Forum layout and design, readability

[awemany]

Hey,

this forum does look a lot better than BCT, but for some reason I found the old BCT forum easier to actually read. Might it be that the text here is not completely black but a darkish gray, or more antialiased or something?
Also, although ugly, I found the boxes around text a nice visual guide to different posts.

Is there any easy way to switch between different styles on this forum, or adapt it to have it look more like BCT?

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I think the gray background on BTC makes it easier to read, and also as you said the boxing effect. I like the avatar and name being on the side, too, not interfering with the vertical scroll screen real estate like this big horizontal bar that is in every post here.

 

[Bloomie]

@awemany I am taking feedback on readability and making tweaks regularly. The body text is black, but the links in the sidebar are gray--that can certainly be changed. The amount of yellow is also going to be reduced to improve readability.

@Zangelbert Bingledack Point taken about the avatar and name positioning. It does look great on mobile devices, because the bar is shorter, but on desktop I agree it takes up a little more space. I'll see if it can be changed.

Please keep the feedback coming, guys, thanks.

 

[cypherdoc]

it is great on mobile! what a relief over BCT! whatever you do, don't change that.

the only thing on mobile is readability contrast as i've already mentioned.

it's great to have a more modern website with all it's new features though compared to BCT.

 

[Bloomie]

The User Info container has been moved to the left of the Content container, per @Zangelbert Bingledack's suggestion. This does save quite a bit of vertical real estate, and mobile view is not affected!

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I like how I can flip to landscape on my phone (by rotating it 90 degrees) and it puts the user info container on the left. Perfect! (How many millions of dollars did it take to make this amazing forum software? )

 

[cypherdoc]

6000 BTC?

 

[cypherdoc]

The User Info container has been moved to the left of the Content container, per @Zangelbert Bingledack's suggestion. This does save quite a bit of vertical real estate, and mobile view is not affected!

that is great responsiveness to user requests!

 

[awemany]

Indeed. Is there an easy way to configure this, per user maybe? I guess I could do tweaks with my firefox and a custom forced CSS sheet, but the whole area of web design isn't at all my day-to-day business and so if there is something easy, stupid, and clickable, I would also really be glad if we could get:

- more contrast between the different posts (gray boxes), as an option
- and remove the extra info between the posts as suggested above

Thanks for the work on this!

Oh and before I forget: I am almost exclusively a desktop/laptop reader. Mobile functionality is nice, but certainly secondary from my perspective.

 

[Bloomie]

@awemany The extra info between posts has been taken care of, see my previous post. Is it not working for you?

There might be a way to have a per-user customization as far as colors go, but it wouldn't be something layout related.

 

[awemany]

Hey, yes, it is indeed better, thank you! But a color picker would be awesome - I'd pick stronger colors personally, to make the separation more clear.