themes

[admin]

I'm happy to spend a bit more of my volunteer time to make changes. But I do need more specific requests than "it's aggressive"!

I can change paragraph spacing very easily. It's currently set to use a paragraph spacing of 1.5 em, which is only a little more than the perhaps-more-common 1em spacing.

The line spacing is 1.4em, again a little more than the normal 1.3em, but only just.

I have changed the font definitions, to prefer Helvetica and Arial which are pretty standard website fonts. It was using "Lucida Grande" as the preferred font, which might have looked a bit "unusual".

[Bicycler]

Anthony has installed Subsilver2 ...

Just had a look, ghastly. Thank heavens for Prosilver .

+1

That said, I agree with Mick about the excessive spacing. Is this a necessary part of making the forum better for mobile users or just a glitch?

[gaz]

Eeeek, getting notifications on being quoted. I'll head to the UCP to find the off switch.

Phew, that was easy.

[Psamathe]

No, the upgrade is not complete. There is quite a lot of fiddling to do yet. The old board had a lot of CTC-specific customisations.

No, you can't have the old board themes back. Sorry, they just don't work with the new code. The new theme is actually much better designed, and I think you will probably grow to like it. Especially on mobile devices.

Don't know about the themes but the font is dreadful for reading posts. Typing this response font is fine (for entered text), but reading posts, breadcrums, etc. the characters are squeezed too close together and it is very unreadable (compared to previous fonts).

The font does seem to be different, the Forum now uses Trebuchet MS on a PC in preference to Arial or Helvetica. I can remove that if people generally prefer Arial or Helvetica. It depends quite a bit on which browser you use, and whether you're on a Mac or a PC or an iPhone or an Android device - they all render text slightly differently.

And I'm viewing on a Mac and it is actually using Helvetica in Safari (I do actually have Trebuchet MS installed). Maybe the character spacing works on PCs
but terrible

Ian

[Psamathe]

I'm happy to spend a bit more of my volunteer time to make changes. But I do need more specific requests than "it's aggressive"!

I can change paragraph spacing very easily. It's currently set to use a paragraph spacing of 1.5 em, which is only a little more than the perhaps-more-common 1em spacing.

The line spacing is 1.4em, again a little more than the normal 1.3em, but only just.

I have changed the font definitions, to prefer Helvetica and Arial which are pretty standard website fonts. It was using "Lucida Grande" as the preferred font, which might have looked a bit "unusual".

I'd take them both down a bit (bit tighter line and paragraph spacing).

Ian

[admin]

That said, I agree with Mick about the excessive spacing. Is this a necessary part of making the forum better for mobile users or just a glitch?

What you see is the phpBB3.1 "ProSilver" style, or, if you have switched, the standard phpBB3.1 "SubSilver2" style. You would have to ask the phpBB3.1 developers why they made the styles look as they do.

I have made a few tweaks here and there to the ProSilver style, but I'm not paid to spend hours playing with this Forum's styles, sadly.

[deliquium]

It's too aggressive looking

Can you explain what you mean by "aggressive looking"?

It makes everything indistinct

The font does seem to be different, the Forum now uses Trebuchet MS on a PC in preference to Arial or Helvetica. I can remove that if people generally prefer Arial or Helvetica. It depends quite a bit on which browser you use, and whether you're on a Mac or a PC or an iPhone or an Android device - they all render text slightly differently.

Hi admin

I only use a desktop Mac with a very large graphic screen so have absolutely ZERO knowledge of anything hand held.

I composed what I thought was a succinct, descriptive and hopefully helpful reply - only to have lost it by pressing the wrong button? - or was it phpbb censorship I AM KIDDING about the latter

By aggressive I meant all the various posts were physically bunched up much much closer together (than before) - it was difficult to separate them and therefore consider them as appropriately relevant? It looked and felt confusing.

Space is just as important as words in conveying information - which is where the older style seemed to work better? Obviously accept we all got used to the previous too.

I have to admit to hating Trebuchet too. Purely personal - but bunch it up without respectful spaces between posts and it looks 'aggressive' (again a personal interpretation)

Not that it helps, I was thrown out of Art Skool at the end of my first year studying Graphic Design and several years later was a brush, ladder, enamel paint and awl 'signwriter' - are there any left?

Mick F hit the nail on the head with one word = INDISTINCT

Appreciate you asking specific questions and hope we can all benefit

Kind regards, Paul

[Bicycler]

I have made a few tweaks here and there to the ProSilver style, but I'm not paid to spend hours playing with this Forum's styles, sadly.

Nor would I ask you to. It's just that the newer Prosilver seemed to result in much more spacing on the home page than the old one. Maybe my eyes are already adjusting to it or maybe you've tweaked something but it now looks better than it did.

[Samuel D]

People hate change on their forums but most get over it in a day or two. I think the main problem here is that the default text is too small. It responds nicely to manually increasing the font size in your browser, but most people don’t even know how to do that.

There is also more space (not less) than before, unless I’m mistaken. That tends to look better to newcomers, but the information density of the old forum was useful for those used to it.

That said, the changes are tiny compared to most site redesigns and I think we’ll manage okay.

[Heltor Chasca]

I like it. Thanks for all the hard work. [emoji106] I'm going to add my unspecific observation: Cool and refreshing.

[gaz]

Yes, please add my thanks to admin.

Just had a look at how the latest update handles pics, much the same as before.

DSCN0277a.jpg

The 256Kb limit is still in place but the error message just says "File too large: xxxxx" without giving the limit figure, might confuse newbies.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,

I will NOT like it.
NOT at all.

I couldn't give a toss about mobile devices .......... personally ............ I would like Subsliver2 back again please.
Even when on my iPad and even when on my Samsung Galaxy, I was on Subsilver2.

If I can't, I'll be hating this layout.
Absolutely horrible in the extreme.

Ah.............you be boycotting the forum then .........mmmmm worst luck

[mjr]

The line spacing is 1.4em, again a little more than the normal 1.3em, but only just.

I have changed the font definitions, to prefer Helvetica and Arial which are pretty standard website fonts. It was using "Lucida Grande" as the preferred font, which might have looked a bit "unusual".

Fiddling in firebug, I think line-height 1.5em or maybe even 1.6em looks better... and I prefer serif for large blocks of text and even if not, Arial irritates me, but if you don't want to try that or others don't like the look I'm probably more capable than many of forcing it to look different for me.

It's just lovely now that the basic theme templates allow me to use accessibility tools to fiddle with the styles easily without it looking like coleslaw. I really hope we can make it work for those that enjoyed the inflexible old look too.

And I really like quote notifications That and +1s or likes or (y) or whatever, then I think it'll make the forum much quicker to use and easier to keep discussions alive.

[admin]

The nicest line height will depend on your screen, the screen pixel density, the viewing distance, and probably how your browser renders the font.

For reference, Google uses line heights of 1.4 in search results and 1.24 in blocks of text on the search page, and 1.54 on their "About" pages. I normally use 1.3 on websites I design, but there is no "correct answer".

There do seem to be quite a lot of nice new features in phpBB3.1 - the on-site Notifications (top right, next to your username) are proving to be useful already, and you can easily turn unwanted notification types off.

I've done a bit more tweaking on the home page, to allow each board's line to exist with two lines of text, making it more compact and similar to how the old board looked on a wide screen.

[PDQ Mobile]

On my mobile device i can no longer see who made the last post in any given topic when viewing all the topics as a list.
That is a great shame. Please rectify. Please!