Testing a new forum theme

[NORINET]

Professionalism is the main feature of the new design.We don't need colrs and flowers.We need English .

[Barb_D]

I agree, except where colors help with navigation and usability. If it's easier to see where a new posts starts or help "clump" like items together, then color is a good thing.

(And right, no one needs flowers. Just send chocolate!)

[Red5]

Agreed. If you have specific suggestions I'd be happy to try them out. If you have colour schemes (and/or can point me to some examples) I can also try them out too. As I'm not a web designer colour choices are not my forte so I tend to use 3rd-party templates and stick with them. This template set pretty much came as-is as far as colour is concerned. Let me know any ideas you have to help improve the look and feel. Ta

[BobK]

I agree, except where colors help with navigation and usability. If it's easier to see where a new posts starts or help "clump" like items together, then color is a good thing.

(And right, no one needs flowers. Just send chocolate!)

Yes. This is why I don't like having to scroll down through adverts before I get to the English. Web-sites with fancy graphics often deal with this by having the link 'Skip Intro'. I wonder if anyone ever doesn't skip it

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[Tullia]

Agreed. If you have specific suggestions I'd be happy to try them out. If you have colour schemes (and/or can point me to some examples) I can also try them out too. As I'm not a web designer colour choices are not my forte so I tend to use 3rd-party templates and stick with them. This template set pretty much came as-is as far as colour is concerned. Let me know any ideas you have to help improve the look and feel. Ta

I'd like to see some of the green from the buttons incorporated into the site a little, in a subtle way. I notice the new style doesn't really have a lot of borders, but the green could work very well on fine borders perhaps - blocks of it would be too overwhelming as it's very bright, but narrow borders would perhaps be OK, and help to tie the whole scheme together as well as addressing some of the concerns above from BarbD about seeing where things start/end and grouping them visually.

As a slightly-related thing, have you ever considered changing the way "Quick Reply" is set up? It's a bugbear of mine to need to press it in a post to use it. It can be set to "auto-on" which doesn't prevent people quoting or replying in "advanced" mode, but does mean those that use quick reply don't have to remember to click the button every time.

Although perhaps I'm the only person to get annoyed by that

[Red5]

As a slightly-related thing, have you ever considered changing the way "Quick Reply" is set up? It's a bugbear of mine to need to press it in a post to use it. It can be set to "auto-on" which doesn't prevent people quoting or replying in "advanced" mode, but does mean those that use quick reply don't have to remember to click the button every time.

The quick reply box requires a prior click in a post for the system to know which post you're replying to. Otherwise the threaded display modes would break.

[Tullia]

Ahhh of course. I'm so used to seeing things in Linear (not a fan of threading either ;) ) that I forgot about that!

By the way, I saw above that you plan to update - I assume to VB4, but wondered if you had considered any other forum software such as XenForo?

(I'm a Forum Admin elsewhere, this is something we're looking into ourselves as we've heard bad things about the security of VB4 so far).

[Barb_D]

Ahh. That makes sense. When you're in your inbox, there is only one message open, so the system "knows" which post you want to reply to. One of those things that makes perfect sense once you think about it.

I have no preference for which colors, by the way. Just a bit more distinction as to where things separate.

[BobK]

...

By the way, I saw above that you plan to update - I assume to VB4, but wondered if you had considered any other forum software such as XenForo?

...

Be not the first on whom the new is tried
Be not the last to cast the old aside

I may be beginning to sound like my grandfather, but 20+ years of dealing with software has left me with a healthy suspicion of updates. They often just provide further confirmation of the Law of Proliferation of Bugs (which holds that fixing n bugs entails the introduction of N more bugs, where N > n). And to quote a stand-up whose name I forget (Welsh) 'If I'm happy with a dog, why should I want an upgrade to a wolf?'

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[BobK]

Ahhh of course. I'm so used to seeing things in Linear (not a fan of threading either ;) ) that I forgot about that!

...

I've seen the non-linear argument before, and can't say I'm convinced. Surely it's a Simple Matter of Programming for VB to detect whether you're in Linear mode, and default to the only sensible setting (given that context)? I know SMOPs are seldom simple, though, and am resigned to all the redundant clicking - a bit like when you click to delete a post and it doesn't work unless you tick the 'Delete this Post' box.

b