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Forum 2.0 Suggestion
Paul Keith:
Ahh, yes. I finally see what you mean. It doesn't bother me that much but yes, I agree that is convenient.
I guess the reason why it never struck me because I often am so frustrated at the zoom level of my browser that I often just zoom it so I don't really get the benefit of the screen estate. I also am used to tagging an rss entry to read later so the extra screen space is wasted on me because I'm too busy marking a forum topic as something to be read later on.
tranglos:
Please have a look at the comparison screenshot (click on the thumbnail). On a much thinner slice of my screen (room for expansion?) I immediately get an overview over twice as many threads and immediately recognize which threads I have visited before, which posts have not been answered - all I need to know, while enjoying a much cleaner interface.
-Lutz_ (September 11, 2008, 09:00 PM)
--- End quote ---
May I register a shrill cry of protest!
Colors. Without arguing aesthetics, I couldn't read a forum that uses yellow (ack!) on black background. And red. Such color schemes are truly, physically unreadable to me, so much that it hurts my eyes and the tiny print appears to flutter like in those optical illusions. There's way too much contrast, and the colors are all glaring neon at me.
I realize this is the preferred color scheme for most gaming sites, for example - perhaps to do with the cool grungey feel they like to elicit, so maybe it's culture-bound to a degree, no matter. I know for certain that if I open up a forum that looks like the left-hand part of your screenshot, I close it immediately and never return unless by mistake. I would never read DC that way.
(One solution for when I really want the content is to read such sites via Google RSS readers, which imposes its own default black-on-white style.)
The same goes for dpreview, incidentally. I've used it when I really wanted to read the reviews before purchasing cameras, but it is painful.
Then there's the layout. Why do books waste paper on margins? Because white space helps readability. It is true that the "dark" forum in your screenshot packs more information into a single screen, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. There are certain things that need to look like an Airbus cockpit, and most of them are Airbuses :) To put that much info on a page you need that small font and narrow line spacing, which to me produces clutter. It's hard to keep eyesight focused on a single topic line, because the neighboring lines intrude.
I'm not saying my way is better than yours, only that there are certain designs that put me off to the point of physical inability to read a site. I've nothing against custom themes - I just never needed them at DC, since the current layout and color scheme are about perfect to me. It's clear, clean and eminently legible. The amount of white space seems to be just about right. I don't even mind the profile icons, since I hardly notice them at all. The only clutter I see comes from personal signatures and avatars (I'm guilty myself).
(There was once a highly informative thread on light vs dark backgrounds - interesting to see how widely basic preferences differ.)
marek
PS. What I'd like to have would be a configurable number of posts per page. I'd set it to something large, like 500, to reduce the number of times I need to click the index numbers at bottom to read a whole thread.
Paul Keith:
I realize this is the preferred color scheme for most gaming sites, for example - perhaps to do with the cool grungey feel they like to elicit, so maybe it's culture-bound to a degree, no matter.
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Not to defend all gamers but we love Gamefaqs blue and white theme before CNN ruined it for us with their own take on the whole thing man. You're not going to see many people yearning for the old green and black theme that's for sure.
tranglos:
Not to defend all gamers but we love Gamefaqs blue and white theme before CNN ruined it for us with their own take on the whole thing man. You're not going to see many people yearning for the old green and black theme that's for sure.
-Paul Keith (September 12, 2008, 10:52 AM)
--- End quote ---
Heck I'm a gamer myself (don't tell my wife! Is FarCry 2 out already?). I just run away from gamer forums :)
app103:
You are NOT stuck with the default theme of any page on the web. You can change it all to suit your tastes and needs.
You are able to define your own style sheet to be applied to all or some pages you visit, in most modern browsers.
Those that love black backgrounds, can have Google and Wikipedia (and even DC) that way, if they want.
Originally intended as an accessibility feature, user defined style sheets are very powerful.
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=accessibility+user+defined+style+sheet
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