If you have any constructive commentary on the new look of the forum, please share it with us.

On my screen, the white background is a little hard on the eyes. Not a big deal.

I love change and this one is a pleasing (to my eyes anyway) one Jaime and Mike.
classy, uncluttered (less is always more) and well shades of blue are my favorite
tis vury purdy indeed good job guys!

Overal, I like the new look, especially the new buttons. I must agree with Victoria, though, that the white background is a bit harsh - and less inviting - than the Old Glory red.

Using the idea of a balance between light and dark, there is too much light. Fonts are very good. Buttons (the red ones with the bar) are a bit blurry. Layout is very good.

It's a little dull and uncreative. No offense but it just has no flare

Having "/AD/" as part of the path for the button images is probably a bad idea. Many filtering proxies (e.g. Proxomitron, privoxy) come with default settings that will recognize such paths as ADvertising and strip them out. Many users might have difficulty figuring out how to fix pages where all the content is still present but the buttons are missing.

Yeah yeah. I've made it a light gray now instead of the white, and will tweak it a bit more to get the colors to be a bit more soothing. The last thing I want is the folks over at Canada' s Debate to claim we stole their background color.


I spent quite a while trying to get them less blurry, obviously without much success. Let me put some more work in on this.


Now that's what I like to hear!

With this skin, we're eliminating the Invision skin. So, I've had to strike a balance between the darker skin (which I like but was quite sick of seeing) and the ultra-bright Invision skin to satisfy those who used to use the Invision skin.

For this skin, I removed all of the gradients behind the headers. Those files were requested 1000s of times per day with the old skin, and I felt they were quite unnecessary. I've actually eliminated many graphics, and reduced the size of many as well.



Fixed, and now back to /2/ like before. I built this skin completely on another server, hacked in our added features, and uploaded all the files in one shot. That was a hold-over from my test board.

Thanks folks! Keep it coming!

Mike

I like the new skin. While it is brighter than before, I'm one of those people who enjoys a lighter background. I find it a bit more inviting and contemporary... the old skin had a bit more of a "classical look" or something like that. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I like the new skin!

I like that it changes from time to time. I do like the new buttons. These colors are fine and nice because it is a change, not because I see a user-benefit for these colors over the previous set up.

Thanks for the revision Mike. Now can you make this thing make me seem more intelligent? (I'll do this first... it won't take much)

Were the text areas white before? Lol it just seems so light all of a sudden! It does make my eyes wander a bit, and I kind of like the red as it made the forum the red blue and white of America, so quite relevant.

How about making the background kingfisher blue, I bought some kingfisher vlue paint today and its very soothing

No, the text areas weren't white before, and they're not white now. There shouldn't be a single design element of this skin that is pure white with the exception of form elements.

The problems with the colored or darker backgrounds is that the software is written for a white background.

Yes, it is obviously possible to change the background color. But when that is done, the links that sit on the main background must be changed from black-on-white to a reverse-text type scheme. (Reverse text causes fatigue, and can be difficult for a lot of people to read.)

Unfortunately, this isn't easy to do with our software. It was the single largest time-robbing aspect of upgrading the old skin. I can change plain text fast enough, and most of the links, but the Page span links ( Pages: 1....7,8,9) require alterations to the source code to make them work properly.

We have considered hiring a professional graphic design service to design a truly custom skin, and are still actually considering it. If this happens, it is possible that it would be with the next upgrade to version 2.0. This should happen in the next 6-8 months, I'd imagine.

We've also considered hiring a professional graphic design service for a logo and identity package, and we tentatively have this scheduled for some time in the next year.

Mike

That's right!

Just a note, the four buttons at the bottom of the page "Add Reply, Fast Reply, New Topic, and New Poll" are bracketed in red.

Try Shift+Refresh (F5 most browsers), Joe.

That's much better. My computer was loading the buttons from Canada's Debate it would appear. However, now the AD buttons are configured for the white background not they grey one.

I prefer the light background and the somewhat subdued style of this new skin, and it loads relatively quickly on my dinosaur of a dial-up connection. That's a huge bonus.

The only thing that I would comment on is the text on the new buttons, which I know you have been working on for a while now, trying to get them less blurry. Text can be really tricky, especially at that small of a size, and it may not be something that you can improve upon much, but my suggestion would be to cycle through the text anti-aliasing options in photoshop to see if any of the others come out more clearly.

I liked the old skin better. This skin is just too...white....LOL... umm the best thing that you could do is make a flag skin.

Just wanted to offer up my services if you wanted some help making buttons or tweaking existing buttons and what-have-you. I don't so much mind the paler colors, but it seems this white IS a bit bright. Maybe a more gray/toned-down white would work...something like

Gainsboro (#DCDCDC) which might be the color used as one of the header bckground colors - looks similar

Maybe even Misty Rose (#FFE4E1) with an emphasis on the reds and then buttons and accents in blue/white/grays. But that might be a more work than necessary. Actually it might only require soem tweaking of the background colors for various things like headers and such (the buttons would still work just fine, actually). Maybe something like FireBrick (#B22222) or Crimson (#DC143C) (something in between maybe) as one of the threaded headers (headers for individual messages or separators) and then a slightly lighter/darker reddish tone than Misty Rose for the "quote" background? Just some quick ideas if you are thinking about some additional color scheme changes.

I could play around with the current buttons if you'd like. I really like them, but agree that the text is probably a little difficult to read (I have really good eyes and 20/20 vision so it's not a problem for me, but I imagine it might be for others). I love the blue color though...very nice color.

Oh I forgot that the other buttons are red. So forget all that talk of crimson and firebrick - you could easily use muted reds/blues as part of the color scheme though (headers and separators)...again, if you are thinking about tweaking colors again).

And when I say "services" I just mean I'd be happy to help in any way...not that I'm looking for compensation or anything like that. WHen I re-read it that's what it sounded like so I figured I'd better clarify

UGH, another edit. I don't have a gif editor or a program that supports gifs on my PC and of course your iamges are all gifs. DOH! I have a really, REALLY old and horrible version of PSP (like 3.0 or something terrible like that) but that's the only gif-supporting program I have. Bummer. Oh but I did want to suggest that if you wanted to fix the text in the red (smaller) buttons, you might want to darken the background red a bit and then do a pure white text instead of the white with black outline. A medium color like that red (seems close to a crimson color) is hard to work with for text because everything is at least a little washed out looking. Darkening it up just a little bit (using one of the variant colors that are part of the gradient effect on the far left hand side of the button would work), might solve the "hard-to-read" problem.

Just an FYI, km - since the start of this thread, Mike HAS eliminated the white background. It is a very light grey now (he can tell you the exact color for it). Additionally, he redid all the buttons last week and they should be clearer. Also, I don't foresee the red and blue color changing - they are from the official U.S. Flag Code (and frankly, I would NEVER associate myself with any shade of pink, even if you call it rose ).

We appreciate your offer of assistance, though. It was very kind of you. Thanks

Your suggestions are still very welcome. If you still think the background's too light, buttons hard too read, that the new spell check button rocks, etc. let us know.

That bum copied my style! I'm gonna sue!

Thanks for the info Jaime. I thought everyone was commenting on the current grayish white (I never saw any other white myself...must have missed it). THe buttons are fine for me (I like them a lot!) but like I said, I've got great vision and don't have a problem with light backgrounds being too much (it was probably just shocking to me since I'm so used to whatever the old background was, LOL).

The only thing I personally don't like much is the lettering of the main "America's Debate" logo, but that's just a personal thing. It reminds of me some sort of "Wanted" poster, I think But I really do prefer this skin over the most recent one (I actually liked the one before the last one...I forget but I am thinking it had light blue something or another in it somewhere? All I know is I preferred it to the one that replaced it). The buttons are very chic, though. Actually...it looks as if the blue buttons have changed fonts even since my posting now that I look closer...maybe I'm jsut seeing things after eating too many Turkey Day leftovers...can't blame it on turkey making me tired because I made cornish game hens (mmmm tasty)...the turkey legs I bought are still in the fridge waiting to be cooked (unexpectedly had to have dinner done by 4:30 instead of the projected 7, so I didn't have time for the turkey legs. But anyway, I really do like the buttons a lot! Hope you don't think I was tearing apart the design as I really do like it. The suggestions were just mostly based upon others' posts and issues and things I thought might help

Keep up the good work! The offer stands though on any help in the future (graphics, logo stuff, whatever!).

You're not seeing things, km. Mike is tweaking the skin again. He's reworking the buttons, the background and some other things I'm sure I'm forgetting.

I must say, Mike...those red buttons are 500% more legible even to my good eyes I like them, I like them A LOT!

Sorry if my comments created additional work for you, Mike, but I think these buttons are much better...dare I say PERFECT!

Thanks.

I wasn't happy with them before anyway. This skin is a work in progress.

I've been tweaking the dark skin for over a year, so it's taking a bit of practice to get a lighter skin to look decent.

I'm going to finish up the buttons tonight, and darken some of the other bright spots.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Mike

Might wanna work on the white background because it obscures the grey part of your sig.

I like the new new buttons, Mike - and the slightly darker background. Big improvement.



I think his signature is supposed to be subtle, GA...

Thumbs up on the new buttons. The UJ background is better, too.

The text background looks better

I don't care for the new boxes around the posts. It makes every post look like a big quote.

Just to muddy the waters, I like the new boxes. The gray background is easier on my eyes, and the box directs me to the text, where it is more legible against the lighter color.

I can tell the difference between the quote (see above) and the main text.

Boy, we're hard to please, aren't we?

I am lovin' the new pushbuttons, the staff indicators, and the background colors. It's da bomb Mike!

Ooh - the page indicators are pretty sweet, too. Though the tops of mine are cut off at the head of the page...

I was a little thrown by the boxes around the postings initially, as well - I think they're just a matter of getting used to, though. The heavier border does help distinguish them from the quote boxes.

Yeah, I'm modeling the page indicators off of the InvisionBoard version 2.0 Alpha. The cut-off line at the top is a bug in the Internet Explorer's style sheet handling I think. The HTML looks correct.

As for the border, I bumped it up one pixel so that it won't be so confusing with the quotes. That was bugging me too.

It won't be like that for long, though. The new version will be out in 6-8 months, and the quotes will look a bit more like the image attached to this post. Of course, it will be styled to match our site. Also, read the text in the image... that will be a feature in 6-8 months, and it is incredible.


I'm now finding that some of the PM screens are a bit out-of-whack, so I'm going to work on those now.

Mike

I'm digging the new buttons and am very pleased with the new look including the fading stars to either side. Excellent job, Mike!

Mike, this new skin looks great! As abs said, especially the stars on either side of the name. The buttons are a lot easier to pick out, too.