Neocolours

Having spent the last week trying my hand at Subeautique restocking I agree they need a clock. In fact, any website with things that depend on the server time rather than the user's time should have a clock. How the heck will we know what time Subeta thinks it is, otherwise?

Keith posted a mock up of the new forums you can go mess around in. It is horrendous looking. I am so sad right now.
Click

The topic I made here pretty much sums up everything I feel is wrong with the new version: Click
It's not often I make a topic on Subeta, especially a complaining board, but I just really hate the style the site is going in. And I even rather liked the mockup he posted before.

I just finished writing up my critique of it (and posted it on the facebook post), but my basic reaction was BLARGH!!

Basically:
It's just too cluttered. The bubble looks makes it very generic. It also spaces things out way too much. I like how compact the forum hub page is now.

They're using the accent color way too much. In this case, there's too much orange, but I think we're still going to have this problem with all the other layout color schemes. They need a secondary, less saturated, possibly darker color for the links.

The HA icons need to go. They don't need to be shoved into everything; we already see them everywhere. Having specific icons for the forums helps me find things. Having HA icons that change whenever someone posts something will not help me find things. It will also annoy me.

The infobox you get when you hover over usernames is way too tall. It has unnecessary icons. WHY ARE YOU CHANGING SOMETHING THAT'S NOT BROKEN.

The navigation bar on the bottom needs to be made a lot tinier. We don't need navigation links there when the topbar follows you around. The fonts are too big.

Where is the clock? Where is the sidebar? I thought we were still going to have the sidebar? Adding in the sidebar will trap in a lot of white space (and that's not a good thing. that is something you want to avoid 100% of the time).

Oh, and it looks like they took the sample page down already.

Holy crap, why there is so much ORANGE? Where's the clock? And why, oh why, is the error message telling me that the preview is over off-center?

Honestly, Subeta needs less of a layout revamp and more of an internal back-end revamp. I get the distinct feeling that the scripts and databases running the site are cobbled together from years of feature changes and use...

This is both, actually. New design, plus recode (and you're right, some current pages have snippets of code from several different years). Also, the orange is only that one specific layout -- all of the unlockable layouts are staying and will keep their own color schemes. They're also tweaking the colors a bit and adding some darker colors to make the layouts less bright.

Cranberry wrote:This is both, actually. New design, plus recode (and you're right, some current pages have snippets of code from several different years). Also, the orange is only that one specific layout -- all of the unlockable layouts are staying and will keep their own color schemes. They're also tweaking the colors a bit and adding some darker colors to make the layouts less bright.

Ok! I was going to mess with the colors with Custom CSS anyway...my biggest gripe with all the orange is that it seems that the portions of the layout would be one big, solid color, which could be harder to work with depending on how the layout is coded, but I guess it wouldn't be too bad if I could give them backgrounds instead.

Definitely nice to know that the site is being recoded. Maybe fewer things will break when a new feature is added, hmmm?

Here's hoping.

Seriously though, Keith and the other programmers have been working with an outside company on the recode and redesign since at least November, and really taking the time to do it right, so I'm pretty optimistic about the whole thing. There are parts of the design I don't love, but everything's pretty much stayed where it was and I think it'll be easy to navigate. They're still tweaking the layout anyway, and I'm sure will pay attention to user feedback once it's released and will change anything that seems universally disliked.

Heya Cranberry, is there an estimated release time frame for the new layout? I'm intrigued by the new look!
'Cept, needs MOAR CLOCK. xD

I don't think so, no. I believe they'd originally wanted to have it out by now, but it wasn't quite done and they don't want to rush anything out without making sure it's all working properly. It seems to be a very big job.

I'm actually rather impressed at the pace it's been going. Even if I don't like all the new aesthetic changes to the site, I have hope that the base coding will be much better because of all the time spent re-writting it. It will be good to hopefully have a mostly glitch free site for once!

http://keith.dev.subeta.net/forums
The color scheme was finally changed, and the Arctic Frost colors immediately make the layout sooo much easier on the eyes. Various improvements are still needed, but overall things are really looking up compared to the first draft.

It looks like one of the "futuristic" designs that were so popular in the late 90s. What is the obsession with rounded corners? And a lot of extra padding/margins that "soften" things up even more--looks terrible, all this white space all around the text of every single element.

Looks awful when I make the browser fullscreen (the bar doesn't attach at the left) but at least it works when it's not fullscreen (how I normally use my browser).

Don't like font choice or font size, but at least that's css-able, I'm sure. Same with the dropdown menus. Honestly, almost never a good choice for a website, almost always terrible for mobile browsing. But it's so "cool" and "fancy"! Gosh.

I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but we'll still be able to simplify the Forums if we don't want to see any headers/signatures and full HA's on the forums, right? I've been so used to that setting for a couple of years now, and I'd hate to see it go away. ^^;

Also....CLOCK. Where is the clock, man?! D:

I thiiiiink the clock will be an available sidebar widget, but don't quote me on that! I know I'll miss it if it doesn't come back. Even though I'm in the same timezone as Subeta, I always find myself looking at the header clock rather than the one on my desktop!

I generally rely on the Subeta clock whenever I'm out snagging a pet name, cause my computer's clock is actually slower...for some bizarre reason. xD
Not only that, but it'd probably be easier for those who live in Europe to have the Subeta clock, instead of trying to convert time in their head.