New Forum Themes/Styles Feedback

[racketboy]

So, I like the colors in the Milk theme except the combination of font style and color. Basically, the text is all too dark (not enough contrast) and too thin. It actually kind of hurts my eyes to try and read stuff. The extra empty space initially threw me off (I'm on desktop right now) but I don't think it's a problem. It was just surprising because of how compact prosilver is by comparison. But yeah, the font style and color combination have very poor visual contrast and are not a very good combination (IMO) re: usability. Probably not going to preview it on mobile since I already know the text is problematic for me.

I noticed that too. It was worse before I customized a few things.
I'm still going to try to tweak and get a better understanding of how the theme works.
There's a lot of options on this one, which is nice, but it's also rather complex.

But yes, contrast is important. And I want to also have the classic RB color feel as well.

[Ziggy]

The last default RB forum skin was the best IMO, as far as striking a good balance between light and dark. The text boxes had a light background, but it was contrasted by the darker background (with the fixed width) so that the overall screen brightness wasn't blinding.

[racketboy]

The last default RB forum skin was the best IMO, as far as striking a good balance between light and dark. The text boxes had a light background, but it was contrasted by the darker background (with the fixed width) so that the overall screen brightness wasn't blinding.

I agree. I spent a lot of time fine-tuning that with my designer at the time.
I guess I didn't remember that the boxes were actually light. I always thought of it as a "dark" theme.

I'm going to see if we can have both ProSilver (standard/light) and the light version of Milk have that same type of darker background. I'm not sure how easy that is.

I may also end up trying to get that older version of the forum running better on another server instance so I can compare better.
(my old hosting plan expires tomorrow and I also couldn't get the setup working too easily -- especially considering I wasn't getting any account support)

[Ziggy]

I guess I didn't remember that the boxes were actually light. I always thought of it as a "dark" theme.

LOL, that's pretty funny actually. I never thought of it as a dark theme.

Taken from the Wayback Machine...



The text boxes have a light background with dark text, which I prefer for reading. It might actually be light grey, not white, kinda hard to tell. But I've always preferred reading dark text on light backgrounds. But yeah, the dark checkerboard background gave the overall appearance of a dark scheme. I think the important thing is that the overall screen brightness doesn't burn your eyes out, especially in a dark room, early in the day or late at night, etc.

The ProSilver Dark skin is too dark for me, so I have mine set to ProSilver light. But since ProSilver light has a white background, it's actually too bright to stare at. I think that's why a lot of people prefer a dark theme. That's why I was saying (I think I said this, anyway) that if you changed the background and header for ProSilver light, that alone would go a long way to making it more tolerable.

edit: Oh, and I forgot which thread you posted this in, but you said you very much prefer having the username/avatar column on the left side instead of the right side. I completely agree! Not that it's bad on the right side, but I'm just so use to it being on the left since that's the way forums have been since forever, and most continue to remain on the left.

[racketboy]

Cool! Thanks for sharing that one.
I actually grabbed some from the Wayback Machine too, but I wasn't sure how accurate it was with CSS and such.

But I'm hoping we can find some good options in the short term and perhaps fine-tune as we go on.

Milk is cool that one of the options in the backend is to change which side the avatars are on (plus many other preferences).

Thank you!

[Ziggy]

Milk is cool that one of the options in the backend is to change which side the avatars are on (plus many other preferences).

So I just noticed that Milk is available. I just switched to it, and it looks LOADS better than the preview. It was really hard to tell how it would look with a better color scheme, because that preview was just god awful IMO. But now that I'm looking at it with a dark scheme, it's actually pretty nice. Although I'm still not a fan of the dark/dark color schemes.

One thing I don't like about Milk, at least how it is right now, is that it shifts the tool bar above the RB banner. On ProSilver, that tool bar is below the banner, which is a lot better in my opinion.

edit: Oh wow. With Milk, there's a button to instantly switch between light and dark. That's really nifty!

[racketboy]

Milk is cool that one of the options in the backend is to change which side the avatars are on (plus many other preferences).

So I just noticed that Milk is available. I just switched to it, and it looks LOADS better than the preview. It was really hard to tell how it would look with a better color scheme, because that preview was just god awful IMO. But now that I'm looking at it with a dark scheme, it's actually pretty nice. Although I'm still not a fan of the dark/dark color schemes.

One thing I don't like about Milk, at least how it is right now, is that it shifts the tool bar above the RB banner. On ProSilver, that tool bar is below the banner, which is a lot better in my opinion.

edit: Oh wow. With Milk, there's a button to instantly switch between light and dark. That's really nifty!

Haha
Yeah, I agree -- I wouldn't have that at the top long-term.
And that built-in "light switch" is really nice!

[Ziggy]

Is it me, or is the font size slightly larger on Milk versus ProSilver? I've been having to zoom in to read the forum (using Ctrl + mouse wheel) with ProSilver.

[racketboy]

Is it me, or is the font size slightly larger on Milk versus ProSilver? I've been having to zoom in to read the forum (using Ctrl + mouse wheel) with ProSilver.

I haven't done side-by-side comparison, but it did seem that way a bit when I was on it.
I'm still using ProSilver Dark as my default at the moment though. (and it is small-ish)

[Ziggy]

One thing that I really hated with the preview of Milk is that it had all of the avatars as circles. I thought it would auto crop our avatars to circles, but they all appear as squares or rectangles to me. Maybe that's an option you were able to turn off? It just looks so awful IMO. I like all of the other rounded features of Milk though, it looks really sleek. But I just noticed that the search option is hidden under Quick Links now, I liked how handy it was in ProSilver.