Questions and comments about the new look to the forum.

[Standard]

My quick 2 cents worth.

Like the new tool bar at the top, the picture at the header is nice also although I wish it filled up more of the room towards the right side of the page to balance it out.

Don't care for the white background and "gray" lettering. There is not nearly enough contrast, and for me at least it is somewhat hard to read/not visually appealing. A larger font size would be nice also. Bring back the rankings, while not vital, it was always nice to see. There seems to be an over abundance of "white space" to the forum now.

I've not delved into the personal section of the forum so will reserve comment about that area until later.

Overall, I think it will be a good change after some minor adjustments. Thanks again for all the hard work you put in for us.

[Lyle1]

Have the kilt auction links to eBay been removed? If so, could whoever created the search strategies share them?

[pdcorlis]

My overall impression - I like the new look. The site design makes sense and it feels like a breath of fresh air. It does seem some of the standing elements are paying attention to the browser width and trying to scale while other don't. My ADD cries out for consistency here - but I can chalk it up to "good therapy" for my perfectionism if I must.

Keep going Steve - this is going to be great!

[DesertCeltic]

The tartan background banner strips (I don't know what a better description is) is a bit busy with the white text on top being tougher to read. The white on the solid navy strips is better, but I really like the lighter blue with the fade used on the buttons.

The text links (ie. Previous Thread | Next Thread) are too light. I think the roll over color would be a better base color with a darker color blue for the roll over.

I agree about the white background being a bit bright. Just don't know what color I would use as I like the contrast.

[KiltedPilot]

Overall, I like the cleaner appearance of this new design.

There is one criteria by which the design is failing in my opinion, however. You might call it the "relevancy factor".

When I click on a post, I want to see that post. That is what I clicked on the link for. I don't want to see anything else. So, an important measure is how much of the (vertical) area of the screen is dedicated to the information I wanted to look at (the post), and how much dedicated to stuff I did not want to look at (adverts, titles, logos, padding, etc).

At the moment, on my laptop, when I click on link to look at a post I see precisely nothing of the post itself. I have to scroll up one entire screen to start reading it. You might say the design currently results in a relevancy factor of 0%.

If I look at "new posts" instead, I see perhaps 20% of the vertical screen area dedicated to the display of the lists of posts.

Obviously, this factor depends on browser, operating system, and screen size. I get a different result on my larger desk machine for instance.

On the average vBulletin forum, the relevancy factor might be 60%-75%. Sometimes has high as 90% for really optimized forums. My observation is that 0%-10% is an unusually poor relevancy factor.

Bottom line here, is that the adverts, their title, and their frame, and the forum logo, are getting in the way of me seeing the real information on any given page.

For funding reasons, the advertisements at the top of the page might be necessary, but this should cause the downward pressure on the size of the forum logo to compensate -- it's actually grown to be very large instead. Furthermore, whilst advertisements might be necessary, a large frame+title around them is probably not.

Overall ... good work though ... keep it up!

Mike

[HeathBar]

I'd like to see a return of the tartan background. And change the where the tartan is now to a solid color. The vertical lines in the tartan make the white font hard to read. The whole look seems washed out. I applaud the removal of the titles, but would like to have some thing other than join date that shows a level of experience on the forum.

[Bugbear]

The "Remember Me" check box seems to be default checked at log in, where it had been unchecked.

The way the new rules are arranged is a lot better. I'm still studying the changes to their content.

[beloitpiper]

PLEASE put the tartan background back up! All this white hurts my eyes. Also, the ads at the top are too wide for the screen.

[piperdbh]

The ads at the top seem to be formatted for a wide screen monitor, even though Scotweb's appears squeezed sideways.

I would like to see the tartan wallpaper return, the background on posts be a bit dimmer, and the default font color be black. I also want the ranks and titles to return.

[NewGuise]

I have Irlen's syndrome, which makes high contrast (black/white) really tough to look at, so I'm fine with a lesser contrast of lettering and background, but all that white in th current design really hurts. And like some others I quite liked the tartan at the sides in the previous design, as it helped define the window visually (against all the others that I keep open at once), but have a little difficulty reading anything against that tartan background.

I also dislike fixed tables that only align / look right if the window is maximized - something I rarely do. For me as a result the "partners" piece here extends far beyond the regular window; obviously I don't really need to see the whole Scotweb ad everytime I look at a page, but I find seeing half an ad at the top of every page, and scroll bars at the bottom, unnecessary distractions.

Otherwise ... fine.