't want to belabor the oft-discussed point of people trusting/not trusting user-submitted reviews, but, perhaps readers might be able to make a more balanced decision on the value of the review if they can put things into perspective of other places the same reviewer enjoyed/didn't like?

Great suggestions - I will add it to the list.

One other possibility: we use IE7, and our aging eyes have convinced us to keep Text Size set to Largest.  This WILL make the front page look like a mess: things smoosh on top of each other.  If you do the same thing know that if you set text size to medium or smaller everything will look great.

Sorry, I can't clear my cookies now as I need them for a transaction I am doing now. If what I see now on the front page is the final design, it is poor design, period. I see a lot of wasted white space with poor positioning of the categories and unnecessary scrolling for users. Sorry to disappoint everyone but I am not a sycophant, never was and never will be one...I call them as I see them.
 
Perhaps I am looking at a beta version of the front page and do not see the beauty everyone else seems to see. When I can clear my browser perhaps I will have a different opinion.
 
If what I see as the front page is the final version, then I would have to be the lone voice saying the emperor has no clothes.

Very nice.  THank you!

OK, I tried it in Firefox and it looks much cleaner. The emperor has at least underwear.

I like the feature of being able to change my last viewed time

I bounce in and out during the day and it helps to see if something is new

Tony Bad

Greyghost


Sundancer,
 
The interior pages are good, and the technical advancements are good, but the front page is a design mess.
Perhaps it has not been finished yet...I hope that is the case

What browser are you using? It looks good to me on everything I have except Safari, where much of formatting appears missing..

Here is what I see with Safari...

I'm using Safari on my iMac and I'm not having any problems. 

Stephen Rushmore Jr.


If you are seeing all white, then it means the browser isn't loading the style sheets.  Hitting ctrl+f5 will solve the problem in most browsers.  I haven't used safari, but clearing the cache will accomplish the same thing.

I don't use it much, so had to check. To clear the cache it is Cntrl+Alt+E in Safari...or you can  click Edit and select empty cache from drop down. Just be sure to reload (F5) page after you do this.

Now it looks like it does with all other browsers. The Emperor is fully dressed!

Greyghost


Sorry, I can't clear my cookies now as I need them for a transaction I am doing now. If what I see now on the front page is the final design, it is poor design, period. I see a lot of wasted white space with poor positioning of the categories and unnecessary scrolling for users. Sorry to disappoint everyone but I am not a sycophant, never was and never will be one...I call them as I see them.
 
Perhaps I am looking at a beta version of the front page and do not see the beauty everyone else seems to see. When I can clear my browser perhaps I will have a different opinion.
 
If what I see as the front page is the final version, then I would have to be the lone voice saying the emperor has no clothes.

The emperor needs to reserve judgement until he can clear his cache.