Nice, very nice, Greg. Cool left sidebar, kudos for the tweaks:-) Everytime I visit your site, it just gets better and better.
The width of the middle column works for components except for the Activity pages, where it looks cramped esp. with indented replies, the pictures cut off, share buttons expanded not looking good. Perhaps for the activity pages you might consider expanding the middle column using body classes in style.css. But that’s just me 
Cheers.
@mercime
Thanks a ton for the feedback, as always. I added a few more pixels to the middle – it’s a tough balance!
I would just go ahead and use three columns dedicated to user profile, if not 3, 2 that fill the entire page — it’s what we (users) are all familiar with — if you’re talking about “more intuitive” there’s nothing more intuitive than having a layout that people are used to. Having the blog sidebar is just not needed and a bit confusing to regular users.
Where having 3 columns would help is moving user’s maps up to the top right, in a 3rd column sidebar. I’m thinking that map is important in what this site is about, real estate right. Then you have that map up top and under it you can display the user’s friends widgets and other widgets for that particular user.
The other thing, I think when the scrolling bar appears on some “About xprofile info boxes” its little awkward looking but not bad. I always try to avoid most things that will have the browser scrolling bar. There’s ways to style scrolling bar but it takes some special .js, I’ve tried using it but in the end it wasn’t worth the trouble setting up so I try to avoid altogether, especially horizontal scroll bars.
Nice call on the map. Moved it up.
I’m not sure hot to avoid scroll bars IF we are going to automatically show the profile info in the right sidebar. I’ve got overflow:auto; in my css and can’t figure out another way to prevent long profile field links from bleeding over into the main content. Firefox nicely applied a word-wrap and split links to two lines, but the other browsers bled over. Anyone know the css for text-wrapping that would work?
I see what you mean about the blog sidebar. For us, that sidebar is consistent throughout the site and shows YOUR info. Arguments each way for sure.
Thanks!
@gregfielding
Try
white-space:normal;
in your CSS
For details, see http://xahlee.org/js/css_text-wrap.html
@pcwriter,
Thanks for that. white-space:normal; helps with my x-axis fields and it works perfectly.
Now, however, I am trying to limit the height of my “about me” field. I’m using max-height:400px; but white-space causes the browsers to ignore the limit. What I really want is: white-space:normal; max-height: 400px; overflow-y:auto; but firefox is the only one that shows it properly. The others all revert to scroll bars, even safari.
Ugh.
have you considered moving some xprofile fields to the top of the middle column above the tabs? This area would make a lot of sense for some of the profile info maybe some of the ones you are having trouble with space.
Nice job!
I feel the buttons catch more attention than content. Maybe remove the border of avatar, and make the username button a bit light?
“First and Last Name”, and “Current Location”, can be “Name” and “Location”, just for saving space.
By the way, apart from your site design, The 2 blocks nav/subnav of BuddyPress are the most difficult stuff to manage, they confuse all visitors. I haven’t seen any good example.
This is really inspiring.
Ok guys, I’ve implemented some changes and some of your suggestions. I think it’s getting a bit better. We also just added in a a facebook wall type feature where logged-in users can post. Here’s a screenshot of what members see:
http://housingstorm.com/files/2011/04/4-3-2011-8-15-59-PM.png
@gregfielding – “Access Denied – The owner of this website (housingstorm.com) does not allow hotlinking to that resource — Cloudfare”
Just switched that off. Musta it it by mistake in the cloudflare dashboard. Thanks @mercime
