# Social Media Connection Box



## SolitonMan (Sep 6, 2012)

I signed in today and suddenly I'm missing the right fifth or so of screen real estate due to the "Find EN World On..." box.  Any way to move that?  Or close it?  That would be nice.  That wasted space is really distracting to me, so if anything could be done I'd appreciate hearing about it.  thanks!


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## Morrus (Sep 6, 2012)

17 seconds! It's a record! 

The side columns have always been removable by subscribers - you should be able to get rid of it unless I've done something wrong (your'e a copper subscriber). I'm playing with a few alternative layouts for the next few days, so things may fluctuate a little. Please bear with it.


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## SolitonMan (Sep 6, 2012)

No problem Morrus, thanks for the heads up!   I finished my original post and submitted it, then returned to the main forums interface and the box was gone.  I said "D'oh!" and moved on.


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## Morrus (Sep 6, 2012)

SolitonMan said:


> No problem Morrus, thanks for the heads up!  I finished my original post and submitted it, then returned to the main forums interface and the box was gone. I said "D'oh!" and moved on.




Yup. The process took about a minute in total. The gap between putting the box there and then assigning the permissions was a matter of seconds. Even so, I knew when I visited Meta immediately afterward there'd be a thread waiting for me!


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## Larrin (Sep 6, 2012)

[as you said you'll play around with it, here is something to keep in mind]

As a non-subscriber, I can't remove it, and as someone with a flittering attention span, I cannot read a post with such a large distraction next to it.  Its big enough to insist on being seen and filled with images and text about the same size and 'attractiveness' as the posts I've tried to read, thus my eyes bounce between what I'm trying to read and the side panel, and nothing gets done.   I tried for several minutes just to read one post, and it took way more focus and time that reading a simple complaint about 5e should.  Currently I've zoomed in my browser so that I can only see the forum posts, which "works" for my poor limited attention span but looks bad and defeats the point of having a side bar.  It needs to be smaller, it truly inhibits my ability to read this forum.


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## Tovec (Sep 7, 2012)

Personally the only real problem it raises for me is that it takes up 1/3 of the screen, which in turn makes threads and even individual posts very very long.

I'm glad to hear you are going to be fiddling with it over the next few days.


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## Azkorra (Sep 13, 2012)

Hello Morrus,

I love reading posts in the story hour section of these boards but currently the sidebar takes up that much of the screen that the posts get way too long, making it hard to read them w/o interruption.

As I am not a subscriber, either, at present I do not see any alternative than to copy posts into Word just to be able to read them properly. 

Therefore, I'd like to politely ask if this giant sidebar will be a permanent fixture or if a workaround to remove it will also be established for non-subscribers.

Thank your for your answer in advance.


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## Lanefan (Sep 14, 2012)

One thing I've noticed is the sidebar seems to want to be the same actual size regardless of one's screen width.  Right now I'm on a computer with a wide-screen monitor and it's not too bad, but when I use our other machine with an older close-to-square monitor the sidebar gets right in my face.

Any way to make the sidebar scale to screen?

Lanefan


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## PaulofCthulhu (Sep 14, 2012)

I imagine it's fixed because the Google ad above it is fixed.


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## MarkB (Sep 20, 2012)

That or the set of social media link icons at the top. If it's the latter, perhaps they could be stacked in 2x2 formation?


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## PaulofCthulhu (Sep 20, 2012)

It will be the Google Ad. It's one of the standard sizes of Google Ad boxes. The media link icons will just have been made the size they are simply to fill the width (defined by the advert).


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## StreamOfTheSky (Sep 29, 2012)

So...any progress?


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## Thalain (Oct 4, 2012)

While it won't completely help you with screen sizing, I found that Firefox + AdBlockPlus can be extremely useful for getting rid of unwanted social media icons all across the web (and the product can be configured easily to still let through unobtrusive adverts so that the site owners still can make money off decent, non-disturbing ads). I'm using that to filter them out pretty much everywhere they are and the more of them I am forced to remove, the more I am convinced that I will never need, want or even grudgingly join the "F".


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## StreamOfTheSky (Oct 31, 2012)

Once again, any progress?

I guess no one else even cares.


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