Jump to content

New Board Skin: Try it out!


Linda

Recommended Posts

As we noted a few days ago, we are working on a new skin for the board. We are hoping to make it the new default by Sunday, but to do so we need to be certain we have all major kinks ironed out.

So, please, give it a try and see what works and what doesn't. You can selected it at the bottom using the skin selector to pick "A Song of Ice and Fire - New".

If you want to point out any remaining colours from the default skin or any other issues, make sure to include links so they can easily be tracked down.

The basic layout is pretty much set -- we're moving to a single sidebar and trying to match top and sidebar more to the main site -- and the basic colour scheme as well, but editing the skin of an IPB is a total bitch so there may very well be spots where you now have light text on a light background or dark text on a dark background.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The ASOIAF banner at the top is really, really hard to read with the grey color on the grey/speckled background. (chrome).

Fast reply is gone? (ETA: no, it's there)

Side bar with the latest news is also really hard to read - red text on a reddish background doesn't work.

The light grey on the orange for the buttons is also a bit odd.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Linda-

The new skin looks nice.

Could you leave the current one as an option for those of us using the Stylish add-on as a sort of fake-skin to replicate the old Stark and Targaryen skins? There are a couple of things in the new skin which don't match up with the work-around. It's not that I don't love the way the new skin looks, but I really prefer reading black text on white, which Stylish allows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, hrm, that's something we hadn't considered. It would be a little awkward, admittedly. I suppose we could force everyone over to the new skin first and then let those who want use a renamed legacy skin for a limited time while the mods are redone. But we do need to shift everyone over and set this as the default.

Additionally, there is a big 3.2 upgrade coming that will break all current skins and we do have to upgrade to that, so the mods will definitely need to be redone then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, hrm, that's something we hadn't considered. It would be a little awkward, admittedly. I suppose we could force everyone over to the new skin first and then let those who want use a renamed legacy skin for a limited time while the mods are redone. But we do need to shift everyone over and set this as the default.

Additionally, there is a big 3.2 upgrade coming that will break all current skins and we do have to upgrade to that, so the mods will definitely need to be redone then.

Thanks. I'm not even sure how many people are using the old skins as mods, but it's nice to have the option. (Also makes it less obvious when you're browsing that this is, you know, Not Work Stuff.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The ASOIAF banner at the top is really, really hard to read with the grey color on the grey/speckled background. (chrome).

I am having problems with the readability vis-a-vis the grey on grey as well.

Other then that, great job!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another vote for readability issues.

The grey-on-grey for the title looks very washed out. The grey-on-orange buttons are very difficult to read. You might want to (if possible) change the weight of the font (e.g. light to regular) or increase the contrast by making the letters more white.

The dark red links on brick red (the ones at the bottom of a thread or forum) are nearly impossible to read until mouseover. Maybe change the static color the current mouseover color and then use a still-brighter mouseover?

Oh yeah, on this machine it's:

W7

FF 3.6.12

Oh yeah and the Hightower is an awesome detail.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the upper left corner, the top of the tower (lantern) is completely obscured by the grey W shield. I think you tried to give it some transparency, but it's not working. I would either move the tower down the page or move the shield to the right. Moving the shield might mean the header getting cramped for people who don't view the page in widescreen, but for me, there's plenty of room.

I'm not that concerned about the colors-on-colors. When you released this a few days ago, there were some problems, but those seem to have been fixed by today. Yeah, the grey-on-orange can be sliiiightly hard to read, but I can read it fine and I like that there's a subtle contrast actually. (Of course, it might be that you fixed this already and I'm looking at the fixed version.)

Personally, I think all the legibility issues are worked out. It's only the shield/tower overlap that's bugging me. And in general, I like this skin better than the old one. It looks a bit tidier and more organized.

eta: Wait, there is one legibility issue, but it's for buttons I never used, so I didn't notice it. It's the red "Previous Topic | Help | Next Topic" links at the bottom of each thread page. It's red-on-red and, er... not easily read. :)

eta2: Ok, nitpicking here, but in the header, the "A" that starts of "A Song of Ice and Fire" is clashing with the "W" in the shield, in my opinion. There should really only be one horizontal anchor, and theoretically, there are three (the tower, the shield and the 'A'). I would make the 'A' less prominent and let the shield shine on it's own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I dunno. If I came here I'd barely know that this was the ASOIAF boards. The font isn't particularly striking, it's not all that noticeable, and it blends in so much that I'd think you wanted it obscured.

Also, for the profile - the 'sign out' buttons and the like are completely illegible. Can't see 'em at all.

The shield also feels like it should be clickable. It's very weird to click on the title to get back home but not the shield.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cleaner than before. Improvement.

From a usability perspective, the biggest problem remains the poor use of screen real estate in “thread view”.

I understand that you operate under constraints that don’t make “readability” the primary parameter, but for me, as a reader, it is.

Unless I make the window very wide, or the typeface very small, less that one third of the window width is taken up by content. The left column is taken up by a fixed-width column of static links and advertising (which, charitably, get less that 1% of my attention), and the middle column is taken up by another fixed-with column of avatars and member info. The remainder gets filled with actual content. When the window width is reduced, the content column is shrunk (the most important part of the page!), while the rest gets to retain the real estate it has grabbed.

To see this in the extreme case, look at a thread view with a long (page height) post at the bottom of a page. One third parchment. Small brown stripe. One third tan. One third content! Yeah!. Tan stripe. Brown stripe.

That’s just a poor way to prioritise screen real estate.

As I said, I understand that content is not king to you. But at least make the middle column (with the avatars) narrower. There seems to be plenty of whitespace at its right border.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I appreciate the death of the right side ad column, (in full screen the left side ad column+avatar column only take up about 1/3 of the screen together) and I like the tower at the header though like Naz that whole corner seems a bit overly busy, and sticking the shield with the W over the tower seems like a waste of the image. That minor nitpicks though. I like the colors (The pale blue helps break up the rusticness a bit) and i'm not noticing any problems with visibility of text. The dark red over the tower (THE LATEST NEWS, mostly) is maybe a bit faint, but its a long way from illegible.

ETA - I can't tell apart right and left...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe the avatar field is fixed width to accommodate some things that only board moderators can see (warning bar, IP address). A little padding could maybe be trimmed, but only a little.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some of the graphical elements are made to match the rest of the site, such as the shield with the logo across part of the image. I see those as mostly decorative and contributing to tying in the look with the rest of Westeros.

I am going to look at what can be done about the colour and weight of links, but its a huge problem with IPB. They have link styles grouped together in ways that make it very hard to break out a few to change and if I change them all other issues will crop up.

I don't really get the screen real estate complaint, however. A sidebar of 200px is perfectly normal. The rest of the spacing issues, within the skin itself, are hard to address, its all the IPB defaults. I wouldn't mind less "air" between elements, but changing that is for the most part beyond me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't really get the screen real estate complaint, however. A sidebar of 200px is perfectly normal.

I’m happy to explain. I’m not looking at how many pixels the sidebar is on the main page. I’m looking at how many pixels contain information in thread view. (I.e, the width allocated to post content) Depending on who wide I make my window, it’s can be 200 pixels or less.

It can also be more, when I make the Westeros window almost as wide as my screen. (That’s what XRay seems to be doing as well.)

So I have to make it really wide. It’s consistently the widest open window on my desktop. All others are narrow and packed, side-to-side, with information. Give and take maye 200 px of sidebar, often used for navigation. My editor, my word processor, my PDF viewer, my terminal window, my mail client, even most browsers views of blogs, newspapers, etc. Wherever I look on my desktop I see a rectangle filled with information side-to-side. These windows are narrow, and I can tile them in many useful ways.

The Westeros window, on the other hand, fills almost my entire screen. I cannot have anything open next to it. Worse, the left half of the Westeros window contains non-content. The 200 px sidebar is not used for navigation (navigation is on top), and the next 200-300 pixels (the column containing avatars, not sure how wide that’s actually is) is very information-poor. Enormous amount of real estate are wasted on information I access very seldom (like where posters live.)

So the (1) Westeros windows hogs most of my desktop real estate and (2) doesn’t do much with it.

Now, I don’t like that. The information shouldn’t decide how wide I make my windows. It’s backwards. The content should honour my preferences for how much desktop real estate I want it to take up.

If, for example, threaded view had avatars above individual posts, rather than to their left, the post could take up the entire page width (minus the left sidebar).

But as long as the mobile skin works, fine. I guess what I’m pining for is a slightly less ascetic mobile skin. (Yes, with a 200 px left sidebar! One that’s used for navigation…)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not having any good way of testing changes on the mobile skin on actual mobile devices, we're very unlikely to change it ourselves. Possibly after 3.2 is out, other people will make various modded skins for the mobile platform, in which case if anything obviously superior comes up, we may go with that.

I won't be surprised if 3.2 introduces a snazzier default mobile skin, in any case, since so much is going that way. But Invision is keeping the cards close to its chest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Beyond the sidebar - which we need - the rest of the "waste" is all down to IPB's default skin and beyond our control. In that sense I don't feel we're doing anything with this skin that is using real estate poorly, its just how the board is designed. Its not made for being viewed with less than full screen, I would imagine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...