Kynesis Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Do they even have a web designer? The default font for the entire site is just painful for me to look at. Arial... the font is Arial 14pt According to reliable sources (like this one http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-WindowsResults.shtml) Arial can safely be assumed to be installed on 99.9% of computers - i.e. it's going to look pretty much as the designer intended and without any aliasing (jagged corners) or surprise font selections by the users computer. I have no affiliation of any kind with BW but I'd have to wonder, do you know anything about design? Look at the colours: light non-white text on a medium-dark background with a soft, simple, relatively large font and black borders... short of reading it all to you, what do you want them to do to make it easier for you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shingara Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 (edited) Well i have finally had enough, i cannot use the forums anymore, they are giving me major head aches. Edited April 19, 2012 by Shingara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kynesis Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 You know, the overall design isn't that awful. The graphics are fine for the most part. The color scheme could have a little bit more contrast, but it's passable. The thing that really destroys the readability and overall flow of this site is the exaggerated vertical spacing. It's like someone took the website, made a silly putty imprint of it, and then stretched the whole thing vertically 50%. It's extremely tiring to read. Can you PLEASE ditch the narrow/light fonts, and tighten up the vertical spacing a bit? Can you post a picture? I don't see this effect at all. Which browser are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goretzu Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Look at the colours: light non-white text on a medium-dark background with a soft, simple, relatively large font and black borders... short of reading it all to you, what do you want them to do to make it easier for you? Well the post data is too spread out now (dunno whether it's right it's being optimised for smartphones, but whatever it's not nice. But the colour contrast is plain horrible, it gives me eye-strain looking at it. The black/grey background contrast isn't great enough, the brown highlight contrast isn't great enough from either, and the standard contrast of the (goldish) text colour isn't high enough from any of the above. Which just adds up to a literal headache with any significant amount of time reading it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geeluc Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Us : We all don't like the new look forums. BW : ... Us : Seriously, can you please give us the choice of the new or old? BW : ... Time passes Us : What did the old ones look like again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goretzu Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 (edited) Us : We all don't like the new look forums. BW : ... Us : Seriously, can you please give us the choice of the new or old? BW : ... Time passes Us : What did the old ones look like again? Or Me : Argh I've gone forum blind!!!! What did the forums look like again? (they do need to sort out the contrast a bit, it may only be some people, but it's not a "dislike" thing, the current combination is genuinely giving eyestrain) Edited April 19, 2012 by Goretzu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kynesis Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 (edited) So... just did some super simple cross-browser testing... it's messed up for Internet Explorer 6, IE7 and IE8. Looks mostly OK in IE9... Chrome isn't picking the right font either.... It's not broken in Safari though, looks quite good there, though I do see your point about the contrast in places being too subtle for such a broad audience (though I personally like it this way, I'm clearly in the minority here). Edited April 19, 2012 by Kynesis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goretzu Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 So... just did some super simple cross-browser testing... it's messed up for Internet Explorer 6, IE7 and IE8. Looks mostly OK in IE9... Chrome isn't picking the right font either.... It's not broken in Safari though, looks quite good there, though I do see your point about the contrast in places being too subtle for such a broad audience (though I personally like it this way, I'm clearly in the minority here). I'm basically having to highlight anything I'm reading in to white background with navy blue text to alieviate the eye strain. Don't think I've ever had this problem with a forum scheme before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grania Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 I'm used to the big font now but still having trouble differentiating between light and lighter light.. like when you're trying to tell which page of a post you're on, or which posts have a new comment vs which don't. It's hard to explain. The little envelope symbol looks almost identical when it's read or unread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlacke Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 New SWTOR site is great, much much better than the previous version. If the whiners don't like it then they are free not to visit it, not to mention the fact the fact that it would make this forum a better place overall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geeluc Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 New SWTOR site is great, much much better than the previous version. If the whiners don't like it then they are free not to visit it, not to mention the fact the fact that it would make this forum a better place overall. But where will they go to complain? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cool-dude Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 (edited) I don't see what was so wrong with the old look, that they had to waste money changing the look of the website, instead of putting that money into improving the game. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. Edited April 19, 2012 by cool-dude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goretzu Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 (edited) New SWTOR site is great, much much better than the previous version. If the whiners don't like it then they are free not to visit it, not to mention the fact the fact that it would make this forum a better place overall. I hardly think eye-strain is "whining". Although it seems to depend on the monitor and ambient lighting, looking at this site with different monitors and different ambient light, it goes from giving (me) a bit of eye strain to really headache enducing stuff. The old scheme was fine in the conditions I've tested, the new needs some tweaking to stop the (valid) complaints about it. Edited April 19, 2012 by Goretzu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickRedOne Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 If you don't like the colors change them. Use Firefox with an add-on that will allow you to adjust the color of the page you see. Took me less than 5 min to find one "Color that Site" is the one I am using right now. I'm not saying that it is the best, just the first one I found. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azoetia Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 The page is a little weird on my computer screen, particularly with every other post sharing the same colour with the background, and without a clear margin. It's hard to read sometimes. However on my tablet and smartphone it looks fantastic. The huge buttons that are a bit of a pain on my desktop are perfect on a smaller touch screen. It really seems optimized for mobile browsing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StarReaperx Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Well Done BW looks far better then it did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tristal Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Maybe they'll have site/forum layout choices in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darka Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Still feel they need to bring back -Off Topic/Create a place for the community to chat about non TOR stuff -Visitor Walls. Probably one of the greatest features the site once hand, a great community building tool! And Implement Server Forums. Having a forum and allowing us to creat a thread with the server tag is... terrible, clunky and puts people off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starglide Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 What the hec is up with the color scheme? It is HORRIBLE. PLEASE at least give is to option to view it in the old classic look. I cant spend more than 5min reading anything on this forum now. The new forums are just like the game. Created without considering the community's feedback and changing for the worse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kynesis Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 (edited) Just out of curiosity I went on a web search and have found lots of professional articles both for and against light text on dark backgrounds, for every article against it there seems to be another strongly in favour of it for exactly the same reasons. Light text on a dark background has the additional feature of low power consumption, which on battery driven devices is a serious issue. It wouldn't be too much trouble for them to add an extra button for people to switch the site to a higher contrast colour palette, arguably a good option for every high-traffic forum. If you're using a Mac, you can activate a system-wide colour reversal by hitting CTRL OPTION COMMAND 8 and use the same again to toggle (switch back & forth). On Windows you can do the same with ALT SHIFT PRINT-SCREEN Given the growing popularity of battery-powered devices, it's a pretty safe bet we'll be seeing many more forums that feature light text on dark backgrounds, well worth learning those keyboard shortcuts imho. Edited April 20, 2012 by Kynesis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DataBeaver Posted April 21, 2012 Share Posted April 21, 2012 I like the new layout in general, but I have a few minor complaints: - No link for advanced search. It can be accessed by clicking the search button, but this also produces an error about missing search terms. - Focusing the search field by default interferes with using keyboard navigation. - Why on earth are patch notes under "my swtor"? Light text on a dark background has the additional feature of low power consumption, which on battery driven devices is a serious issue. Sorry, but no. Not with LCD displays anyway, which are the most popular type these days. The backlight has a constant brightness; on black regions the liquid crystals in front of it simply block all light from getting through. In fact, the natural, undriven position for a liquid crystal is to pass light, i.e. white, and making it black takes a tiny bit of power. The power requirement for driving the LCD is insignificant in comparison with the backlight though. The power consumption argument was true with CRTs, and will again be true with OLED displays, when they get more popular. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sydh Posted April 21, 2012 Share Posted April 21, 2012 I'm cool with the new color-scheme and functions that have been added, but the overall design is a mess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goretzu Posted April 21, 2012 Share Posted April 21, 2012 Just out of curiosity I went on a web search and have found lots of professional articles both for and against light text on dark backgrounds, for every article against it there seems to be another strongly in favour of it for exactly the same reasons. Light text on a dark background has the additional feature of low power consumption, which on battery driven devices is a serious issue. It wouldn't be too much trouble for them to add an extra button for people to switch the site to a higher contrast colour palette, arguably a good option for every high-traffic forum. If you're using a Mac, you can activate a system-wide colour reversal by hitting CTRL OPTION COMMAND 8 and use the same again to toggle (switch back & forth). On Windows you can do the same with ALT SHIFT PRINT-SCREEN Given the growing popularity of battery-powered devices, it's a pretty safe bet we'll be seeing many more forums that feature light text on dark backgrounds, well worth learning those keyboard shortcuts imho. It's not the light/dark so much as the colours and contrast of the colours used that is giving me the problem, I've use many forums with dark or black background with a lighter text without any eyestrain, even the prior SWTOR forum was similar to that make up. Increasing the scheme contrast a bit would probably sort it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GunnerBod Posted April 21, 2012 Share Posted April 21, 2012 Don't Like the new color scheme at all, please offer a classic mode or some option to customize it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Januaria Posted April 21, 2012 Share Posted April 21, 2012 I mostly agree. Seems like every other post does NOT have a delineating box around it making it awkward to view the comments. But my biggest disappointment is the lack of font selection. BW, where is my Comic San Serif? What have you done with it?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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