Maidens of the Kaleidoscope

~Bunbunmaru News~ => Letters to the Editor => Topic started by: scherzo on July 21, 2011, 02:05:08 AM

Title: New forum theme
Post by: scherzo on July 21, 2011, 02:05:08 AM
The new light blue forum theme makes my eyes cry. Is there an option to revert to the old dark blue one? (if not I am requesting it.)
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Edible on July 21, 2011, 04:11:19 AM
Pretty sure you can change it from your userpage -> look and layout.  For most forums on here, anyway.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: E-Nazrin on July 21, 2011, 04:13:05 AM
I actually have to agree, while the new theme is cute I'd rather not keep it permanently, even if having it as an alternative option for those that prefer it is probably a good idea.

Pretty sure you can change it from your userpage -> look and layout.  For most forums on here, anyway.

Oh, really? I'll try that, then.

In which case, I'll say that once TSO's birthday shenanigans are over with, I'd rather keep the old theme as the default for people, if it isn't already. :V
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: MatsuriSakuragi on July 21, 2011, 04:14:03 AM
We had a dark blue theme?

Oh, and I still hope we keep the new fonts when we go back. I'm growing quite fond of this. <3
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Tengukami on July 21, 2011, 04:18:58 AM
So as long as we're going by matters of personal taste: I like the new theme. Some of the colored fonts might need to get tweaked, but I find this much easier on my eyes. It's soothing to read on this background, to me.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Janitor Morgan on July 21, 2011, 04:19:53 AM
Pretty sure you can change it from your userpage -> look and layout.  For most forums on here, anyway.

I'm not seeing it there, personally:

Quote
Show board descriptions inside boards.
Show child boards on every page inside boards, not just the first.
Use sidebar menus instead of dropdown menus when possible.
Don't show users' avatars.
Don't show users' signatures.
Return to topics after posting by default.
Don't warn on new replies made while posting.
Hide messages posted by members on my ignore list.
Show most recent posts at the top.
Show WYSIWYG editor on post page by default.

Nothing about changing the forum skin to default.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: E-Nazrin on July 21, 2011, 04:21:41 AM
Seconding rdj - not seeing an option to change board visual theme in my profile, I'm afraid.

Oh, and I still hope we keep the new fonts when we go back. I'm growing quite fond of this. <3

I actually don't like the main new font much - the edge of letters tend to be jagged for me. I don't know if that's my display settings, tastes, not remembering the previous one doing that anyway, or the font itself, but it's not my first preference.

And a more legitimate criticism of the theme: The background color is the same as the color for some of the 'boxes' used for forum posts, so there's no indication of the 'edges' there. (Like the box that's supposed to be around the posting interface in 'post reply,' if I recall correctly).
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Tengukami on July 21, 2011, 04:22:05 AM
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/readable/
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Edible on July 21, 2011, 04:22:30 AM
Whoops!  Guess it's admin-only! <_<

A ha ha ha ha ha!
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Tengukami on July 21, 2011, 04:23:59 AM
And a more legitimate criticism of the theme: The background color is the same as the color for some of the 'boxes' used for forum posts, so there's no indication of the 'edges' there. (Like the box that's supposed to be around the posting interface in 'post reply,' if I recall correctly).

Huh? I am not seeing that at all. The "post reply" box here is a darker shade than the background.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Aya Squawkermaru on July 21, 2011, 04:26:58 AM
I'm also in support for changing back to the old theme. Or, at least making it an option. This was fine for the sake of birthday shenanigans, but (no offense to TSO) I find it to be an eyesore. It's not very fitting of the forums, either, in my opinion.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: E-Nazrin on July 21, 2011, 04:27:41 AM
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/readable/

Not sure I want to forcibly tweak things like that - especially if people use different fonts for stylistic reasons and it removes that effect (which I HAVE done in a few writing segments).

Huh? I am not seeing that at all. The "post reply" box here is a darker shade than the background.

Likewise with every other post in threads normally? Hmm... maybe it's firefox 3.5's fault. What browser are you using, and what was the theme designed for...?

Whoops!  Guess it's admin-only! <_<

A ha ha ha ha ha!

Yeah, that was my second guess. Whoops.

I'm not exactly hurried to have this option added/returned, but I would appreciate it being on the table in maybe a week or two?
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Tengukami on July 21, 2011, 04:29:21 AM
Not sure I want to forcibly tweak things like that - especially if people use different fonts for stylistic reasons and it removes that effect (which I HAVE done in a few writing segments).

The default setting of Readability is very simple. Not really any "forcible tweaking" required.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Red Frost on July 21, 2011, 05:14:04 AM
I actually didn't get to see the old layout much at all, but I recall it not being this when I added it to my favorites way back.  When I finally decided to join my first thought was "Wait, is this the right site?" followed by "Is that girl from Nichijou?  I've been meaning to watch that..."

It's a brighter color, but it's actually not too bad on the eyes.  That might be a different story if my lamp wasn't on, though.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: helvetica on July 21, 2011, 08:30:07 AM
Theme is actually not just for my birthday shenanigans.  Please wait warmly as other things are being put together at the moment.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Yukarin on July 21, 2011, 01:24:29 PM
The blue is actually good with the font Chocolate Cooky.

I'm trying it right now, and it's fucking good.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Edible on July 21, 2011, 03:40:43 PM
Theme is actually not just for my birthday shenanigans.  Please wait warmly as other things are being put together at the moment.

helvetica standard at her computer
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin on July 21, 2011, 08:29:20 PM
helvetica standard at her computer
I chortled.

Wait ... are you saying that angel is a trap!?
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Rin Kagamine on July 22, 2011, 05:25:27 AM
(9:24:21 PM) HomurachanHomHom: I love this new theme and I don't want it to go away
(9:24:40 PM) HomurachanHomHom: but shouldn't the new post icon be the right-facing ghost?
(9:25:04 PM) HomurachanHomHom: then the new sub-forum icon would face left and then turn grey with no new posts

Can we please do this?
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Mushyrulez on July 22, 2011, 05:45:41 PM
I actually don't like the main new font much - the edge of letters tend to be jagged for me. I don't know if that's my display settings, tastes, not remembering the previous one doing that anyway, or the font itself, but it's not my first preference.

I think there's an option in Windows that allows you to use 'TrueType fonts'. It eliminates the jaggedness for me (this font /is/ Calibri, though, right?)

As for the theme, is it possible to implement a way to switch between themes? Since the only people who seem to be able to are admins, and them switching themes probably switches the themes for the entire forum.

I don't want to seem too demanding, but it'd be nice to see a white-background theme too. Black and blue just never felt right to me :/
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: wooterz on July 28, 2011, 05:12:26 AM
Dear god I hope this isn't the new default theme. It seriously gives me a headache.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Roo on July 28, 2011, 06:02:23 AM
I personally love the new theme. While some are right about difficult to read text and such, It should definately become an optional website theme.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: helvetica on July 29, 2011, 03:00:50 AM
Dear god I hope this isn't the new default theme. It seriously gives me a headache.
Can you explain exactly what bothers you?  I'm currently developing the new replacement theme and so far I've kept the blue shading on the post boxes.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: wooterz on July 29, 2011, 06:15:52 AM
It's just too...bright.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Stuffman on July 29, 2011, 06:20:37 AM
I don't hate the new theme but I preferred the old black and orange. Is it complicated to have SMF support multiple themes or something?
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: helvetica on July 29, 2011, 06:44:04 AM
Complicated in the manhours I have to put behind supporting it.  SMF has no problems supporting multiple themes but there's tons of customizations I've done I really don't want to worry about having to keep synched across multiple themes.  Same with any bugs that may crop up.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: HakureiSM on July 29, 2011, 08:10:02 AM
Um, I think I have an issue with the theme, which is that everyone keeps talking about font changes but the font looks the same to me :V

Also I could probably get used to this theme too, but I have to join the old-theme-hurt-less team
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Tengukami on July 29, 2011, 01:01:25 PM
I'm honestly really not getting the complaint about the color scheme. The softer hues of blue are probably the least offensive colors on the spectrum to the eyes. Our retinas are in fact tuned to accept blues in the softer portion of the spectrum due to us having a sky of that color!

I think the complaints are more about people not really being crazy about change, or because they spend most of their time on websites with color schemes that clash with MotK.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: ふとくていなねこじょおう on July 29, 2011, 01:22:34 PM
I'm not in favor nor against this theme, but I must say the first day I saw it it burned my eyes. I was so used to the darker theme.  :V
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Stuffman on July 29, 2011, 01:39:07 PM
I think the complaints are more about people not really being crazy about change

Well yeah. It doesn't feel like home, y'know?

But if it's a huge pain in the ass to maintain multiple themes I won't complain :[
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: helvetica on July 29, 2011, 04:09:48 PM
You guys know there's tools like Stylish where you can import your own CSS on any webpage (kinda like GreaseMonkey but for CSS rather than Javascript).  It would take all of 5 minutes to learn the VERY basic CSS needed to edit colors, all you need to do is edit the lines that say Background.  The hard part you guys can't do is the actual structure of the theme (what the forum software spits out) (well you could but it'd be a lot more work for you than for me to do it), but color editing is just a few lines in CSS. 

Hell I'll upload the site's main CSS file and point out which sections do what and would be more than happy to help with any questions (or make any accommodations to make it easier for you guys).  There really isn't a reason why I have to be the only one supplying multiple themes, color manipulation is pretty easy with very common browser plugins.

Eventually I will have a way to change color palettes built into the site but for now it'll be one color scheme.  The idea of the theme rewrite was with this in mind, so you guys can easily add your own customizations to it.  Most big web communities have a set of user made custom scripts or CSS to change looks or add features beyond the default.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Iced Fairy on July 29, 2011, 05:59:33 PM
My only complaint with the theme is that "New Posts" and "No New Posts" are kinda hard to tell apart. :\
I mentioned it to Ruro, but this is really my only serious complaint with the new colors.  I'm red-green colorblind, so there's almost no difference whatsoever between the two for me.  It's annoying when I can't tell at a glance if one of the announcement boards has been updated.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Azure Lazuline on July 30, 2011, 01:47:41 AM
For that, I suggest darkening "no new posts" by half, instead of just making it grayscale with no other changes.

As for the rest, I'd comment, but I'm obviously biased towards light blue...
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: helvetica on July 30, 2011, 04:19:32 AM
The images are merely placeholders.  There will be a new set of images as soon as the server-tan contest is completed.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin on July 30, 2011, 06:24:19 AM
I suppose that's caused by the contrast. You click on MotK, and in your mind's eye you expect it to be the light-on-dark color scheme, whoa wait it's bright instead. I mean, there's plenty of websites which are black-on-white, which is definitely a higher contrast than this.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Shadoweh on July 30, 2011, 12:34:42 PM
To me the text is just harder to read. The black doesn't stand out as much against the blue and it hurts to squint at it for too long. That and half the colored fonts are impossible to read. Is it possible to give all the colors black edging? I have no idea what Stylish is. Or CSS. I've never wanted to change the background to somewhere I go before. If you were willing to tell people how to change it that would be good.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Dead Princess Sakana on July 30, 2011, 12:44:27 PM
I have a hard time imagining how the black can be hard to see on the blue. I find the contrast between the two to be very sufficient. I can still make out the letters properly even when I take my glasses off, and they are rather strong ones.

Are you sure this isn't just your display settings not giving enough contrast?
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Shadoweh on July 30, 2011, 12:58:16 PM
Pretty sure. It's not impossible to read, it just takes more effort, which wears after a few paragraphs. I think the dark blue is more blendy then the light blue. It's definitely noticable for me that the quote boxes are much easier to read, being white background and black text.
Quote
In fact quote boxes are so pleasing to the eye right now that I'm tempted to write all my posts this way.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Dead Princess Sakana on July 30, 2011, 01:01:41 PM
I can agree on the quote boxes, yeah.

Haven't experienced any issues with the darker blue boxes, but I don't think I've had to read anything long in them yet either, so I guess it could just be that.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Tengukami on July 30, 2011, 01:03:38 PM
I wouldn't recommend writing your posts in quote boxes.

And if black text on a light turquoise background is difficult to read, you must find a great many sites hard to look at.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Dead Princess Sakana on July 30, 2011, 01:08:26 PM
I gotta say I personally prefer the lighter theme a lot because practically all sites I visit frequently use light backgrounds, as well as IRC with white background as well. Usually changing from MotK with the dark theme to any other site was pretty awful for me, especially at night.

I'd definitely prefer keeping a light theme over going back to a dark one. I'd keep the blue as well, but I guess if some people have problems with the darker blue that's something that can be taken care of easily as well.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Pesco on July 30, 2011, 01:18:47 PM
Don't use your comp in a dark room/turn on the lights?

I'm fine with the colours, but the font size needs to be a bit bigger.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: n i c o l e on July 30, 2011, 02:12:20 PM
my only complaints are the quote boxes are white, and that is mildly triggering for me but I've been able to deal with it fine so far. aside from that I really like the colour scheme and everything else as it is.

I also agree that the text is a little harder to read
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: communist unity (comm-unity) on July 30, 2011, 03:02:59 PM
Code: [Select]
code boxes need to be fixed
The contrast between grey on black and black on blue hurts.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Ryuu on August 12, 2011, 05:32:00 PM
I have to agree with everyone saying that this forum is a literal pain to look at now.

idk what it is but reading this board strains my eyes and makes my head hurt.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Momiji on August 12, 2011, 05:52:14 PM
It's up for a reason.  Also, stop viewing it in the darkness.  XP
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Barrakketh on August 12, 2011, 05:58:53 PM
You guys know there's tools like Stylish where you can import your own CSS on any webpage (kinda like GreaseMonkey but for CSS rather than Javascript).  It would take all of 5 minutes to learn the VERY basic CSS needed to edit colors, all you need to do is edit the lines that say Background.  The hard part you guys can't do is the actual structure of the theme (what the forum software spits out) (well you could but it'd be a lot more work for you than for me to do it), but color editing is just a few lines in CSS. 

Hell I'll upload the site's main CSS file and point out which sections do what and would be more than happy to help with any questions (or make any accommodations to make it easier for you guys).  There really isn't a reason why I have to be the only one supplying multiple themes, color manipulation is pretty easy with very common browser plugins.

Eventually I will have a way to change color palettes built into the site but for now it'll be one color scheme.  The idea of the theme rewrite was with this in mind, so you guys can easily add your own customizations to it.  Most big web communities have a set of user made custom scripts or CSS to change looks or add features beyond the default.
The problem with that is that the theme (at least in its current implementation) is dumb from a HTML/CSS standpoint.  For instance, the colors for a user's name is stuck in a style attribute instead of using a class like 'role-acolyte' and then picking the color in a CSS file.  That needs to be addressed for the board to be more easily themed by users.

If you use a color tag there's the same problem, where ideally the color selection would be done through a class so it can be tweaked if necessary.  As an example, one forum I frequent switched away from VBulletein to a custom Vanilla board, and we switched from a dark-blue color theme to this (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/145207/attitude-expectations-for-posts-in-this-forum).  As a result, certain color tags that worked fine on the old board ("lime" for truth) became nigh-unreadable and I did some adjusting on my end to make it nicer.

Hard-to-read colors here include the Shrine Janitor color, the Idiot Maiden color, and the color #F88379 being used for what I think is the Global Mod primary group.  They were fine on the dark theme, but they're much harder to read on the blue.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: KennyMan666 on August 12, 2011, 10:00:44 PM
As long as the old one, or something similar, returns at least as an option...

My opinion on this skin is that it looks pretty much horrible, and doesn't fit MotK at all.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: Momiji on August 12, 2011, 10:06:09 PM
bitchbitchbitch...
Someone forgot to take their tongue-in-cheek meds.
Title: Re: New forum theme
Post by: KennyMan666 on August 12, 2011, 10:13:37 PM
I didn't think that was bitchy at all. (you should have seen what I was going to post initially, though. That was bitchy, and the exact reason I deleted it all and posted that instead.)