(It’s interesting to see the variations in people’s preferences for this sort of thing. For example, I’ve had multiple people tell me that they like the brutalist theme best (it’s certainly not a joke!); the dark theme was made as a response to someone’s specific request for one (and was greeted with enthusiasm); the design of the grey theme came from another user (though I refined it); etc. If ever there was a clear demonstration of why options and customizability are critical to a good user experience, it’s this!)
I’ll take a closer look at your user style in a bit, though let me say immediately that I definitely appreciate you making one (it’s gratifying when users take the effort to improve my work!).
Edit: I’ve tried out the style now. Not bad at all! It’s too small a change for it to make much sense providing it as a whole separate theme, but I definitely recommend it for anyone who agrees with your critique of the default appearance. Thanks again!
P.S. By the way, I think you’re right about the navigation in the simple theme being rather messy. That’s on my to-do list of things to correct.
A note about the .comment-item cascades—those are generated programmatically,
via PHP (search for “nested_stuff” in the script for the relevant bit). That script can be run by itself (it does not depend on anything else in the repository), e.g.:
php style.css.php > style.css
You can make the necessary tweaks to style.css.php, then extract the relevant bits of result from style.css. (Or, you know, not. I entirely understand if you don’t want to bother! Just noting the possibility.)
I made it. (Other than the grey theme—which, of course, is based on the modifications you posted—I made all the themes and did all of the design you currently see on the site.)
I am 100% unsurprised that preferences on these things vary :-). I do like light-on-dark in many contexts, but high-contrast light-on-dark using “ordinary” body-text typefaces always looks terrible to me (Bad Things, to my eyes, happen where the strokes are narrow). For e.g. monospaced typewriter-like text in text editors, light-on-dark works just fine for me. I mention all this not in order to try to provoke any changes; just musing, again, on how preferences vary. Incidentally, the green borders on new comments are super-duper-prominent in the light-on-dark theme; you might consider toning them down a bit.
I wasn’t expecting my tweaks to become an all-new GW theme (though I guess if there’s a sudden clamour from users who try them and love them, anything’s possible).
I don’t have PHP installed on anything convenient, and don’t think I will bother installing it just to make a small optimization to the appearance of my GW style.
I do like light-on-dark in many contexts, but high-contrast light-on-dark using “ordinary” body-text typefaces always looks terrible to me (Bad Things, to my eyes, happen where the strokes are narrow). For e.g. monospaced typewriter-like text in text editors, light-on-dark works just fine for me. I mention all this not in order to try to provoke any changes; just musing, again, on how preferences vary. Incidentally, the green borders on new comments are super-duper-prominent in the light-on-dark theme; you might consider toning them down a bit.
These are, actually, very valid concerns, and you’re not the only person to have mentioned this sort of thing. An upcoming feature will address all of this. Stay tuned! :)
Edit: By the way, I’ve found that differences in how people perceive, and react to, various combinations of font / color / etc., are often largely caused by differences in the device that a site is being viewed on. (I’ve already made several tweaks to the site’s design to account for users on different platforms, which seem to have helped some people, and am always open to doing more in that vein.) Do you mind saying what you’re using to browse GW? (I’m interested in both hardware—what kind of device, what size of screen, what resolution, etc.—and software—OS, browser, version.)
Right now I’m on a laptop with a wide-gamut 15″ 4K screen. So e.g. it generally copes very nicely with fine details in type, and it’s possible that colours may appear more saturated than they do on other devices. It’s running Windows 10 and I’m using a recent version of Firefox. The zoom factor in Windows, which on my machine defaults to 250%, is set to 200%, so many things will be displayed slightly smaller for me than is standard.
I have also tried GW on two other systems. One is running Windows 8.1 and, again, a recent version of Firefox, but with a lower-resolution monitor (30“, 2560x1600). The other is running a Unixy system (FreeBSD, as it happens) and a slightly older version of Firefox, and a 24” 1920x1200 monitor. Neither of these displays has a particularly wide colour gamut and I have made no attempt to calibrate them for colour accuracy.
All the displays are LCDs with a standard RGB stripe layout. I don’t think I have any nonstandard configuration to report besides what I mentioned above.
My impressions of GW are essentially the same on all of these. I have tried my tweaked styles only on the first and last (which are also the two most different) and prefer them to the defaults on both.
You’re quite welcome!
(It’s interesting to see the variations in people’s preferences for this sort of thing. For example, I’ve had multiple people tell me that they like the brutalist theme best (it’s certainly not a joke!); the dark theme was made as a response to someone’s specific request for one (and was greeted with enthusiasm); the design of the grey theme came from another user (though I refined it); etc. If ever there was a clear demonstration of why options and customizability are critical to a good user experience, it’s this!)
I’ll take a closer look at your user style in a bit, though let me say immediately that I definitely appreciate you making one (it’s gratifying when users take the effort to improve my work!).
Edit: I’ve tried out the style now. Not bad at all! It’s too small a change for it to make much sense providing it as a whole separate theme, but I definitely recommend it for anyone who agrees with your critique of the default appearance. Thanks again!
P.S. By the way, I think you’re right about the navigation in the simple theme being rather messy. That’s on my to-do list of things to correct.
A note about the .comment-item cascades—those are generated programmatically, via PHP (search for “nested_stuff” in the script for the relevant bit). That script can be run by itself (it does not depend on anything else in the repository), e.g.:
You can make the necessary tweaks to
style.css.php, then extract the relevant bits of result fromstyle.css. (Or, you know, not. I entirely understand if you don’t want to bother! Just noting the possibility.)When the brutalist theme appeared, I instantly switched to it and haven’t looked back. Really curious to know who made it.
I made it. (Other than the grey theme—which, of course, is based on the modifications you posted—I made all the themes and did all of the design you currently see on the site.)
I didn’t think I’d say this, but the brutalist theme is in fact pretty good!
I don’t like the font personally (which I imagine is the point for many).
I really just like how clean it looks.
I am 100% unsurprised that preferences on these things vary :-). I do like light-on-dark in many contexts, but high-contrast light-on-dark using “ordinary” body-text typefaces always looks terrible to me (Bad Things, to my eyes, happen where the strokes are narrow). For e.g. monospaced typewriter-like text in text editors, light-on-dark works just fine for me. I mention all this not in order to try to provoke any changes; just musing, again, on how preferences vary. Incidentally, the green borders on new comments are super-duper-prominent in the light-on-dark theme; you might consider toning them down a bit.
I wasn’t expecting my tweaks to become an all-new GW theme (though I guess if there’s a sudden clamour from users who try them and love them, anything’s possible).
I don’t have PHP installed on anything convenient, and don’t think I will bother installing it just to make a small optimization to the appearance of my GW style.
Update: see this comment—there’s a new feature that should address some of your concerns!
These are, actually, very valid concerns, and you’re not the only person to have mentioned this sort of thing. An upcoming feature will address all of this. Stay tuned! :)
Edit: By the way, I’ve found that differences in how people perceive, and react to, various combinations of font / color / etc., are often largely caused by differences in the device that a site is being viewed on. (I’ve already made several tweaks to the site’s design to account for users on different platforms, which seem to have helped some people, and am always open to doing more in that vein.) Do you mind saying what you’re using to browse GW? (I’m interested in both hardware—what kind of device, what size of screen, what resolution, etc.—and software—OS, browser, version.)
Yeah, agreed, that can make a big difference.
Right now I’m on a laptop with a wide-gamut 15″ 4K screen. So e.g. it generally copes very nicely with fine details in type, and it’s possible that colours may appear more saturated than they do on other devices. It’s running Windows 10 and I’m using a recent version of Firefox. The zoom factor in Windows, which on my machine defaults to 250%, is set to 200%, so many things will be displayed slightly smaller for me than is standard.
I have also tried GW on two other systems. One is running Windows 8.1 and, again, a recent version of Firefox, but with a lower-resolution monitor (30“, 2560x1600). The other is running a Unixy system (FreeBSD, as it happens) and a slightly older version of Firefox, and a 24” 1920x1200 monitor. Neither of these displays has a particularly wide colour gamut and I have made no attempt to calibrate them for colour accuracy.
All the displays are LCDs with a standard RGB stripe layout. I don’t think I have any nonstandard configuration to report besides what I mentioned above.
My impressions of GW are essentially the same on all of these. I have tried my tweaked styles only on the first and last (which are also the two most different) and prefer them to the defaults on both.
Excellent, thanks for the detailed report—it’s much appreciated.