New Experimental Style

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

On a whim, I've made a new Experimental style (available in the switcher at the bottom left of every page) that I will be testing some new ideas and features in while trying to make vBulletin less bad.

 

The first change to appear in Experimental is a new, sleek thread listing style. Hit New Posts and you'll see the difference{ the forum each thread is from is listed underneath its title rather than on on the far right, freeing up some horizontal space for long thread titles and making it easier to tell where threads came from. And I've eliminated the annoying thread icon column to make the most of our horizontal space.

 

If you have any comments or suggestions on the adjustments, post them here. If nobody finds them too hideous, I'll eventually move them over to the main SFN style.

 

Next up: more tweaks to post layout to try to make the most of space and make threads easier to read.

[iNow]

Okay, please keep in mind that these are first thoughts only. I don't want you to act on these comments just because I'm the only who to say something so far.

 

First, it looks pretty good. It's clean. However, something happened to the colors on the staff. For example, your username is in white instead of red. It's tough for me to know that you're one of the people who keeps the site functioning and whatnot.

 

On the "user online yes/no" green button, I personally preferred it down at the bottom. It is sort of distracting to have it up by the username, but I could get used to that rather quickly I'm sure.

 

Last, on the search results... you have added in which forum the post lives beside the OP username. It's a cool feature, but somewhat busy. Would it be possible to reduce the font size on the forum name which is shown? Since that's really secondary level information, I don't think it needs to be shown as prominently as the thread title or person who opened it, etc.

 

 

All in all, though, it's clean. I'm interested to see where it goes. I hope the above helps, but (like I said) I don't want you to act on any of it just because nobody else has responded. Cheers.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

First, it looks pretty good. It's clean. However, something happened to the colors on the staff. For example, your username is in white instead of red. It's tough for me to know that you're one of the people who keeps the site functioning and whatnot.

Yeah. The colors just didn't seem to work well in the first place, so I'm trying to find a better combination of colors. I'll see if there's something that works well.

 

On the "user online yes/no" green button, I personally preferred it down at the bottom. It is sort of distracting to have it up by the username, but I could get used to that rather quickly I'm sure.

Ideally I could make it invisible unless the user is actually online. That'd reduce clutter a bit. (Edit: Done. That makes it a little better.)

 

Last, on the search results... you have added in which forum the post lives beside the OP username. It's a cool feature, but somewhat busy. Would it be possible to reduce the font size on the forum name which is shown? Since that's really secondary level information, I don't think it needs to be shown as prominently as the thread title or person who opened it, etc.

Would it help if it was the same color as the username and such also displayed there?

 

All in all, though, it's clean. I'm interested to see where it goes. I hope the above helps, but (like I said) I don't want you to act on any of it just because nobody else has responded. Cheers.

 

It certainly helps. I'll keep your suggestions in mind and try to make things as clean as I can get them. Thanks!

 

Any other comments or suggestions would be welcome.

Edited January 3, 2009 by Cap'n Refsmmat

[iNow]

Yeah. The colors just didn't seem to work well in the first place, so I'm trying to find a better combination of colors. I'll see if there's something that works well.

FWIW, I had no problem with the red. It conveyed a sense of power, and since there are only like 3 or 4 of you, it's not like it's something we see in every thread. I agree with DH that red on blue is generally not so good, but since it was so small to begin with (and a negligible percentage of the sites overall visual gestalt), I never found it to be much of problem. Hopefully someone else will offer their thoughts on this point, because I thought the red username on Admins was fine.

 

 

Ideally I could make it invisible unless the user is actually online. That'd reduce clutter a bit. (Edit: Done. That makes it a little better.)

Oh yeah, that's MUCH better now! Great idea. That's significantly cleaner.

 

 

Would it help if it was the same color as the username and such also displayed there?

Yes, probably. What makes it [having the forum name below the thread title on search results] feel so busy to me is that it's a hyperlink. It makes it more prominent, and it's also right below the hyperlink to thread itself. Perhaps just disable the hyperlink (make it non-active text only), as that might tone it down.

 

Also, have you tried to put the last post timestamp on the left column instead of the far right? I wonder how that would look. Right now, the timestamp looks a little lonely way out there by itself (although, I do like the extra room you've added for long thread titles).

 

 

I've always found this site to be one of the easiest on the eyes and also I like it in terms of general usability, so in my view, you've got a tough task trying to improve it (i.e. not a lot of room for betterment). Either way, thanks for the quick action on the ideas above.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Okay, I changed the link color on the link to new forums. I definitely like how it looks now, and the link's still clickable.

 

Visually, I'm not seeing the last post date working on the left. I can try it sometime though.

 

Does anyone use the Views column when looking at New Posts? I might try canning that to make it less cluttered.

[Mr Skeptic]

Any other comments or suggestions would be welcome.

 

Color-coding the listed threads by forum might make them easily distinguishable. It might be an eyesore though.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The experimental style's improvements have been added back in to the default style for everybody's enjoyment. If you notice any bugs, send me a PM or post a comment here.

 

I hope everyone enjoys the tweaks.

[swansont]

I find I'm not liking the "recent post" listing that has the forum in the grey lettering next to the poster's name rather than its own column. I find I'm missing physics posts that I should be reviewing, because it's harder to scan for that information.

[YT2095]

likewise, in fact I can hardly read it sometimes

[Sayonara]

I am also not a fan.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Well, there are two options. I could put it back in its own column, which I found visually distracting, or I could make it easier to read where it is, perhaps by darkening the text color or making it larger or something. Do you have a preference?

[iNow]

What if each forum had it's own color? Physics in blue, math in red, ecology/environment in Green... etc.

 

That would make finding them during a visual scan much simpler.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That'd be a bit difficult. Unless there's a plugin avaialable, I'd have to manually tweak the template to select from a list of colors, etc... actually, I might be able to pull it off with a clever JavaScript thingy.

 

If anyone has any other clever ways of making it easily readable -- moving the forum name over, changing its font somehow, etc. -- I'm open to suggestions. I'll try to figure out what I can achieve when I have some time.

[GutZ]

How about making my name glitter with sparkles because I am so amazing. I am positive there is on out there so...if you admins could get on that.....that would be awesome.

 

Thank you, dont ban me.

[BigMoosie]

My thoughts on 'Avater on left':

 

- The avatar needs more spacing, a few more pixels to be as spaced as when on the right

- The vertical grey line is ugly, I don't think it should be there. If you want to seperate it visually from the text then a larger horizontal gap between the two would be better.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

How's this?

[BigMoosie]

Looka much better, but I still feel the avatars need 1 or 2 more pixels spacing from the frame.

Cheers,

-Moosie

[Mr Skeptic]

How about we add a bit that shows when the first post was made? It could also be color-coded, and could help prevent necromancy.

[Mr Skeptic]

Could you make the indent and quote look slightly different? As it is, some people might confuse an indented quote from outside (ie, someone bothering to cite sources) with the person they are quoting, and so skip over it if they are in a hurry.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Indent

Quote

 

Doneskies.

[iNow]

That sucks. I use the indent all of the time. You just ruined the formatting of like 97% of my posts.

 

Indent is better since it still appears when others quote it... which is precisely why I do it when citing sources.

 

The boxes surrounding indented text were one of my favorite things about this site. Can you put it back the way it was, or will all of my previous posts suddenly be much more difficult to read?

 

 

Test

test

test

test

[iNow]

(My last post has not yet been approved for visibility, but this is supplemental to that)...

 

 

So, I use the Indent for two reasons. One - It allows people who quote my post to keep the text within the Indent tags. The quote feature does not allow this, so I have used Indent for all of my citations such that they will appear in the post of the person who quoted me. Two - It makes the formatting nice when the box is around text within Indent tags (like it was formerly). I often used the indent to put a "frame" around my text, giving it prominence, while simultaneously letting everyone know it was from another source.

 

My concern is that now it just looks like my own words... The text within Indent tags no longer stands out, and just looks like I wrote it. When the frame box was around indented text I didn't need to change the font on text from other sources (like put it in Italics or a different color), nor did I use quotes. It's going to confuse readers if the new format is kept.

 

Here is an example post: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=455163post455163

 

...It gets especially confusing when there was quoted text within the quote itself... So, the first layer was indented... And within that, another indent to show text which my source had quoted... As you can see at the example post above, now it's just all jacked up, and you can't tell where my text begins and where the source text ends. I hope you can put it back the way it was or come up with some other option. Thanks.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Better?

[iNow]

Yes, absolutely. A VERY elegant solution. Thank you kindly for your quick action, Cap'n. It's much appreciated.

[Pangloss]

Fascinating. I intend to steal this and flaunt it about as if it were my own idea! (maniacal laughter)