zoogs
New member
First off, thanks to all the folks who worked so hard to get the new board up and running. It's much appreciated 
However, I would like to make a suggestion: please remove the sidebar. It's a message board, not a social networking site (on that note, what's the 'friends' feature?...is that a default with IPB now or is that an add-on?), so I really don't get the "status updates" and "top posters" thing. Even if the sidebar only appears on the main page, and not any of the subforums, I feel it's adding extra little gadgets of marginal utility and serve only to take away from the feel of HB and its function as a message board.
I also think the new "sign-in" status box, the gray box with the dropdown menu on the top right of each page, is another one of these widgets. It looks pretty nice, but it's also a little distracting, being so large and "in your face", when the acknowledgment of whether or not we're signed in is of very peripheral utility to the end-user. As in, it's good to know, and it should exist, just not in such a bold and forward way...should be much more subdued, IMO. And furthermore, things that are actually of much greater utility to us: the links to "settings", "messages" (a link which also tells us how many unread messages we have), etc, are hidden away and we now have to access a dropdown menu to even see them. So from both a visual and user interface standpoint, I'm finding the dropdown box questionable.
I kind of miss the old look of the board. Ugly as heck, but homey, and useful. The new forum right now, feels a little too smooth and polished...oh! another suggestion. When viewing a forum, I think there should be a LOT more contrast between the background color in the cells for the forum topic and the border lines dividing two topics. I.e, the background is now a very light grayish, while the borderlines are white. I think a dark gray borderline or something would improve the look a lot. I don't know, it just doesn't feel right visually with such subtle distinctions between forum topics.
It's weird because this is a visual style (minimal, polished, smooth) I'm a big fan of when it comes to most websites - but browsing and posting on a message board is a different experience than say, visiting a company website the purpose of which is advertising a product or service. Websites that are much more participatory in nature, or high volume in terms of information (shopping sites like Amazon, or news sites like SI or NYTimes), don't tend to go with these visual styles and go with more traditional, utilitarian looks. For a message board, the purpose of which is both participation and high information content, I think there is definitely such a thing as "too sleek." I'm just looking to come here and read/write text in boxes...not to admire its prettiness. Not advocating distractingly ugly, just functional over stylistic in visual design philosophy. I thought the old look was plain and boring...and I really liked that. (Except for the distractingly large header section that I eventually got over)
* EDIT: oh, another thing! Something about the viewing posts looks strange to me...I think the fact that our username is a part of the darker gray background row with the post # in it, rather than in the white side section, along with the fact that the side section is too wide (considering how little information it contains and how secondary that information is to the post content). I think the username should go right on top of the other information on the side.
Ah, also, in the post title, the subtitle text is too dark. A paler, lighter gray would still give it contrast to the main title...but it's really poor contrast with the red right now. Red is a hard color to pull off in website designs
Apologies if I seem overly critical; I don't mean to take away from all the hard and well-intentioned work putting into the server/software/frontend updates. And like with any site that you frequent - you can only expect pretty negative reactions when the change is first made, but then you (usually) get used to it.
This has been a long, haphazardly thrown together rant Hopefully I'll get used to it, but I did want to bring up my concerns and initial impressions of the change in look.
However, I would like to make a suggestion: please remove the sidebar. It's a message board, not a social networking site (on that note, what's the 'friends' feature?...is that a default with IPB now or is that an add-on?), so I really don't get the "status updates" and "top posters" thing. Even if the sidebar only appears on the main page, and not any of the subforums, I feel it's adding extra little gadgets of marginal utility and serve only to take away from the feel of HB and its function as a message board.
I also think the new "sign-in" status box, the gray box with the dropdown menu on the top right of each page, is another one of these widgets. It looks pretty nice, but it's also a little distracting, being so large and "in your face", when the acknowledgment of whether or not we're signed in is of very peripheral utility to the end-user. As in, it's good to know, and it should exist, just not in such a bold and forward way...should be much more subdued, IMO. And furthermore, things that are actually of much greater utility to us: the links to "settings", "messages" (a link which also tells us how many unread messages we have), etc, are hidden away and we now have to access a dropdown menu to even see them. So from both a visual and user interface standpoint, I'm finding the dropdown box questionable.
I kind of miss the old look of the board. Ugly as heck, but homey, and useful. The new forum right now, feels a little too smooth and polished...oh! another suggestion. When viewing a forum, I think there should be a LOT more contrast between the background color in the cells for the forum topic and the border lines dividing two topics. I.e, the background is now a very light grayish, while the borderlines are white. I think a dark gray borderline or something would improve the look a lot. I don't know, it just doesn't feel right visually with such subtle distinctions between forum topics.
It's weird because this is a visual style (minimal, polished, smooth) I'm a big fan of when it comes to most websites - but browsing and posting on a message board is a different experience than say, visiting a company website the purpose of which is advertising a product or service. Websites that are much more participatory in nature, or high volume in terms of information (shopping sites like Amazon, or news sites like SI or NYTimes), don't tend to go with these visual styles and go with more traditional, utilitarian looks. For a message board, the purpose of which is both participation and high information content, I think there is definitely such a thing as "too sleek." I'm just looking to come here and read/write text in boxes...not to admire its prettiness. Not advocating distractingly ugly, just functional over stylistic in visual design philosophy. I thought the old look was plain and boring...and I really liked that. (Except for the distractingly large header section that I eventually got over)
* EDIT: oh, another thing! Something about the viewing posts looks strange to me...I think the fact that our username is a part of the darker gray background row with the post # in it, rather than in the white side section, along with the fact that the side section is too wide (considering how little information it contains and how secondary that information is to the post content). I think the username should go right on top of the other information on the side.
Ah, also, in the post title, the subtitle text is too dark. A paler, lighter gray would still give it contrast to the main title...but it's really poor contrast with the red right now. Red is a hard color to pull off in website designs
Apologies if I seem overly critical; I don't mean to take away from all the hard and well-intentioned work putting into the server/software/frontend updates. And like with any site that you frequent - you can only expect pretty negative reactions when the change is first made, but then you (usually) get used to it.
This has been a long, haphazardly thrown together rant
Hopefully I'll get used to it, but I did want to bring up my concerns and initial impressions of the change in look.
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