Quote:
Originally Posted by communicant
Edwin, people perceive colors differently, and of course screens differ as well. The 'orange' doesn't look orange to me, and the 'dark blue' isn't dark, but the main thing is that regardless of the shades they are supposed to be, they are jarring and distracting and really quite unnecessary. I agree with someone earlier who said the tan background in quoted text was pleasant enough, but other than that, the color changes so far seem to me to add nothing, and to detract quite a bit from the former look, which put the emphasis where it belonged -- on the words.
I am not against change per se, I just see no need for colorizing the site at all. The old look was pleasant and conducive to the site's purpose and didn't get in the way. The new look is mentally jumpy and distracting. I know it is subjective and I speak only for my own eyes and brain of course, but I must be honest and say that for me at least, the changes have been entirely negative and have diminished the ease and pleasure that I take in perusing the site.
This is just one vote, but I do wonder mournfully why it is so often necessary to 'fix what ain't broke', and I also note sadly that 'improvements' (in any context) almost never actually improve things and often seem to accomplish the opposite. My heart sinks whenever I see 'New and Improved' on something that I like and enjoy, and now it seems the phenomenon has cropped up again, here at EMD. Alas.
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Yes, you're right - people perceive colours differently, but beyond that, monitors also display colours differently. The forums look moderately different on each of my two monitors, and that's despite supposedly calibrating them to the exact same shades using the built in calibration tools. So that certainly doesn't make the task easier!
Addressing the other issue, of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" you have a good point there as well. However, I have changed the forums a handful of times over the last 14 years, and each time some people didn't like the transition, but generally the feeling after a little while seemed to be that the improvements were exactly that i.e. improvements.
I would welcome suggestions on how to improve things further, but for me at least the current look is a lot less mournful and more appealing visually. Text seems to stand out better, especially against some of the darker backgrounds, than it did with the old washed-out colour scheme.
Finally, as I may have noted elsewhere, while there are a lot of "forum" regulars between 60-75% of the forum traffic at any one time (in overall pageview terms) is from first-time visitors. So I'm conscious that things that make the forums easier to grasp quickly are worth exploring, such as highlighting the first post of a given thread.