A surprise today when using the reflector. A dramatically changed layout:
The page no longer occupies the full width of the browser window - just the central strip in a 4x3 (think pre-widescreen TV) ratio
The compose dialog now opens as a popup rather than a panel, and is fully WYSiWYG (you see the bold, images, etc, not the markdown).
I can’t seem to do anything to fix item 1. But for those that like to compose in and see the markdown, some playing around in the composer window reveals that the new composer can be switched back to the old dual-panel markdown + preview layout by clicking then new M button on the toolbar.
At present using EDGE browser on Windows 11 - everything here is normal.
I can remember sometime ago, getting what you describe Matt and I think, indeed a log out and then back in fixed it for me. I think the format you are seeing is the one intended for smartphones.
Then again, someone may have fixed what the problem was, between your post and mine. A log out and log back in will not harm in any case.
Log out / log in makes no difference. I see the 4x3 view irrespective of whether I’m logged in or out. Likewise opening in another browser (tried firefox, chromium, opera) has no effect. Likewise a ‘private window’. Likewise Ctrl+F5. The page briefly loads in full-width view, but switches to 4x3 as the stylesheets get applied. The only thing that changed at my end since I last viewed the site normally was to install Opera (in response to a bug report I needed to check out). But I can’t see how that should have changed views in firefox or chromium.
It is a tightly controlled fixed maximum width column on Windows 10/Firefox. All done with style sheets no doubt. I once managed a SAP portal/website, which had a stylesheet that was 350kB in size, unbelievable. But all generated by the underlying software. Only feasible on an in-house site as 350kB is a huge overhead.
I tested narrowing the width of the page and it responded well, all links and icons squashed up or repositioned themselves reasonably well. so whatever the change was, it has resulted in a fair outcome for the page format. can’t ask more than that.
The “problem” is we used managed hosting for the reflector. This means someone else has to apply patches and keep the damned thing working and not me or Andrew or Christophe or Josh. The downside is the opening credits on The Outer Limits said “We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.” When the software gets fundamental changes they get forced onto us.
There are some plugins / themes etc. that can adjust things. We run one for light/dark themes. There’s some adjustments possible to the style, we have square avatars on the desktop version of Discourse still. But most of the time our hands are tied.
Your friendly admins can have a look at recent changes to see if we can restore some style changes but may well be limits we cannot get around.
You can still use markdown in the rich editor and it just updates to the format. The double arrows still make the editor “fullscreen” and the editing area is the same size it always was. Just with the rich editor you no longer need to see the preview. If you switch back to Markdown you get the preview window again.
With rich text editor, the editing window is 741px on my screen and on a forum running the older version the editing window is 720px. So it’s actually larger now. Switching to markdown editor on here is nearly 720px again.
So it seems like an EFHW does better than a dipole on my summit.
