Bad Color Contrast for Forums

The new color scheme hurts my eyes. Why try to fix something that's not broken? Now we have a painfully bright white with a medium-light blue font and light purple visited link. It strains my eyes to look at it. Please consider darkening the empty space to a light grey at least. White is too bright. And the font colors need to be more readable. Thanks.

I agree. There once was one game related forum where I visited regularly for years, it had quite a simple look, but all the necessary functions and some ads. Then they decided to update it and gave it really different look because they were bored with the layout and it didn't take long until it was shut down. I think others did exactly the same thing as I did, they stopped visiting it, because it just felt wrong and unbalanced.

ptbcomposer

You might want to look into your screen calibration. The "light blue" is actually a (rather cold but still) shade of green. So maybe your whitepoint is just way off.

I came here to post the same thing. I tried running a contrast analysis tool on the site, but it can't seem to pick up the url (probably the https). I find links especially hard to read.

Edit - I manually ran the colours through the WCAG 2.0 standards and the results were:

Blog text - Not passed

Forums text - Not passed

Forum links, visited - Not passed (did pass if text is bold)

Forum links not visited - Passed

Froum post headers - Not passed

Footer links - Not passed

I laid out my case on this other thread Manual Style Hard to Read Now and I showed new/old pics side by side, and discussed the issues with contrast/spacing/size.

Tom commented that they've gotten feedback indicating some people like the new look and they can't please everyone, but I haven't seenanyone who likes the new washed-out look, much less can make a case for why. I haven't read the manual for two weeks because I keep hoping they'll fix it. This is going to be a real problem, shortly.

Yeah in my opinion the new changes are absolutely terrible. Giant goofy headers, ugly bright/minty teal color, little contrast, public restroom toilet paper texture, purple text for unread threads, too much space at the bottom. The old layout was just fine! Click "Log In" after browsing the forums for a bit - that looks like the new layout!

It's minty fresh.

I don't really care about how it looks. Content is important :D

but I'm kinda like that "public restroom toilet paper texture" on bg.

I agree the text is too light, I'll be making it a lot darker. Readability is by far the most important thing for a website.

And while you are at it, Tom, why not changing the ugly 90's style shadowed headlines as well? <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

(My eyes really hurt <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> )

I like the headlines :) Honestly, it's pretty much impossible to please everyone when making changes. We have had emails complimenting us on the new changes.

Hey tulamide, how strong you are seeing the headline shadows?

I noticed that in some monitors the shadows are almost inexistent, while in other they appear subtle. My guess is that maybe your monitor are on the other side of the spectrum and appears very pronounced.

Animmaniac

It's hard to tell wether it is strong or subtle. I just notice them clearly.

But it is not the shadows alone that bothers me. It's the composition of font and shadow - it just doesn't fit to the rest of the design. And to be honest, that ugly shiny color concept overall is a strain on the eyes. (is it "on the eyes" or "to the eyes"?)

I used to take my time to read as many posts as possible. But currently I can't stand it longer than 1 or 2 minutes.

It isn't very user friendly, at least not for dvi-connected LED displays.

I'd prefer much more contrast and darker colors. Readability and overview are the most important aspects for a forum, I'd say.

Great work Tom, everything's becoming much more readable again :)

You're still getting some contrast problems, but it's much better than before (I can use checkmycolours.com now too which is cool, I guess the site isn't using https anymore?)

I like the direction of the new design. Looks a lot more professional IMO. Good job Tom.