New Forums Look - Live Today!

[petteyg359]

The background is actually the exact same color as the old theme, I just went and double-checked to make sure I wasn't misremembering.

And yet, the grays are lighter, and the blues are more blue and less gray.

Comparison from my own screenshots on the same system:

View attachment 209457

Another screenshot posted by somebody else previously:



I'll get used to it, but I still find the brighter colors decidedly more eye-stabby.

 

[Alaric]

This is what I have, for what it's worth. I'm using Vivaldi (Chromium engine).


View attachment 209459

 

[ATMINSIDE]

And yet, the grays are lighter, and the blues are more blue and less gray.

Comparison from my own screenshots on the same system:

View attachment 209457

Another screenshot posted by somebody else previously:



I'll get used to it, but I still find the brighter colors decidedly more eye-stabby.

The Overclockers blue has always been brighter than the gradient was on the old forum style. This style is also removing all gradients, in favor of flat colors, because the way the gradients were handled was actually all images which are inherently slow to load compared to a set of hex colors.

What you're seeing is the background image for the body, check the post background color as it is the same which is where 90% of reading on a forum is done.
The background image is removed, now using a background color, and the background color matches the post background color.

This is what I have, for what it's worth. I'm using Vivaldi (Chromium engine).

View attachment 209459

I see no issues in your screenshot, but what about at 100% zoom instead of zoomed in?

 

[RollingThunder]

Gee, I can go back to a 22" monitor now @ 120% zoom!

 

[Alaric]

Here ya' go. I keep it at 120% to make web pages easier to read from my couch. My monitor is a 43" TV in my living room. No frills except 3 HDMI inputs and 8 ms response time. I can read it at 100%, it just takes more effort.
View attachment 209460

 

[DaveB]

Got no use for a Chat Box. It appears it is attracting users to chat rather than post in the forums themselves. It is the technical forums that are dying out everywhere, there is no need for a new social media style chat box for mundane sentence fragment style chit chat. If you want something like that, and want attract new users, just add twitter feed links on the page.

As far as the regular forums go, you over shrank them.

 

[rainless]

Okay... Here we go...

View attachment 209461


View attachment 209462

Maybe the font hasn't changed... but the contrast or SOMETHING has certainly changed. Look at the sidebar below... I just can't read it anymore.

View attachment 209463


As a comparison... here's a screenshot I captured as a joke just last week:

View attachment 209464

...I could read THAT clear as day.

Like I said earlier... It seems to be a question of eyestrain... Whatever changed... it's just not the right mix.

Now... over the course of 14 years... I've complained about a LOT of stuff on this forum... (like when I couldn't get the https thing going right...) but I'm reasonably certain that I've never, ever complained about how it looks before.

In general... I don't really care what the sites I visit look like. Zuckerbug wants to go all "Hello Kitty" with his FB theme... that's his business.

But I swear to you... something on only this site is hurting my eyes. I can't quite nail it down... I don't know if it's the background, or the font, or maybe it's brighter or darker or what... but you have my word something isn't quite right.

EDIT!

The last screenshot on the bottom from the old theme... the background is clearly a different color... giving better contrast with the text. Maybe that's it?

 

[Zerileous]

Glad to see the margins fixed, I like the new theme fine now. Missing the thunderbolt however.

 

[JLK03F150]

Glad to see the margins fixed, I like the new theme fine now. Missing the thunderbolt however.

I agree on all points.

I spend most of my time here on a 15" notebook w/ a 1080p display. I use Firefox & have the zoom set to 133%. That's a common setting for me on most sites that I visit frequently - old eyes & progressive lens glasses.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Here ya' go. I keep it at 120% to make web pages easier to read from my couch. My monitor is a 43" TV in my living room. No frills except 3 HDMI inputs and 8 ms response time. I can read it at 100%, it just takes more effort.
View attachment 209460

OK, looks normal to me. Not seeing the same thing as I am in rainless' screenshots. Thank you.

Got no use for a Chat Box. It appears it is attracting users to chat rather than post in the forums themselves. It is the technical forums that are dying out everywhere, there is no need for a new social media style chat box for mundane sentence fragment style chit chat. If you want something like that, and want attract new users, just add twitter feed links on the page.

As far as the regular forums go, you over shrank them.

If you don't like the chatbox, don't use it. Simple as that.

The only people who have access to it are premium members, seniors, moderators, and admins. It has been here for... oh... about 10 years? IMOG set it up, it wasn't a secret when it was done, either... I simply opened it up to senior members as a nice gesture, that's the only change to the chatbox.

"over shrank them"... elaborate, please?

Okay... Here we go...

View attachment 209461


View attachment 209462

Maybe the font hasn't changed... but the contrast or SOMETHING has certainly changed. Look at the sidebar below... I just can't read it anymore.

View attachment 209463


As a comparison... here's a screenshot I captured as a joke just last week:

View attachment 209464

...I could read THAT clear as day.

Like I said earlier... It seems to be a question of eyestrain... Whatever changed... it's just not the right mix.

Now... over the course of 14 years... I've complained about a LOT of stuff on this forum... (like when I couldn't get the https thing going right...) but I'm reasonably certain that I've never, ever complained about how it looks before.

In general... I don't really care what the sites I visit look like. Zuckerbug wants to go all "Hello Kitty" with his FB theme... that's his business.

But I swear to you... something on only this site is hurting my eyes. I can't quite nail it down... I don't know if it's the background, or the font, or maybe it's brighter or darker or what... but you have my word something isn't quite right.

EDIT!

The last screenshot on the bottom from the old theme... the background is clearly a different color... giving better contrast with the text. Maybe that's it?

I have no clue why, but all the text in your screenshots look... bolder? and blurry? Compared to what I see on my screen.
I can put your screenshot side-by-side with my browser and it looks different. See here. I completely understand why you're having issues reading stuff after seeing that side-by-side.

View attachment 209471

Do you have the same issue on another PC? On your phone maybe? Have you tried incognito and/or another browser?
Here's a comparison of your sidebar to mine.

View attachment 209472

As mentioned before, the post background is the same color as the old theme. Some boxes had darker backgrounds, such as the site stats box you had in that last screenshot.

Additionally, the text color here, on the background color, is well past the WCAG suggested contrast levels for web design. They require 4.5:1 for large text, 7:1 for normal text. We're just a hair under 10:1 for the post body, the side with usernames is a bit over 12:1. The absolute lowest contrast anywhere on the site now is 4.74:1 and is only in headings with larger or bold text.

The old theme had most text in the range of 9:1 up to 16:1, but there were a lot of elements down in the 3:1 to 4:1 range, which is really hard to read.

Here's a screenshot showing the same thread, side by side, on the new theme vs the old theme. The new theme actually has a HIGHER contrast than the old theme, which should make it easier to read.

View attachment 209473

Maybe the issue is that the borders on things stand out too much too? If so, I can work on getting those toned down some?

Glad to see the margins fixed, I like the new theme fine now. Missing the thunderbolt however.

Thank you!

I agree on all points.

I spend most of my time here on a 15" notebook w/ a 1080p display. I use Firefox & have the zoom set to 133%. That's a common setting for me on most sites that I visit frequently - old eyes & progressive lens glasses.

Sounds about right, that's small for 1080p!! Any legibility or contrast issues for you?

 

[EarthDog]

Got no use for a Chat Box. It appears it is attracting users to chat rather than post in the forums themselves. It is the technical forums that are dying out everywhere, there is no need for a new social media style chat box for mundane sentence fragment style chit chat. If you want something like that, and want attract new users, just add twitter feed links on the page.

As far as the regular forums go, you over shrank them.

To add to what ATM has said, if you take a few minutes to scan the chat, you'll see it is 99% off topic banter between that group of members and staff. There are barely any technical discussions that go on there and to have these short 'twitter like' discussions in lounge posts seems silly.

I appreciate your thoughts and hope this explanation helps a bit to frame its actual purpose and uses. If it isnt for you, it isn't...and that's ok.

 

[wagex]

To add to what EarthDog said the chat has actually been there a long time for "premium" users, like he said it rarely even gets used I've actually mostly ignored it for the last few years lol

 

[RollingThunder]

The sidebar for "New Forum Posts" is redundant with "Quick Links" > 'Today's Posts' and at the far left end of the bar with "New Posts" which really makes it redundant in triplicate. IMO the sidebar is mostly useless, makes for an unbalanced screen and margins entering OC Forums and reduces margins on the whole page so that various text needs an extra line to complete and wastes too much space. Look how far down the opening screen page is to the bottom. Not a big deal but it gives the appearance of an amatuerish new look.

Additionally I too am seeing the slightly blurred text that Rainless is seeing in certain windows. The text fonts HAVE changed too here but not for the worse. The "Quick Reply" text is different than the "Advanced" reply text. Not a major issue but this is evident on two different user's OS's and browser versions so it's not the user.

 

[Automata]

The sidebar for "New Forum Posts" is redundant with "Quick Links" > 'Today's Posts' and at the far left end of the bar with "New Posts" which really makes it redundant in triplicate.

"Today's Posts" shows all read/unread threads. "New Posts" only shows unread threads. They are not the same thing, and it has been this way for at least 10 years.

For those with blurry text, what OS and browser are you using?

 

[JLK03F150]

Sounds about right, that's small for 1080p!! Any legibility or contrast issues for you?

Text is sharp and the new colors make it more vivid - in a good way.

I saw the chatbox this weekend, then noticed it went away. lol Now I know I wasn't supposed to see it.
From the Forum home I go directly to Quick Links/ Today's Posts so I rarely see the side bars. I'll have to take a look.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

The sidebar for "New Forum Posts" is redundant with "Quick Links" > 'Today's Posts' and at the far left end of the bar with "New Posts" which really makes it redundant in triplicate. IMO the sidebar is mostly useless, makes for an unbalanced screen and margins entering OC Forums and reduces margins on the whole page so that various text needs an extra line to complete and wastes too much space. Look how far down the opening screen page is to the bottom. Not a big deal but it gives the appearance of an amatuerish new look.

Additionally I too am seeing the slightly blurred text that Rainless is seeing in certain windows. The text fonts HAVE changed too here but not for the worse. The "Quick Reply" text is different than the "Advanced" reply text. Not a major issue but this is evident on two different user's OS's and browser versions so it's not the user.

The "New Forum Posts" in the sidebar actually isn't redundant with anything. It shows the post text, then gives a link to the thread the post is in.
"New Posts" shows a list of threads sorted by their most recent post, showing only unread threads.
"Today's Posts" also shows a list of threads sorted by their most recent post, but cuts off shorter than "New Posts" and shows both read and unread threads.

So no, none of that is actually redundant. Also, there are items to be added as we get the time to do so in the sidebar to make it longer.

What OS and Browser? If Win10, what is your Display Scaling set to?

I can promise you the text font has not changed, nor has the size of the font. I actually ensured all of those were set to the same values when building the new style.

If your "Post Quick Reply" and "Go Advanced" buttons have different text, that is an issue in your browser.
Those both pull from the exact same CSS and cannot be different unless manually set via custom CSS to be different.

"Today's Posts" shows all read/unread threads. "New Posts" only shows unread threads. They are not the same thing, and it has been this way for at least 10 years.

For those with blurry text, what OS and browser are you using?

All of this +1. The blurry text is something on that individual system or browser.

Text is sharp and the new colors make it more vivid - in a good way.

I saw the chatbox this weekend, then noticed it went away. lol Now I know I wasn't supposed to see it.
From the Forum home I go directly to Quick Links/ Today's Posts so I rarely see the side bars. I'll have to take a look.

Thank you, glad to know it is sharp/clear for you!

 

[ATMINSIDE]

As promised, sidebar now has more content. Check it out! https://www.overclockers.com/forums/

 

[JLK03F150]

This is weird. This is my desktop, Windows 7 & IE11. As long as the quick reply box is active, the background is the same color as the text. Works fine with Win10 & FF.
Just seeing all the text tools are missing with the quick reply box too. And the box is text colored in advanced reply too.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

This is weird. This is my desktop, Windows 7 & IE11. As long as the quick reply box is active, the background is the same color as the text. Works fine with Win10 & FF.
Just seeing all the text tools are missing with the quick reply box too. And the box is text colored in advanced reply too.

So the quick reply looks like that, but the advanced looks the same as your W10/FF setup, correct?

 

[JLK03F150]

All the buttons are missing here in advanced too. I'm dumping Win7 for Win10 in the next few days, getting everything ready for the update.