Questions and comments about the new look to the forum.

[CDNSushi]

You know, this is seriously going from bad to worse. No one denies the effort and time that it takes to make changes like this, kudos to Steve for having the intestinal fortitude to undertake that.... In spite of my preference for "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," I don't understand why the changes aren't unrolled the way they usually get done on MOST websites and forums I've ever been on...

World of Warcraft tests upcoming ideas for game changes on the "Public Test Realms" extensively before they get written into the next patch, for example.

Keep the OLD system up... Then, set up a "Beta" version of the site where all the tweaks, adjustments, testing, etc, can go on without having the regular users go nuts. Open the Beta site to the public a few weeks before the official roll-out, and if all goes well at that point, let er' loose!

But otherwise this way, we have hour-to-hour changes and don't even know whether the site is even stable.

[bricelythgoe]

Right now is perfect!

I would like to thank everyone for their comments, suggestions and concerns so far.

I will be bringing all of the comments about errors in the program to the attention of Chris, but he is in the UK and will not be available for a few hours yet.

Those comments and suggestions about the look of the forum will get fixed. I too agree that the site is bright. We have gone through four changes, darkening it each time. We are trying to find a happy medium between a stark white sheet and a black gaming site. The colors of the windows and panes and blocks of the site are fairly easy to change, but after looking at this site for hours each day and trying different combinations of colors and tints it becomes hard to tell when you get it just right. Each monitor is slightly different. I've looked at the site on seven monitors and I thought we had it.

I thank those who voiced concerns. All concerns are valid and valued. Thank you for having the conviction to state them.

[CDNSushi]

Right now is perfect!

I agree -- the current incarnation (screenshot below) is to-date, the most legible for me (while still missing the tartan).

But I still have a hard time understanding and differentiating between threads I've read and ones I haven't. Some a are blue/bold, others are black/bold, others are not bold...

[Steve Ashton]

Please be patient. We are making changes right now.
As you can see the screens are easier to read.
We are trying to get the Tartan back but it is giving us a problem.
the place on the forum where the Tartan was displayed was one of those add-on things that was causing a conflict. We had to remove it.

Please notice that the size of the forum and the problem with the Top Logo Banner stretching out to the right has been fixed.

When we had the new forum in beta testing we vetted it through 8 people and the seven Forum Moderators. Many of the people who reviewed the site used it exclusively for a week. No one mentioned the problem with reading the text so the comments here caught us off guard. We didn't think we had a problem. We thought it was pretty good based on the reviews we had received.

I'm sorry I haven't been around to answer some of your comments. I have been in almost constant communication with Chris getting the changes done.

If anyone is still having problems with the size of any of the block on the page not being the correct size please post here.

[fluter]

Thanks to Steve, all the staff, and the programmer behind the curtain! Things are coming along. I happen to like black, black letters on a background of #efeffe; but that my be too light for some folk.


I most often use a Windoze laptop (Win XP, Firefox 3.5) at 1024x768 or sometimes 1280x1024 resolution.

I do still see the fourth ad in the horizontal strip up top, partly off the right side. The material in the right margin is now nicely framed (usually).

In the "disoriented" thread in General Kilt Talk, I saw the too-wide symptom on the page with the large image. that is fixed, perhaps by resizing the image??? I don't see an indication that the post itself was edited.

Now at post #42 from Jerry,there is another biggish 800x600 screen-shot, and that page has the marginal material pushed off the screen. This time, the messages themselves are not "too wide to read." That may just be a lucky choice of image size, since I'm at 1024 pixels right now.

[Avonlea22]

I've never been a big fan of the pop-up summary of a topic when you hover your mouse over a topic title. I wish there was a way to disable that. But no biggie if it can't be done.

I like it otherwise.

[sydnie7]

I've never been a big fan of the pop-up summary of a topic when you hover your mouse over a topic title. I wish there was a way to disable that. But no biggie if it can't be done.

I like it otherwise.

And yet that is one of the features I love about the XMarks format! I've even suggested that it be added, at other forums I use.

Horses for courses. . .

[Santa Wally]

And yet that is one of the features I love about the XMarks format! I've even suggested that it be added, at other forums I use.

I agree, I love the pop-up intro of the topic. I can find out if I want to load the topic or skip it. Saves me time on the forum.

[Steve Ashton]

Just to clear up a couple of things people have made comments about.

We are still trying to get the Tartan back onto the site.

The overall color of the site is currently darker than the original. The type color is full black. I put a light meter on my screen with the original and this version and the over all brightness is down by about 8%.

We have stopped working for the night to get some sleep. We'll get back at it tomorrow.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

I'm glad to hear the tartan background is coming back to the page borders. Why? Because that way you see some of the tartan no matter where you are on the forum, and also because it's perhaps the one place on the site to display the tartan where you don't really have to worry about text over the tartan image.

I don't care how much you play around with the contrast, resolution, or saturation, text is just plain difficult to read over a tartan background.