Experimental style

[simmitc]

Following comments about background colour and font colour and size, I have created an experimental style for people to try out.
Features:

• Background is alternating pale colours - I tried plain white, but that made it difficult to differentiate between posts.

• Font is black instead of grey

• Font in posts is slightly larger

• Font in editor (where you type replies etc) is slightly larger

It's not intended to be a finished item, it does not match the topics list; it's testing ideas in an attempt to address points that have been raised.

To try out the style: Top right, click on the dropdown next to your name. Select User Control Panel - Board Preferences. Change the style from prosilver to mmsimple. You can revert to the present style at any time.

All comments, good or bad, suggestions etc welcome. To change everything will take time and we do have other things to do first, but it's open for discussion.

[geoberni]

Personally, those alternating backgrounds are far too bright and stripy.
I think they would also be a problem for anyone viewing the site, perhaps potential members of the site just come for a browse, who have certain disabilities.
There's a lot of people out there, with various conditions, who lead perfectly normal lives, but such contrasting visual stimulation can cause them discomfort.
By all means have something like that for an option people can personally select if they feel it works for them, but it shouldn't be the default configuration for anyone just finding the site the first time.


Is the 'prosilver' not already using 2 different shades of Pale Blue for the posts?

[simmitc]

The idea is definitely to give people a choice, the default style can remain as prosilver.but Phil commented that the font was grey and small, and he would prefer black on white and slightly larger letters. The experimental gives a slightly larger base size (the browser allows one to increase/decrease fro the base) and is black. As I said, I tried all white for the background, and it was quite difficult to use, hence trying a couple of pale colours; but they are an experiment, so points noted. As a reminder, the old board looked like this:

Oldboard.jpg (84.91 KiB) Viewed 945 times

Yes, prosilver does use two shades of pale blue. We can have whatever colours we like: grey as per old board, blue for prosilver, or anything else. Those who can recall the early days of the board may remember when someone set black text on a red background. I would not repeat that, but all other suggestions welcome.

[geoberni]

Those who can recall the early days of the board may remember when someone set black text on a red background.

Oh Boy, that would be bad. Some colour blind people wouldn't see the red at all, so it would be Black on Black!

[philipkearney]

As geoberni rightly says, we need to be cognisant of people with disabilities or conditions who may struggle with the colours or the contrasts between colours but in the interests of fairness, I have to say that I really do like the mmsimple style and I'd quite happily keep this as my setting inpossible.

Thanks for taking the time to play around and create this Simon.

[simmitc]

A pleasure. There's quite a bit of work involved to produce and test a complete style, hence starting with just a few simple changes. The software is designed to allow choice, so it's nice to be able to offer a choice. Feel free to keep whichever you prefer, and, given time, we'll try to develop a complete set. A few other things to look at first, though.

[philthehill]

My first office computer had green letters on a black screen - not so easy to read and no internet but they were happy days and back then it was impressive.

[Chief]

green letters on a black screen

Was it a Dragon? That's how they had it as well if it wasn't (also, I found green on black easy to read, but I was young ! - this new style, alternating vanilla yellow with aqua-marine and highlights of fudge just wasn't for me).

[geoberni]

So because Mike put the well known (to some people here at least) photo of the Stripy Bonnet Stockport Constabulary Minors on the facebook Group this morning, I went to the Greater Manchester Police Museum website to see what they offered for research.

At the bottom of every page they offer some information that is composed of Dark Grey on Black!
https://gmpmuseum.co.uk/visiting/

[simmitc]

Truly appalling. Rest assured, I will not be replicating that!

[Classiccars]

Fccoc forum has black on white an is very easy to read plus letters are larger.Our page is not a good set of colours and letters are too small in my opinion.

[Chief]

At the bottom of every page they offer some information that is composed of Dark Grey on Black!

Displays as light grey text on a dark grey background for me, so very easy to read, just shows how a website designed on one monitor can look completely different on others.

[geoberni]

At the bottom of every page they offer some information that is composed of Dark Grey on Black!

Displays as light grey text on a dark grey background for me, so very easy to read, just shows how a website designed on one monitor can look completely different on others.

Here's a screen snip.
I can actually see it a little better today, most likely because it is dank, grey and piddling rain outside, so the home office is much darker inside today, thus screen seems a little brighter by comparison.
Perhaps my description yesterday should have been Mid Grey on Charcoal....
.

gmp.JPG (78.56 KiB) Viewed 747 times