Seriously, why olive green?

[snoopy369]

Koy: we're talking about forumdisplay.php not showthread.php; on showthread.php if you are on Restricted Extra Wide you'll find it's just above quick reply.

LA: I'll look at it

[Asher]

How, precisely, is the breadcrumb better? The breadcrumb is on top of the page, which usually you need to scroll up to get to... while the forum jump is right after the last post (in R:EW). The forum jump defaults to showing you the forum you're in, so it's always easy to get to the nearby forums; and any forum that's not in the breadcrumb is much easier to get to. If you only post in OT then they're basically equivalent, except for the position on the page; but I fail to see how the breadcrumb is significantly better.

Because the drop-down is randomly organized, is tiny in size, and doesn't show post information? It's god-awful, I HATE IT SO MUCH (seriously). It's also ridiculously positioned so far away from the last post, I need to page down or scroll to get to it anyway so it is in no way easier than accessing the top (HOME button).

I hit HOME to get to the top of the page, then click the main forums link to scan. The new design is ridiculously stupid for linking to the useless homepage rather than the forums homepage with the big link, now I must carefully click the "Forums" link which takes more skill/attention...

[Locutus]

I'm responsible for our new design, so if anyone is looking for a scapegoat, you can blame me Apologies for the lack of response on design issues like this: unfortunately I was on the road in the past few weeks, so I actually wasn't around for the public roll-out of the forum upgrade.

First off, I have to mention a big, big caveat about the design: we made some major shortcuts to be able to release the upgrade when we did and one of them was that the design got really short-handed, so what you're looking at right now isn't nearly the final version. We basically took an existing vB3 style that looked a little bit like what I wanted and started editing it to suit our needs. We've made some major changes to it already, but aren't nearly done yet. So in its current state the design is essentially an early alpha at best. Almost all of the problems people have identified in the design stem entirely from this. (It was either this or delay the upgrade with another couple of months.)

That said, in large outlines the current design isn't too-too far from what I have in mind for the final version. I definitely do intend for us to have some green elements in it, although not exactly the same shades as what we're using now (they're not too far off though, but my palette is slightly brighter) and not quite as much of it (although the horizontal bars are meant to be green, which is by far the most dominant element).

I find it mildly amusing that most people seem to think that our old forums were blue: that proves exactly why we IMO needed to add the green. Because in reality the old forums (in the default style) were actually gray: virtually every element on the page that wasn't a link was actually some shade of gray (where I consider white and black to be extremely light/dark shades of gray in this case). The reason why people think it was blue is because the only real thing of colour on most pages were the links, which were of course blue.

That's still the case in the new design: most links are still blue (only some of the menus are white or red now), so there is still almost the same amount of blue on the page now as there was on vB2, and for almost everything else we still use various shades of gray, so the palette we use now is almost the same as on the old forum. It's just that there's now also some green in it to make the page less bland and drab. Since the green is more striking and used in larger panes it becomes much more dominant, pushing the blue largely to the background.

IMO this is something that the design really needed: some colour to liven the page up a bit. Grey tones really don't add anything and the blue we use on Apolyton is used all over the net and is (as such) fairly bland as well. You can argue until the end of time about which colour is best and I experimented with many, but in the end that's a very subjective matter. However, we did really need that extra colour, I just 'happened' to pick this green because I for one like it.

I went for green because it made sense to me: blue is already used for links so that's the last thing we need more of (then it becomes far too dominant, and it risks causing confusion about what is and isn't a link). As we already used some red on the old site I tried that first, but it just didn't work for me: depending on the shade it was always either too aggressive, too dark or too pink. Red's just too strong a colour to be used in anything other than very small quantities IMO. After blue and red, green is to me the next logical choice as the third primary colour. This particular green (or rather a somewhat lighter shade of it) I liked because it's a nice natural colour that's neither too aggressive nor too dark. Also, I had already tested it as part of the CivJunction site that was our 2007 April Fools joke and most reactions were fairly positive at the time (in that sense it was more than *just* an April Fools joke, as tends to be Apolyton tradition )

Any colour takes a little getting used to after 10 years on our previous, extremely bland design, but once you get past that I think this green is quite alright. However, I certainly understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so not everyone will be on the same page on this one, but that's true for any colour I could possibly have picked. We'll have to see if we can satisfy other tastes with alternate styles in due time (or maybe the lighter shade of green will satisfy people, that's what it did for Dan).

[Robert]

I like the green.
The colour is way better then th cfc scheme.
Colours shouldn't be dominant on websites you're visiting mostly for the (Textual) info on it.

The green is subtle.
It's fresh. It's ok.

[TCO]

Locutus, pull your head out of your ass and listen to the customers. Green sucks. And this blog is dying. I can't beleive you've fallen behind CFC. That's shameful.

[Robert]

TCO, pull your head out of your ass and listen to other customers then those who agree with you, who think that green is fine. Not everybody agrees with your opinion. Your opinion is not the only opinion.

[conmcb25]

I like the green.

And lightening up the shade would be fine by me.

[Krill]

I would like the option of not having to look at a green forum. All of the other forums give choices of colours though, so I'd assume that we aren't going to be forced into a green forum.

[Locutus]

To be clear: yes, there will eventually be other colour schemes as well. It may be a bit before we get around to developing those though, so until then try to get in touch with your inner tree hugger and love the green

[Krill]

Actually I'll just waste your time and use Stylish to alter the colour scheme.

[Bloody Monk]

Seriously, I can live with just about any color for the top bar. It's just an accent after all. My complaint is that the background is too bright. My eyes can't take very much of the glare before I have to go elsewhere.

So, please, please, tamp down the white background. Thanks.

Monk

[Ben Kenobi]

[action=Ben Kenobi]storms Locutus' house with pitchfork and torch. [/action]

So you are the one responsible.

[TCO]

you guys wouldn't understand feedback if it cut your balls off. no wonder this place is dying.

[Krill]

OK, it's been over 7 weeks now...can we please get some new colour schemes? Or maybe the ability to make our own?

[ZEE]

NO, how dare you ask such a ridiculous question!