Site upgrade!

[roddy]

Need to do an upgrade at some point over the next few days - includes a bit of a redesign, hopefully nothing too drastic. Will provide more warning closer to the time, but if you find us missing, that's why. 

[roddy]

Ok, that's the upgrading done for now. You'll notice the design has changed somewhat - we're currently running on the defaults, will restore any tweaks as they are requested (it's really only a few CSS colour changes we've done in the past). I don't think there are any major changes for users to worry about. There are some additional things I've currently got turned off, might take a look at those later. 

 

Still got a few things to work through, but everything should be running smoothly. 

 

Anyone typing BBCode like [ b] this [/ b] but without spaces - be aware that'll be getting turned off at some point. I know, I know...

[abcdefg]

Nice clean layout, uncluttered. (I have only looked at the laptop version, not the mobile version.)

[roddy]

Good good. I've toned all the white backgrounds down a bit - that's a request regular enough to be anticipated. Gone from #ffffff to #fcfcfc. 

 

Once change I've made is to expand the left hand column on the home page a little, to make the left and right columns even, and to give enough width in the left side for the popular contributors block to go there, instead of tacked onto the bottom of the central column where nobody ever saw it.

[Lu]

I can't believe I'm asking this but: where is the quote function? Not a button of course, but the functionality where I could select some text and the option to quote would pop up.

 

Also it's still really white. Perhaps some parts of the page can become blue altogether?

[roddy]

Ah, that quote thing got lost when I removed the quote buttons - must have been too heavy with the editing ax. I've put the buttons (and that functionality) back for now, will take a look tomorrow. I suspect I may have done exactly the same thing last time round. 

[roddy]

20 minutes ago, roddy said:

will take a look tomorrow

Should be working again now, I was quicker than I thought.

[xinoxanu]

Can we get the original blue colour palette?

 

The current blue is too blue for my taste so I'm feeling blue.

 

Also, as Lu points out, the site is too white! Come on, it's 2021 not 1963 - give me some shades!

 

PS: I'll need some valium because I wasn't ready for the redesign after all.

[Lu]

Also I have the impression that there is more whitespace/empty space everywhere. Lots of space between the different subforums on the Forums page, between posts in a thread, on top of the page, in the notifications pop-up block... Is that something you (or other people) prefer? If not, can it be changed? It feels like most of the time now most of my screen is filled with just space and only a small part with the content that I come here for and that makes this forum the most comfortable I have ever run into. For example, if I go to Unread Content, there is so much space everywhere that there is only room left for 1 actual post, at the very bottom of the page. (I do know how to scroll of course.)

[roddy]

I was thinking there's scope for reducing white space in posts (signatures and reactions could easily be on the same line). Not sure about elsewhere - this is what I see on the unread content page, Lu, is it very different from what you're seeing? There will be differences across browsers / screen sizes / font settings...

 

Edit: And also should have said, everyone can try hitting CTRL+F5 or their equivalent to force a reload - it's possible old stylesheets are making things look odd.

 

[imron]

Can we write in _markdown_ yet?

 

* I guess not

* I wish we could

* I agree the site is too blue and too white

 

[roddy]

Ok, I've gone from #fcfcfc for the (previously) white backgrounds to #f6f6f6, which is darker than they were originally. They look a little grubby to me, but possibly helps.

 

Does too blue mean there's too much blue on the page, or the blue that exists is too bright, or...? I'm happy to tweak, but I have no eye for design and will only make things worse. 

[xinoxanu]

The original blue used for everything on the site should be: HEX #3D6594

 

Call it nostalgia, but I am very fond of the original top banner as well. The one we have now is better from a legibility standpoint tho, so it might be a matter of getting used to it:

 

 

The current "white" is fine now, feels like the original.

 

[889]

You can also make the site a bit darker and more readable by using a heavier font for the comment text.

[Lu]

3 hours ago, roddy said:

Not sure about elsewhere - this is what I see on the unread content page, Lu, is it very different from what you're seeing?

 

This is what I see:

 

 

You have more posts visible, but also even more white. I wouldn't leave out entire lines, but as I see it, there could be a lot less space in between the lines for the various items, to make it all a bit more crowded (in a good way).

 

ETA: There is also a lot of white around quotes. Like 1.7 line distance (what even is the term) around everything. OK I'm getting ridiculously annoyed over this minor detail now, I'm going to do some work instead.

[mungouk]

OK my 2 jiao's worth...

 

The site overall looks much brighter than it used to be. The very-light-blue page background doesn't have much contrast compared to the almost-white boxes with the text in.

 

Also, as @Lu points out, there seems to be more extraneous white space ("padding" or possibly "margin" in CSS parlance)... if you use gmail it gives you options regarding how dense or loose you want it to look, and it feels like everything just got a lot more loose. (They call it default - comfortable - compact.)

 

Generally, things that are important on the screen need to be a bit brighter than things that are not. The top banner is now very bright (but it's not important) and the page background (very unimportant) is also too bright. Overall, too much contrast makes everything harder to read.

 

Personal opinions, but I also teach web design. Happy to give more help if I can.

 

[Lu]

4 minutes ago, mungouk said:

if you use gmail it gives you options regarding how dense or loose you want it to look, and it feels like everything just got a lot more loose. (They call it default - comfortable - compact.)

Yes this is what I mean. I have my Gmail set to 'compact' and I like that much better than the default.

[Lu]

More grumbling from me on the same topic:

 

There is so much empty space around absolutely everything that only a few lines of the actual post are visible. Sure, if everything is more compact, there is a lot more text on screen and many people are a bit afraid of text and don't read. But not the members of these forums, surely? We don't need all this padding to make us comfortable with the fact that there is text. We come here especially for the text.

Or perhaps it's for the same reason that apparently recipe bloggers write lots of text before the actual redipe? People scroll a lot and then the search engines apparently think that this means they like the site and it's bumped up in the search results? In that case, can we please still not do that? Surely the site's content is strong and specific enough to not need this kind of SEO.

 

Same problem here: there is so much empty space everywhere that you can't even see three posts.

 

And the combination of a still very bright white and a rather slim font hurts my eyes. Perhaps I'm getting old, but I'd like to get old here.

[mungouk]

Sending positive vibes to @roddy in the middle of all this... hope it doesn't feel like too much negative pressure! 

 

And thanks for all the work and support over the years. This forum is easily the best free resource I've ever been a part of.

 

A couple of small CSS tweaks will surely sort things out.

 

 

[roddy]

Oh, this is nothing. Upgrades are often unpopular, and I fully expect some stuff to be annoying. Plus I'm not invested in it - it's not like I designed this. The fact it's only design and not functionality is a win* (although if you're currently being blinded by your computer screen, I appreciate it might not seem that way). I do think there are some places white space can be cut down on, and some more colour tweaks to make, but it's the weekend. Will get to it at some point early next week, I hope. Thanks for the offer of help, mungouk (did you offer help? I'm going to assume you did) and I may call upon you next week.

 

Although Lu, could you check what your browser text size is set to - I need to turn mine up to 150% to see what you see, which I'd imagine is higher than average.

 

*I turned the sidebar off again, despite thinking it would actually be a huge boon to the site long term, as I didn't want to provoke outright insurrection.