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Some forums styles are still styling code blocks with proportional fonts

Question
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I see that code blocks are still not styled with a monospace font in all "styles" of forums. In the Visual Studio (vstudio) forums style, they are styled with a monospaced font (good), but in other forums style they still use a proportional font (bad).
Note, some of my previous threads about this:
In fact, I'm very confused as to why the style of the forums changes at all, depending on the url used to access it. This is greatly distracting and disorienting.
For example, depending on which of the urls below you use, you will get different styles, but you are effectively looking at the same forum data.
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=csharpgeneral
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=csharpgeneral
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/home?forum=csharpgeneral
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsdesktop/en-US/home?forum=csharpgeneral
etc...Of those, only the "vstudio" urls yield a code block style that correctly uses monospaced fonts.
So depending on the search strategy you use to find an answer (Google, Bing, browse, etc.), you will either land at a "pretty" version of the forum, or an "ugly" version of the forum.
- Edited by Wyck Friday, July 19, 2013 1:12 PM Another url example.
Answers
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@Wyck - We'll add the formatting of code blocks a monospaced to our backlog. It seems like a wholely reasonable request.
@davewilk - What you refer to as branding is not only changing of styles. A dev center (MSDN) or tech center (TechNet) for a product is a holistic experience that spans forums, sample gallery, documentation library, search, etc. that share a common information architecture (most obviously shared menu structure), scope of content, etc. I understand that for MVPs who frequently traverse the boundaries between different dev/tech centers the differences in appearance may seem like a distraction. But for more novice users, and people who develop primarily for a single platform (e.g., Windows Phone, Windows, Windows Azure, Office) it's important for the forums associated with that center to look and act like the rest of that center. We see this over and over in usability studies, where people feel it's "jarring" when one part of a center experience "feels" different than all the rest.
Users coming from bing or google should consistently see a given thread displayed in the same branding (i.e. the canonical brand and center for that thread). So while it's possible to navigate within the forums, or manipulate the URL in the address bar, to see a thread a center that is not its canonical, that shouldn't happen coming from 3rd party search.
- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Friday, August 30, 2013 11:07 PM
- Marked as answer by Richard MuellerMVP Thursday, September 5, 2013 10:17 PM
All replies
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I didn't realize any forums had fixed width (monospaced) fonts in code blocks. That's why I seldom use them. I use Insert HTML for all my code examples. But that isn't practical for most people. If I understand correctly, the HTML is the same, it is just rendered differently depending on the branding?
Richard Mueller - MVP Directory Services
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@Wyck - We'll add the formatting of code blocks a monospaced to our backlog. It seems like a wholely reasonable request.
@davewilk - What you refer to as branding is not only changing of styles. A dev center (MSDN) or tech center (TechNet) for a product is a holistic experience that spans forums, sample gallery, documentation library, search, etc. that share a common information architecture (most obviously shared menu structure), scope of content, etc. I understand that for MVPs who frequently traverse the boundaries between different dev/tech centers the differences in appearance may seem like a distraction. But for more novice users, and people who develop primarily for a single platform (e.g., Windows Phone, Windows, Windows Azure, Office) it's important for the forums associated with that center to look and act like the rest of that center. We see this over and over in usability studies, where people feel it's "jarring" when one part of a center experience "feels" different than all the rest.
Users coming from bing or google should consistently see a given thread displayed in the same branding (i.e. the canonical brand and center for that thread). So while it's possible to navigate within the forums, or manipulate the URL in the address bar, to see a thread a center that is not its canonical, that shouldn't happen coming from 3rd party search.
- Proposed as answer by Ed Price - MSFTMicrosoft employee Friday, August 30, 2013 11:07 PM
- Marked as answer by Richard MuellerMVP Thursday, September 5, 2013 10:17 PM