87 replies to this topic

[JonF]

Yuck!

Ugh!

Ptooooey!



And, while I'm ranting, who decides on 4-point subtitles on the forum names! Sheesh.

[Nuno Brito]

Well.. I like the design a lot, all the other ones I've tried looked too monochromatic.

And a change once in a while is needed to take the dust off the windows..

who decides on 4-point subtitles on the forum names!

Sorry but I'm not understanding what you mean, are the letters too big?

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Also, the main forum page is now displaying the top 5 active topics for the day and updats this list with ajax. This way you can only keep one boot land window open on the browser and occasionally check for new replies without need to click refresh.

[homes32]

my opinion.

• the header is too big, shrink it down to half it's current size.
  
• right nav bar width should be thinner. there is valuable space being used by about 1" of nothing.
  
• all the gray makes it really hard to read and see where the posts end. everything just seems to run together, especially on the forum index pages.
  
• the user info should be on the side of the post, not on top.
  
• the "new topic" and "add reply" buttons are the size of my thumb. that is way bigger that a button should ever be.
  
• the "add reply" and "preview post" buttons are gray and look disabled.
  
• the blue text in the posts blends to much with the surrounding site colors and makes it distracting to read.

other than that I like the less cluttered approach.
-homes32

[Lancelot]

Agree with JonF and homes32

minor addings:
- i dont like to see "smooth edges of screen fonts", this wasnt on boot-land before
++ At last my avatar size works nice , i just updated

[billonious]

it will take a while for members to get used to. New theme looks like a blog. I vote it.

[pscEx]

I do not want to contradict the comments of Billonious
(BTW: Looks intersting to see the emoticons choice covering your text!)

I generally agree!

I want to give my own comment here:
The new design consists out of two 'components'

• Position of certain menus, information, etc. on the page is different
  
• The 'theme' is different

Topic one is no problem for me. Maybe depending on my age I need some more time to become totally familar to use

But topic #2 brings me a lot of troubles:

Some parts I cannot read.

It starts with the 'light' colouring which for me is not really unreadable, but rather difficult to read
And it ends with some font changes like in 'edited by' which I cannot read (My system has a 19 inch monitor with 1200 * 1024 and 'large' character size)

And why are the two lines in my signature, both containing a link, displayed in differen colours?

Peter

[JonF]

Sorry but I'm not understanding what you mean, are the letters too big?

Too small.

[pscEx]

Too small.

Peter

[pecd.net]

sorry, i must say that i really dislike the new design...i can not read the text....


Urgl - is what comes into my mind...

[Nuno Brito]

Let's work on the design details then!

As Peter mentioned:

It starts with the 'light' colouring which for me is not really unreadable, but rather difficult to read

I've modified the text color to plain black which should be more readable.

Also, I've found a small guide that helps identifying the CSS portions responsible for the colors on the forum.

Please use it to help me guide through the colors and font sizes you think that are better suited!

http://www.invisionp.../ipb22cssguide/

I recommend bookmarking the page as reference, or perhaps it can be later posted as sticky to help other members refer to the details that they would like to see changed.

For example, the text on the topics is called "postcolor" as mentioned here:

Thank you!!


btw: Sorry for not replying back to some of the proposed suggestions, they weren't forgotten nor ignored, I'll be posting more details in case they are applied as our work here advances.

[MichaelZ]

Hi Nuno,

have many thanks to get Boot-Land up on anew server!!!

I think there are two so far not mentioned disadvantages of the new design. The contrast is too low in the overall appearance. For example it is not as easy as before to see the 'boundaries' of a post. The main navigation on the right side is very unfamiliar. Most web designs have it on the left side?

Many Greetings
MichaelZ

[Lancelot]

Hi Nuno

i couldnt find (maybe missed) in tutorial

here is a picture to show:

(only some of them pointed with red)

I know this with "smooth edges of screen fonts" of windows feature which is disabled, also with ie "always use cleartype for html" is disabled too (and i use opera).

Shortly i dont get this with previous design of bootland or anywhere on my computer or webpage i know.

[Nuno Brito]

I think there are two so far not mentioned disadvantages of the new design. The contrast is too low in the overall appearance. For example it is not as easy as before to see the 'boundaries' of a post.

Hmm.. the boundaries are indeed softer than before but it might be an effect of changing the visual to something that is not usual in IPB forums.

The main navigation on the right side is very unfamiliar. Most web designs have it on the left side?

The reason is too obstruct as little as possible the eye-sight. Since most users of the forum read from left to right, this allows to focus first on the topic text.

The right column contains information as before, most often skip reading it but when it's necessary, most users should know it's there and click on whatever is needed.



--------------

I know this with "smooth edges of screen fonts" of windows feature which is disabled, also with ie "always use cleartype for html" is disabled too (and i use opera).

hmm.. Why don't you use cleartype?

Opera under ubuntu looks good, but I enabled font smoothing system wide so it might affect the overall way how I see the page on my machine.

[Lancelot]

hmm.. Why don't you use cleartype?

never liked it (also i had friends who liked it too) for some reasons and always effects my reading in bad way (my eyes glitches).

Here is a picture, red arrows shows where cleartype exists, green arrows shows where cleartype not exists.

http://img227.images...678/snapam8.png

Anyway, i guess all oses now supports cleartype and windows users have it default (one of my first to-do is disableing this ). Better to leave it to users as all websites do .

[Nuno Brito]

Wow..

My eyes must be really in need for a revision because my weak sight can hardly tell the differences..

I mostly use cleartype because laptops don't often have a good resolution and eye-flicker can sometimes turn into headache after a few hours of work.

Will see if I can find a font more suited to non-smooth/cleartype environments.

[Lancelot]

My eyes must be really in need for a revision because my weak sight can hardly tell the differences..

dark side of the Force always attack weak side of man, come back to light side of the Force

May the Force be with you....

Reference 1 and Reference 2

[Nuno Brito]

Updates on the site.

- http://boot-land.net is redirecting directly to http://boot-land.net/forums
- clicking on search box will automatically select the advanced search mode
- some forum sections moved to the project forge (TFTPD32, Portable Apps)


Quoting on homes32:

1. the header is too big, shrink it down to half it's current size.

Will see what can be done.

2. right nav bar width should be thinner. there is valuable space being used by about 1" of nothing.

It should soon be put to good use, if not, will be thinner as you mention!

3. all the gray makes it really hard to read and see where the posts end. everything just seems to run together, especially on the forum index pages.

The text color was changed to black which should help the contrast of each topic.

4. the user info should be on the side of the post, not on top.

Post were not showing very well the user info on the side as it took too much space along with the column. This gives more room for posts.

5. the "new topic" and "add reply" buttons are the size of my thumb. that is way bigger that a button should ever be.

Will leave this for later.

6. the "add reply" and "preview post" buttons are gray and look disabled.

Yes, this is important to correct. People who didn't knew the forum before might interpret it that way.

7. the blue text in the posts blends to much with the surrounding site colors and makes it distracting to read.

Modified text to black on white.

[Nuno Brito]

And why are the two lines in my signature, both containing a link, displayed in differen colours?

Have you changed the color of text manually?

All hyperlinks should look the same.



EDIT by psc
Nothing changed, only added these lines

Edited by psc, 16 December 2008 - 01:19 PM.
Test

[Lancelot]

4. the user info should be on the side of the post, not on top.

Post were not showing very well the user info on the side as it took too much space along with the column. This gives more room for posts.

Yes i like the idea of giving more room for posts.
But
with old design we had ~340 pixels for "user info(~170 pixels)"+"recommended (~170 pixels)"
now we had 284 pixels

it is an interesting math, 340-170+104 , i guess most users dont like this +104

I have a different idea for horizontal design.
+navigation and links are top as before
+recommended parts is on right of search bar, now we have lots of space there

Here is a picture with my low ability of art, i hope all will like the idea:



ps: my eyes still glitches

[Nuno Brito]

I have a different idea for horizontal design.
+navigation and links are top as before
+recommended parts is on right of search bar, now we have lots of space there

That is a nice suggestion but would make the header too crowded with options and text, I would like to keep it as simple as possible. Having the right column gives a lot of room for adding more things as needed.

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6. the "add reply" and "preview post" buttons are gray and look disabled.

I've now changed the text color of the buttons from light grey to black so that they can also be viewed as active.

[Lancelot]

Nuno:

Keeping the original design as it is (with agreeing simplicity idea)
only eliminating wasted spaces will be enough i guess

here is the wasted horizontal space with red marks:


here is my new suggestion of gaining space with not loosing wasted space:


ps: eyes eyes

[Nuno Brito]

I'll try to make as you suggest.

[fxscrpt]

Nuno,

many thanks for this new cool forum!
its much faster , no 404 errors anymore

Peter

[pscEx]

I also find the new placements of elements, menues, etc. a bit strange.

But that is

• Something the owner of the site can define
  
• Something EVERY user can become familar with

But I cannot become familar with the fact that I'm physically not able to read the contents just 'in a view'. I have to read char by char, like a pupil in the first class.

Why such 'soft' colors rather than 'solid' ones?
Why 'small' letters are displayed acceptable, 'wider' letters like a 'w' only displayed as a greyed shadow?

Maybe there exist some third party tools (which of course use some of my system ressources) to smooth the display.

But I want to take part in the forum w/o installing third party SW.

Peter

[MichaelZ]

Hi Nuno,

I don't like the new design at all. It has improved already, but it is still quite hard for me to read. I use a LCD display so I have ClearType enabled (using Vista). Because of the discussion in previous posts in this thread I disabled it and checked it with Opera so it doesn't interfere with IE7 built in font smoothing. It looks like this (sorry, I dont know how to include an image that only shows a preview):


When I enable ClearType the font is smoothed of course, but not much better readable:


Is there anything I can do to get a readable Boot-Land forum again?

Many Gretings
MichaelZ

P.S. Just to demonstrate how easy it was to read before: