Concrete And Solid Reasons Why Light Design Is Lacking

[Khunvyel]

I do not beat on the white skin. I like having the option to alternate between both versions depending on where I am and what time it is. However, the new skin has lots of issues which are hurting me on many ends;

 

• Option to switch forum theme should be more visible - It is a bad placement on the bottom left with slim font, takes endless to find and you cannot even change the forum skin in all places of the forum in the first place.

   

• Change of theme should not mean loss of functionality - Not updating the links in the "Latest Warframe builds" box for dark theme is just horrible design philosophy. You basically say "screw you people who prefer viewing the forum on dark skin." Dynamically parsing SQL entries is not rocket science. You've used this update box since months now and put in the links manually. That means it was plenty of time to find a dynamically parsing solution or spend a few bucks for a plugin that does exactly that. There are so many possible solutions to do that, which are all rather easy and working cross-theme. This is the only thing I'm honestly getting worked up, and I've never been angry at DE for anything else since I play Warframe. Please stop hardcoding and do dynamics. The "latest staff replies" and "recent topics" are proof of concept for working cross-theme.
  

   

• Light skin has way too much red - Why the red? Warframe's iconic colour is BLUE or rather cyan. We have 21 Warframes including Primes whos default energy colour is cyan/blue or in the range thereof. I think even all Tenno themed weapons have cyan energy colour. The distinction between Administrators / DE Staff is blurred due to the red member names now. Seriously. Go to white+blue or white+teal, since cyan is too bright for a white background. Stop breaking with your own game aesthetics. (( at that point; switching out the GREEN to CYAN in all things mod screen numbers would also go more canon with Warframe blue and ALSO get rid of the red-green issue in the same swipe. Just saying )).
  

   

• Not all forum items are properly fitted to the new design - Just a few examples which are more clear oversights; 1) Forum icons on index are still the old ones, thus invisible on the light skin. 2) Reputation number 0 is white on white text. If you want to camouflage "zero" reputation, then make the number black on the dark version. thanks for fixing that. 3) Making hover colour light grey is not exactly emphasizing contrast. 4) original CSS buttons still are darkblue.
   

• Smartphone skin combatibility has nothing to do with PC skin compatibility - Any forum can parse which device it is being viewed at and can automatically reroute to a different skin depending on the information given back. The reroutes for this are fairly straightforward, and pretty much every plugin either has a plugin for it, or has an explanation or option somewhere to do it on it's own. Just making a default white skin to be more smartphone / handheld suitable is not exactly helpful for these devices, and neither helps the desktop users.

 

What is super sad on an unrelated note, is that you still have not been capable of replacing your WYSIWYG editor with something actually useful. Stop punishing people who do not know how to use a forum by stripping them of helpful functions. What is so bad to have buttons for posting images / urls / making bulletin lists / making numbered lists / etc. ? If you do not want us to write in colour and do not want us to write in huge font sizes, then take that away on a coding level. Don't punish the ones who don't know how to BBcode.

 

On top of that, the WYSIWYG editor is still your default one which still has not received a facelift of customized design catering to the light or dark theme. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Khunvyel

[Shifted]

Step 1: Hire this guy

Step 2: Avoid screw-ups in the future

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit

[Guest]

Don't punish the ones who don't know how to BBcode.

eh, what now?

[Arlayn]

have to admit the colors to clash abit here. Good news is DE mentioned they had plans to update this. Just not the black one. So there is hope yet for a better visual version of this one here. I doubt the background will change, but I can see the font changing. They could try messing with the design abit more here. Keep the lotus logo though.

[Khunvyel]

eh, what now?

So you know how to use bbcode, congratulations. Apparently you have missed the plethora of people asking about how to do certain things like as simple as embedding images. Look at pretty much every image contest.

 

By the way, thank you for this example. Because I dare everyone trying to reading that on the light skin. Now with a skin toggle there are colours now which we - the people who try to make things more visible and accessible in large blocks of text - can no longer use.

Look at the example colour ranges below and switch forum skin. You know instantly which cannot be used any more to ensure compatibility on both. And I'd probably go with a mix of the teal + medium blue one current red. Because Warframe blue.

 

yellow    YELLOW    bolded    BOLD CAPS

orange    ORANGE    bolded    BOLD CAPS

red    RED    bolded    BOLD CAPS

darkred    DARKRED    bolded    BOLD CAPS

purple    PURPLE    bolded    BOLD CAPS

pink    PINK    bolded    BOLD CAPS

magenta    MAGENTA    bolded    BOLD CAPS

skyblue    LIGHTBLUE    bolded    BOLD CAPS

mediumblue    MEDIUMBLUE    bolded    BOLD CAPS

blue    BLUE    bolded    BOLD CAPS

cyan    CYAN    bolded    BOLD CAPS

teal    TEAL    bolded    BOLD CAPS

lime    LIME    bolded    BOLD CAPS

darkgreen    DARKGREEN    bolded    BOLD CAPS

grey    GREY    bolded    BOLD CAPS

 

Oh well.

 

(( btw, the forum is so bad with the colours and the wysiwyg editor in general that one has to go over and parse the same colour several times in a row, especially with "written" colour instead of #coded colour ))

Edited November 20, 2014 by Khunvyel

[OriKlein]

White is actually bad for mobile.
It drains battery and heats up the device several times faster.

[vaugahn]

White is actually bad for mobile.

It drains battery and heats up the device several times faster.

 

Not really. That's not how LCD displays work.

[Briareos]

I'm going to chime in here both about the red text color, which plenty of people are complaining about, and the accompanying grey text color, which I haven't seen mentioned yet. Grey text on a white background is a rookie-level mistake when you're aiming for legibility. Come on, guys. Tone down the white and red and change the grey to something darker still, maybe black? I dunno, but I can almost hear the colors coming off my screen.

[Khunvyel]

... and the accompanying grey text color, which I haven't seen mentioned yet.

Well I have mentioned grey text issues in my opening post. Might have not been clear enough about ALL levels of grey text on white background being horrible.

[FractalMind]

Not really. That's not how LCD displays work.

AMOLED screens on mobile devices only drain battery when the individual LEDs are lit. Bright is indeed bad. Especially for large screen devices with small betteries like phones. Tablets less-so.

 

Note... LED not LCD... different technologies.

 

As more computer monitors adopt AMOLED technology when it comes down in price, bright forums and internet pages will become a major source of unnecessary global power wastage.

Edited November 21, 2014 by FractalMind

[Khunvyel]

I notice the reputation "zero" is not invisible any more, thank you for that, removed it from the list.

Really hoping for some other adjustments in foreseeable future, because I mention again; I *DO* like a light skin in certain situations and want it to be functional and pretty without major visual displeasures. I am NOT bashing on it just because it is a light skin, that is as far from my intention as possible.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Khunvyel

[vaugahn]

AMOLED screens on mobile devices only drain battery when the individual LEDs are lit. Bright is indeed bad. Especially for large screen devices with small betteries like phones. Tablets less-so.

 

Note... LED not LCD... different technologies.

 

As more computer monitors adopt AMOLED technology when it comes down in price, bright forums and internet pages will become a major source of unnecessary global power wastage.

 

AMOLED displays have awful efficiency across the board. White doesn't really worsen that. Only like a dozen phones and certain specialty displays use AMOLED.