What do YOU think about the new look of the RS Europe website?

Kent, I just discovered the changes on the evening of Nov. 11, so I'm still getting used to the "new look". My initial impression is that it's a more attractive layout, but the font size when typing replies seems a bit small. I haven't checked the Travel Store or other sections of the Website yet. Compliments for the Webmaster are absolutely deserved! I know how much work it must have been to make the changes! Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to thank him in person when I'm at ETBD in January.

I hate the new look. Hate it. Not only does it look lousy on my Mac using either Safari or Firefox, it seems much much slower and less responsive. This was fixing something that wasn't broken and breaking it in the process.

On a Mac, horrible in Safari but nice in FireFox.

I'm still mulling over the changes, but my first impression is that there's too much wasted space (vertical) in the Helpline section. I guess I'll give it a little time to see if that really bothers me.

The changes don't work on Mozilla. I can still use the helpline, but it looks awkward.

I use Mozilla too, and this morning I thought it looked awful. Big blank sections. So, I wrote a post about what I thought. Later, I come back, and it looks really nice. Great colors, a bit muted and this font as I am typing is way too small, but other than that, it looks nothing like it did first thing this morning. Great job Webmaster. Can't wait to see what is next.

I would rather see the topics displayed as before--more information per screen means less work for the eyes and mouse hand.

The Store and Home pages look good. I DO NOT like the look of the Helpline and agree the font is too small. Also it is not a very readable font (I prefer something like Tahoma in MS Office, or Ariel). Also the spacing is all wrong. At first glance it looks ok, but when you are trying to read it, it is very uncomfortable.

The Helpline totally doesn't work on Mozilla. I thought I had gotten an error page at first, I had to scroll down to get to the helpline. Needs a bit of tweaking.

I like it. The open spaces are more pleasing to my eyes. Yes, the type for comments is a wee bit small but it is readable. Overall, Good Show!!!

I really like the new look. White/blank space is actually quite helpful when reading a full page to keep the overview. I don't mix up lines as easily anymore and don't click on the wrong topics by mistake. Some room for improvement: * The sticky topics on top should be better separated from the discussion topics (e.g. by a different colour). * The font size in the reply box is really small and should be a bit larger, e.g. like the font size of the questions/answers.

The page looks fine on Foxfire, but it looks awful of Safari. I suspect coding problems.

I agree with Larry. Topics were much easier to scan under the old format. Also, the font for replies is much too small.

Roy beat me too it. The page looks terrible on Safari, lots of white space. It looks very unfinished.

Echo the safari problems on iPad.

I agree - for me, the font for adding a comment is so tiny I can hardly see it. Otherwise, I can get used to it.

I definitely like the addition of some soft color. But also think the font size when typing a response is too small for those of us who did our first trip to Europe almost 25 years ago. (I'm guessing the webmaster is younger than me!) I also find the spacing between post topics to be a bit large, causing a lot of unnecessary spacing. But I like how threads become highlighted once you click on them. What I would love is an icon that alerts you when a thread has new replies or a "jump to new responses" type of option. I have this on other message boards and use it a lot.

Font size in the Reply box is smaller than small. Really impractical and unrealistic Also seems to take half a lifetim to change from one page to the other- especially going from topic list to the topic itself. Very, very noticeable The look doesnt bother me, but apparantly the bells and whistles in tarting it up affected too many other items

I'm currently using Mozilla FireFox to access the HelpLine and is seems to work fine. It looked fairly cluttered when I first switched-on the computer this morning, but the Webmaster provided a "tip" to hold down the "Shift" key and then refresh the screen and that cleaned things up nicely. I just tried Safari and it seemed to work fine right away. No problems at all. I don't own an i-Pad so have no advice to offer on formatting problems on that platform. However, I just accessed the HelpLine from my iPod Touch and the text part seems to work fine. However, none of the photos or graphics will display. I don't know if it's possible to "hold down the Shift key" and refresh the screen on an iPod Touch? I can't get the Keyboard to display at the same time as the Refresh arrow??? Cheers!

I also agree that the font in the reply box is too small. I'm also just getting used to Rick's new look. I do like that the posts I visited are now red and help me keep my place. Please tell me it wasn't always that way.

The problem on Safari seems to be fixed now.

I don't really like the look of HelpLine - all the extra white space on the Helpline Topics pages, you can't see as many threads at the same time and it requires more scrolling. I don't see the need for the double spacing, but I will get used to it I expect. However, Ireally hate the font size, it's too small. My eyes, like the rest of me, aren't 20 years old anymore. I'm experiencing diffuculty reading and typing in posts. I hope this is a negotiable issue.

Run Leopard on a G-5 -- Firefox is not pretty. And Safari would not open. Will give it another day. EDIT - PS - The shift refresh does wonders for Firefox. But do I have to do that everytime?

I do like the red highlighting, though.

Cntrl + in Firefox quickly increases font size, even the font in the reply boxes.

OK, thanks to the wonderful poster who suggested hitting refresh, now it works on Safari and Firefox. You guys are great!

It simply STINKS!

OK... First, thanks for the feedback. I might have missed fixing some of that. The bold setting on links has been removed and the padding between lines has been reduced to reduce the need for scrolling. The tiny text in the textboxes should be fixed. I'm glad that the color change aspect has returned to the links. The "shift + refresh" technique simply helps to make sure you are using the most recent css that our site uses. It just had a massive overhaul which is why things looked wrong for many of you. You only have to shift refresh once. If you can't get it to look right still, it is due to your cache settings. You can either clear that, or wait until they reset on their own. As I don't have easy access to an iPad or iPhone for testing, I would be highly interested to know how you feel the design works for that, especially now that we've made a few tweaks. To those who posted requesting greater functionality on the Helpline, all I can say is that I agree. We'll get there. These changes were meant to be cosmetic only. I still owe you BB code instructions for formatting.

I don't like it. Previously I could see the entire reply using my netbook, but now I have to scroll back and forth.

The "reply" font size is much better now! I'll check out the site on my iPad later to see if it's improved. But that's a lot of progress for one day.

As stated by others, looks horrible in Safari; it's as if the page doesn't fully load--just giant text at the top as if it's in a Word or Note document... When I first saw it, I thought there was a problem with the website. I didn't know the format had changed until I saw this board...

Webmaster, To view how lousy this is on an iPad, ask for a long lunch Monday. Drive to University Village and hit the apple store. There will be ipads aplenty to test this on. ETBD has a wonderful philosophy on travel. It does not extend to keeping up with modern technology. How about testing this thing before throwing the switch?! How about asking users what features they'd like to see? These ain't them. I'm in your corner, but unless you start adapting to the needs of consumers, your marketshare will begin to erode. That would be a shame.

It is now worse on the iPad than it was this morning. It has shrunk to a half-screen page way over on the right side. I have to enlarge and slide it to the left to see it each time I go to a new page. Not good.

What happened? This was working for a while but it is a mess again.

I have a Mac and all I can say is it looks horrible and is getting worse .

Looks great on my Android phone!

Here's a question. I'd like to look at older posts. But as of now, to get there you have to go back page by page via the "Next" button. Can a list of pages be shown so that you can get backwards easier? For example, I've gone about 10 pages deep in a couple forums I am interested in. To go further, I'd currently have to repeat all that. And , as it now views, there is no idea of how far back any of these actually go.
I have seen this ability on other forum style web-sites.

We've now seen that the Webmaster is reading this thread, so keep your suggestions coming and they may be implemented, if possible given the limitations of the software. The Webmaster won't be back until Monday morning.

Don't like it! Why the change? It looks even more basic than before.

The reply font is more readable now. I think the size is the same but Calibri is easier on the eyes. I can actually see my typos now. Thanks Mr WebMaster. Added later - Just a suggestion for other "youngsters" out there who struggle with reading glasses: I know I've been whining about the font size, but I just discovered something that makes my middle-aged eyes happy. I can set my zoom level to 150 - it shows the entire reading pane,every bit of the white space, but cuts off the non-used blue margin space. No need to scroll from left to tight - all of the message board verbiage is displayed and my eyes are happy now!!! I use a 13.5 laptop with IE8.0 so I don't know how that zoom works on netbooks or desktops.

Wow, something happened overnight. Looks much better. There's tabs at the top now, it was just listed in plain text before and looked really amateur. And I'm definitely not a tech guru, but I can enlarge the text/screen on my touchpad on the laptop.

Yep, it looks much better today to me, too.

Yes, the reply font size is much better and almost back to "normal" (I'm looking at this on a PC with Mozilla Firefox). But a couple of times since yesterday, when I've gone to the homepage of this website, the images and buttons are completely messed up - everything is in the wrong place and there's a big white space in the center of the screen. I clicked the Refresh button both times and both times the homepage then came up as normal. Has this happened to anyone else?

Never had any issues either before or after the makeover on XP at home or my Evo4G's Android 2.0 which is more like Windows in some ways than it is like Apple, which seems to have problems, no big surprise there. Looks great Mr. Webmaster.

I like it. The color change for read postings is back. The shift/refresh did wonders with no problems since then. The PM font is a size bigger which is nice. Of course, for those don't like change, probably still a problem.

It still doesn't look right on Safari.

I wonder if the Webmaster is reading these? On our Mac, the website is fine with Mozilla, but looks terrible on Safari, as noted by others above. So it also looks bad on my iPad, which uses Safari. In fact I gave up using my iPad to access this website.

You can't see the whole width of the helpline page on my computer. It's annoying, because I have to scroll from side to side just to see the width of the page. I don't find this issue anywhere else except the graffiti-wall pages. This sort of thing is typically caused by specifying the width of something in absolute terms (e.g., in pixels) rather than in relative terms (e.g., percent). It's a common newbie mistake.

I like it just fine and I use a Mac with Safari with absolutely no problems - however, I do zoom up any web page I use to fill the whole screen - easy to do on a Mac with Safari - I have trifocals and still having some sight problems.

I'm glad the RSS Feed is back! but when I click on the links from my firefox RSS reader, i get an error :(

I'm having the same problems that Adam is having.

The new website now seems to be working well, and the issues with small font in replies has been corrected. I haven't tried it on the Netbook yet, but not anticipating any issues. I haven't noticed the "width" problem that Adam mentioned? I'm presently using a 15.4" MacBook Pro and the page is nicely formatted. Perhaps the "Shift + Refresh" would help correct that problem?

I bought my first iMac last summer, but hated Safari, so I immediately downloaded Foxfire. The new Helpline looks GREAT on Foxfire on my iMac. I sit about four feet from the monitor, and the new Helpline pages are very easy to read at that distance.

When I reply to a PM, the box to type in is TINY. What's up with that?

I've noticed the same problem Susan has (post immediately above). Susan, I think we should both notify the Webmaster, using the Contact Us link at bottom of page.

The website is now functioning correctly on Safari. It looks pretty good. Definitely looks different..very bright. I kind of like the previous look a little better, but I'm sure I'll get used to this. It's not that much different anyway.

FYI: The Webmaster fixed the PM reply box problem mentioned by me and Susan earlier today.

I'm zooming up to fill the screen with the white space and no scrolling is required, SO, I am happy with the new webpage - which to me - looks just like the old one again.