Can we have an option to use the previous theme please?

[Teddy07]

We should be grateful and not complain. Some sites never change anything

[TempestCatto]

46 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I believe it's because that's where all of the tags are now. Author, Solution, Popular Post, Featured Comment

 

Those I can understand, mostly because that's been that way before. But the one for OP needs to be moved back and coloured orange. It's just plain stupid otherwise.

[colonel_mortis]

20 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

It's just plain stupid otherwise.

I think that is a little bit unfair.

[colonel_mortis]

As has been said, it's not possible to go back to the old theme. Even if we could though, I don't think we would. People asked for the same think back in 2016 when we rolled out that theme, but looking back now I don't think many people would argue that this was better. I am all for addressing specific problems that people have, and I am under no illusion that this theme is perfect, but it is all too easy when something changes is to have a knee jerk reaction and say you hate it and prefer the old one when in fact there are just a few specific complaints that you have.

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

• Distinguishing who is the OP is now a chore. It used to be colored red which would naturally catch your eye and was aligned to the left of content where your eyes naturally gravitate when you start reading. Now it's unintuitively all the way out in the middle of nowhere on the right where nobody looks and in a light blue which is not easy to catch.

It will go back to being orange in the next update.

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

• The alignment of just about everything is way off, it's not pretty to look at. Content boxes are just seemingly thrown wherever with no regard to surrounding elements, nothing aligns and in turn just looks jarring.

Could you give some concrete examples where you think it looks jarring?

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

• Padding is way too much.

Are there some specific places where you think there is too much padding? You are far from the only person who has said that

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

• Signatures are now enormous and dominate threads.

They should actually be smaller and less intrusive since the update.

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

• Fonts are more difficult to read and icons are wonky and large.

The icons are not significantly different to before. The font varied by browser, but it has been rolled back now.

3 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

I could go on, but I'd just like the option to go back to a more usable experience.

If you have other constructive feedback, I would like to hear them.

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

There are a lot of things that will be easy to get used to, some things like the super tiny font (on my phone at least) not so much. 

The font size on mobile shouldn't have changed.

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

The thing is though, why this change, where are the improvements? There also wasn't a real explanation why these changes were deemed necessary afaik... That would have surely helped to accept the changes I think. 

I also think there were probably some under the hood changes as well but things like mobile notifications and editing in quotes on mobile still don't work (I suppose) 

 

As for the notification thing I don't know if it can even be fixed, it does work on discord for example - it might just be an android 10 thing tho. 

 

But yeah, the question is why, the forum was at least visually almost perfect, the new spacing and alignments, and all the different gray shades don't really improve it, they just made it incoherent, in my humble opinion. 

 

Never change a winning team. 

 

If there was a legacy theme, exactly how the old layout and color scheme was I'd switch back immediately and never think about it again.

Beyond what I've said above, we are also constrained by what IPS (the forum software devs) do - we can't afford to fall too far behind the upstream software, because we wouldn't get security or bug fixes. There were a lot of changes in this update, but most of them are not particularly relevant to you, either because they're backend changes or because they change things that we don't use here.

1 hour ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

i miss the BB code editor.

I'm sorry to announce that IPS has announced intent to entirely remove BBCode support in the near future.

[TomvanWijnen]

38 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

I don't think many people would argue that this was better.

I do actually think that that was better. I also tried going to a thread (the thread from Bengali), and while I'm not entirely sure if it's loading correctly (images are missing, so I'm not sure if anything else is missing too), I think I like that more too.

 

One specific suggestion, that the old old forum did have: the time of posts doesn't show. For that thread, it just says "Posted January 4, 2013", while the old old forum shows this: "Posted 03 January 2013 - 11:06 AM", which I much prefer. Even when it says "Posted 46 minutes ago", I think it would be great if it were to be expanded to "Posted 46 minutes ago, at 11:22 PM", or something similar. [EDIT: The time can already be seen by hovering your mouse above it on desktops, but that unfortunately doesn't work when you can't use a mouse, such as on your phone. And even so, I think this would be more convenient anyways.]

 

Another suggestion: would it be possible to widen the typing box on mobile? It's a bit narrow, I think. There's nearly a centimeter between the edge of my screen and actual text, on each side.

[Mark Kaine]

29 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Beyond what I've said above, we are also constrained by what IPS (the forum software devs) do - we can't afford to fall too far behind the upstream software, because we wouldn't get security or bug fixes. There were a lot of changes in this update,

Thanks for your reply and I understand, I also appreciate it that you're going to fix issues, I mean I always had the feeling you guys really care about a good forum experience and did a great job with it too (which is also why I'm quite baffled with 'some' changes, which might / hopefully are just mistakes tho like the very tiny and thin looking fonts - yes I know you changed them back but it's possible I didn't even see the new one, I just see it's tiny, objectively not by much but it makes it just harder to read) 

 

 

Top: Old

Bottom: "New"

 

 

(not tinkered with I used the same tool and same width) 

 

I'm going to try a different browser see if that changes anything, but obviously I prefer using my browser (Samsung internet beta, not updated recently) 

 

29 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

The icons are not significantly different to before.

 

They appear bigger, as does the signatures... They're somehow weirdly prominent and, well, rather big... 

 

 

 

 

 

It... might just be a bug... but you can hopefully see what I mean (look at how tiny the normal text is lol) 

[Spotty]

4 minutes ago, TomvanWijnen said:

One specific suggestion, that the old old forum did have: the time of posts doesn't show. For that thread, it just says "Posted January 4, 2013", while the old old forum shows this: "Posted 03 January 2013 - 11:06 AM", which I much prefer. Even when it says "Posted 46 minutes ago", I think it would be great if it were to be expanded to "Posted 46 minutes ago, at 11:22 PM", or something similar.

If you hover your mouse over the timestamp/datestamp it shows you the exact time. I like this approach as I think it looks cleaner while still retaining that information if needed.

 

[TempestCatto]

52 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

I think that is a little bit unfair.

I don't. I don't want to have to look on the other side of the screen for one piece of info when everything else is already there. I'm looking for the profile name and pic of the person who posted. Having the orange OP badge next all that is all info I need/am looking for. It's just inefficient otherwise.

[TomvanWijnen]

8 minutes ago, Spotty said:

If you hover your mouse over the timestamp/datestamp it shows you the exact time. I like this approach as I think it looks cleaner while still retaining that information if needed.

Whoops, I thought about it, but then still forgot to add that part into my post. I edited it in now. I'll quote what I edited in here too, for convenience:

 

"The time can already be seen by hovering your mouse above it on desktops, but that unfortunately doesn't work when you can't use a mouse, such as on your phone. And even so, I think this would be more convenient anyways."

[TomvanWijnen]

Is this intended?  Browser: Chrome. Phone: OnePlus 7 Pro.

 

 

 

Maybe putting the Featured topics above the Discord/merch/floatplane/support box, and making the Topics twice as wide would be a good idea.

[Mark Kaine]

Just tried with Firefox, same thing, font is very small. 

 

And I've also noticed the issue here 

 

 

The font is just tiny, the gap between words is much too big therefore and there's a lot of wasted space on the sides, that could be used to display actually bigger text. 

 

 

So I don't think this is nitpicking, I think this is actually bad for your eyes to have such small letters. 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, TempestCatto said:

I don't. I don't want to have to look on the other side of the screen for one piece of info when everything else is already there. I'm looking for the profile name and pic of the person who posted. Having the orange OP badge next all that is all info I need/am looking for. It's just inefficient otherwise.

I agree with you on the subject, it's placed really weird right now, because it's not a spot most people would look at, they'd look at name and profile picture, but still what you said came off as unnecessarily rude, which was what @colonel_mortislikely was trying to say...

 

[LogicalDrm]

10 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

I don't. I don't want to have to look on the other side of the screen for one piece of info when everything else is already there. I'm looking for the profile name and pic of the person who posted. Having the orange OP badge next all that is all info I need/am looking for. It's just inefficient otherwise.

Can you post screenshot of your situation? I feel like people who complain most about too much padding, things being far away and others like that use forum with ultrawide monitor and maximized window. As on 1080p and 110% zoom I'm using its all within one glance.

 

Same people used to whine about too much unused space on the sides, but accepted that it's ergonomically better to have your reading material in thinner space than moving your head constantly.

[TempestCatto]

1 hour ago, LogicalDrm said:

Can you post screenshot of your situation?

Spoiler

1920x1080 100% zoom (the default/normal zoom set by Firefox). The OP badge is as far away from the rest of the info (profile name, pic, location, number of posts, etc) as it could be. I always look at that stuff when someone posts something. Gives me a quick idea of who they might be, if they're new (not many posts) or if they ask for help that depends on their location (even though not everyone puts it). It's just useful information and I think moving the OP badge away from that is not ergonomic as we now have to look on the other side of that for only one more piece of info, when it could just be right where it always was.

[Murasaki]

I echo your concerns about padding. First thing I did was make a userstyle to lower the padding from 18px to 10px for threads and subforums. I understand wanting to seperate things for more distunguishability (is this a word?) but its another iteration ive seen on the web that makes everything look like its made for phones/touch ease of access.

 

But that is my only qualm about it, loving this more clean look.

[LogicalDrm]

2 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

  Hide contents

 

I see what you mean. Mine is probably thinner mainly because of Windows DPI settings then since it doesn't move that far apart if I would use 100% zoom. So it might be better if the bubbles started from left side, next to timestamp.

[TempestCatto]

15 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

I see what you mean. Mine is probably thinner mainly because of Windows DPI settings then since it doesn't move that far apart if I would use 100% zoom. So it might be better if the bubbles started from left side, next to timestamp.

That's something I forgot to mention. My Windows zoom/DPI settings are all default as well. I have what I would consider to be a very typical setup display wise. I don't have ultrawide or 4k monitors, nor is anything zoomed in or out differently.