TOS Forum Theme Feedback Thread

[TurdPile]

As I stated here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26946

This is a feedback thread for the TOS theme. It is very much a work in progress, and not even near to completion.

Any new icons you would suggest added, so on and so forth, you can post here (or PM'ed if you wish to remain anonymous).

All post must remain constructive.
Bad: "It looks terrible."
Good: "It looks terrible, because X, Y, and Z. What would make it look good is ___".

Cheers,
-Chris

[leyva45]

I don't like the bots color, it's a pain to look at, imo.

Edit: Same for FM Mods and Donator things, I do not like the color, maybe you could make those colors a bit darker?

[jacobm1122]

The bot color is hard on the eyes. The Donator color clashes way too much. The fm mod color is hard on the eyes on the dark wood color and not too good looking on lighter wood either. I would mess with the wood colors to fix this and not the fm mod color.

Quotes are ugly. Too boxy and square.

The light and dark wood colors contrast too much

[ronit]

The bot color is hard on the eyes. The Donator color clashes way too much. The fm mod color is hard on the eyes on the dark wood color and not too good looking on lighter wood either. I would mess with the wood colors to fix this and not the fm mod color.

Quotes are ugly. Too boxy and square.

The light and dark wood colors contrast too much

If Im honest an fm mod colour change and donator change would be refreshing.

[Swordsworth]

The bot color is hard on the eyes. The Donator color clashes way too much. The fm mod color is hard on the eyes on the dark wood color and not too good looking on lighter wood either. I would mess with the wood colors to fix this and not the fm mod color.

Quotes are ugly. Too boxy and square.

The light and dark wood colors contrast too much

If Im honest an fm mod colour change and donator change would be refreshing.

Well, on this backdrop, the colours actually aren't bad. But some tweaking on shades is necessary for those flairs, I feel, in the ToS theme.

[NheroArconix]

Here we go... Spoiler:
The icons look too similar, and it could be hard to tell the difference.



Does not contrast well.


Why did the text color change for anything that should normally be black? Also, link colors are weird to look at.


This is a significant gap between the avatar and online tag here. Again, text is not black.


This is a different color then what the color is below a users avatar (appears in the "by XXX" section on each post)


Why are we still using a phpbb logo and not a ToS - centered one?


Quote boxes change color on the third quote, boxes are just straight lines


Why is the text not black? Why do the buttons blend too easily?


Why the sudden font change? It drastically breaks the theme the forum has going for it with it's font, and just doesn't look good.
All of these were found in a few minutes with the new theme. I have switched back since.
The theme definitely needs some tweaks. Also, a "Dark" version of the theme, or simply a dark prosilver, would be AMAZING.

[TurdPile]

Thanks. Not sure when I'll be able to find the time to change some stuff though

[NheroArconix]

Whenever you do is fine, like you said, it's a work in progress. There are bound to be things that need to be polished up or worked on.

Spoiler: To explain why I want a dark theme, here's how smashboards's themes work. (And this is partially because I really like how they do forum themes.)

This is the smashboards theme, it is not the default, but it is the non-dark version. It can be a slight eyesore to look at because of the brightness, however that goes away during the day. For a thread, it has black text on a white background.



This is the "dark" theme, which simply replaces a lot of the white with a dark grey, and uses a light grey text color instead of a black for threads so it contrasts well. It's much easier on the eyes to look at day-round. Smashboards also has slight alterations of this theme, such as Ruby, which changes the orange to a red. There is also "Onyx" which replaces it with an even darker theme. (And also a theme that makes mostly everything blue.)

[Mroz4k]

Personally I reccomend rather darker background then brighter.

Its a lot better choice, and if you switch the default text color from black to white, it allows everyone to create threads while using a much wider variety of colors.
Thats just my opinion on it - With this setting, it could be done if the transparent background wasnt a cream colored, but rather darker brown, or a semi-dark grey.
Also, one thing that doesnt sit quite well with me is that the boards on the background look modern. That doesnt really sit well with the TOS theme, being a game based on historical theme (at least initially) but still overall, I like the TOS theme a lot better then the original default forums!

I was wondering - is the theme a Forum layout created by Phpbb, or was it custom-made? If so, would it be okay if I (later on) posted a color scheme and a background I would consider a bit better? (thought that would be custom made by me, and not exactly a Forum layout. And it would only be for a proof-of-concept, and I would probably let one of the community members who is more skilled with Photoshop then I am, to make the wood texture continuous.)
(I was thinking of using this as a background: http://gdj.gdj.netdna-cdn.com/wp-conten ... ure+26.jpg
The website says its free-to-use, so it shouldnt be a problem: http://graphicdesignjunction.com/2013/0 ... -textures/ )

What I am mainly interested in is to learn if you can customize the main background (the one under the text) with a different color. If that is so, I´d reccomend rather using darker background with white text, then lighter with black, as it allows for bigger variety of colors - since you can use even the very light colors, and the bright colors are still pretty well displayed)

(I guess I am going to be cheap and use my own forums as an example for what I consider to be better with the colors)
Spoiler:

Just my opinion on the whole theme. I definitedly like it a lot more then the default one, but could use some additional work (but hey, its work in progress! )

[Hurricat]

The problem with the theme as it stands is the lack of contrast.

There's the basic color scheme. It's just about monochromatic, just like the prosilver theme. But compare it to the prosilver theme:

Notice how instead of being more of a gradient like the new theme, it has two predominately darker colors that immediately transition to almost-white, then white itself? Contrast. Without contrast, the theme looks almost washed out. Basically, the darker colors need to be darker, and the lighter colors need to be lighter.

The default text colors in posts should ALWAYS be either white or black, depending on the background. On a forum where people can use bbcode to change how their posts look, setting a default text color to anything other than black or white is a huge hindrance and causes confusion. The brown makes it look like the text is fading into the background itself. Default blue links also look pretty bad on the washed brown (again, contrast). Donator, FM mod colors, and especially bot colors look terrible against the brown, as has been pointed out.

The "view latest post" button is almost the same exact color as the background behind it and is almost impossible to see.

As for the light/dark background thing, the most viable option would be to have both as options, because some people like dark backgrounds and some people like light backgrounds. It's a preference thing where one option won't please everyone all the time.

I'll PM you about the icons shortly.

[Waffleme3]

I like it so far but like others have said it hard to see some things.

[TurdPile]

I was wondering - is the theme a Forum layout created by Phpbb, or was it custom-made?

It's SoftWood (see bottom of page) with very minor edits.

[iggyvolz]

*changes theme* huh, I don't see anything diff... *page refreshes* HOLY SH** THIS IS AWESOME!!!

One of the things that bugs me a little bit is that anything not active sorta blends in with the page... like as I'm typing this reply the subject box and the BBCodes are greyed out and are a bit hard to read. I understand that you want to keep focus on what you're actively typing in and I totally agree... but I'd tone this down a little bit.

Another thing is that the Smilies have white spots around them. This is more phpBB's fault for not properly cropping the images, but it's something anyone could do in an image editor by just erasing those couple pixels around the smilies.

Other than that, it looks amazing! I'm never switching back.

[Metazoxan]

It feels too plain and kinda flat. As for a suggestion you know the new UI for the front page? The one with the new music? Well how about making parts of the forum look more like stone with what looks kinda like a metalic frame. Some parts can still remain wooden but it just feels a bit bland to me with it just being a plain wood background with a lighter brown for the forum itself.

As for what parts to make look stone or metalic like maybe the interfaces and buttons? I can't picture what would work best but I think this would be a good direction to go in.

[Mroz4k]

I must say, though there is definitedly some things I would like changed (the colors are all kind of blending together, that would be my biggest problem) I am already starting to get used to this, and even if no big changes are made, I must give a thumbs up for this theme. I´d still prefer a darker theme, though.

And the one thing esthetically that is a kind of difficult for me to bite over is the fact that the background planks look like they were placed on a floor yesterday (aka they give me the novelty feeling, as if they were done for a brand new modern home.) Doesnt really boat that well with the TOS semi-historical background in my opinion.

I tried to have fun with that dark plank background, but it didnt really work out. So I was browsing the web, looking for phpbb templates I would like, that I would consider to be a bit more on-topic, and I found this:
http://www.template4all.com/phpbb-templ ... nload.html

Just a disclaimer: Even though I tried downloading it myself and I ran it through a check of multiple scanners, still could potentially be malware - but so far, I havent experienced anything).

Seems to have pretty nice background, its dark which I personally like, and if it was customised with the TOS themed buttons for posts etc like it currently is, I believe this would make the forums look a lot more with the theme then the current modern looking planks.
As the Wild West theme does kind of go with the victorian era an the overal TOS theme (in my opinion).

[TurdPile]

I like it. I'll try it out when I have time. (If I remember lol)

[Jfire]

Change the read and unread icons please!

[Mroz4k]

Change the read and unread icons please!

Why?

They seem pretty clear to me. You get colored head for a post with unread comments in it, and greyed out head with the already read topics.

Its exactly the same way it used to be with the default Phpbb, just this time, its heads of the TOS characters. And to be honest, I find that way better then the default, plain motive.

[Jfire]

Change the read and unread icons please!

Why?

They seem pretty clear to me. You get colored head for a post with unread comments in it, and greyed out head with the already read topics.

Its exactly the same way it used to be with the default Phpbb, just this time, its heads of the TOS characters. And to be honest, I find that way better then the default, plain motive.

On mobile it's much harder to see, and I mainly use mobile.

[TurdPile]

I looked on mobile and it looked alright. Can you snapshot what you mean?

[Swordsworth]

Woah. Okay. The theme clashes heavily with the name colour of the bots(Bing, Baidu, Google, etc). It's really painful to look at.

[BirdyThePhoenix]

I'm using it right now, and when looking at who is online at the bottom of the page, you can barely see any of the names. It's really annoying.

[LevinSnakesRise]

I'm using it right now, and when looking at who is online at the bottom of the page, you can barely see any of the names. It's really annoying.

Those are the Bots, which are colored in Gray, making it hard to see. The rest don't seem too awful for my eyes, but the Bots list does irritate my eyes.

[oliy]

It's surprisingly easy to get used to, and I like the theme. I just have two problems:
1) The smilies have an annoying white brokem outline. Ex.
2) You can't tell when a sticky is locked or not

[Mroz4k]

I like it. I'll try it out when I have time. (If I remember lol)

Any chance you will try out the dark wooden theme?

Seems like quite a few people would prefer darker forums, got to say I prefer darker forums myself because everything just stands out better, from font colors to pictures etc.