No offense Quim, but shouldn't that have been done prior to taking everyone for the ride?

I have no problem that the dark theme is not the default, but couldn't you have given one real option that looked like ITT. You options are useable and ugly, or nice and dark, but missing most features.

Then we hear, well if you don't like it, make one ourselves???

Most of this will be fixed with a fully functional minimalistic theme, but....

It is not an aestetic issue, the new theme looks pretty, it is...

Usability! Usability! Usability!

What is wrong here: text colors/contrast, background contrast, fixed margin widths/sidebar

When designing visual elements you must think of:
- readability / eye strain
- old people
- visually impaired people
- color impaired people
- old screens
- excess of visual information / mental load (not an issue here)

About the text
- never use light text over light backgrounds / never use dark text over dark backgrounds: unreadable, eye strain
- text must have the biggest possible contrast: readability, enable color impaired people
- use system colors or allow user choice of colors if possible, if not choose colors with great care; the site should look mostly the same in greyscale, do not differentiate elements just by chromacity : readability, distraction, color impaired people
- provide choice between dark and bright backgrounds: the screen will be placed anywhere from 100-1000 lux of illumination, screen background must not contrast too much from room background. To much background contrast causes eye strain. Old CRT screens cause flicker and eye strain with bright backgrounds
- never assume or force a font size: tiny screens / old people / visually impaired people

About layout:
- it is better not to use fixed margins or width, will conflict with font sizes or window size. For the same reason, make sidebars optional, allow text to span the whole window width.

Disclaimer: Yes, I'm a occupational health and safety consultant.

I gave it a try. This new theme/layout is a crime! At least please allow users to choose the default vbulletin theme!

hey they got rid of the topic inbetween posts - although i would still like the name/thanks/member type etc next to the post rather than making me scroll 30% more by adding it to the top

kind of annoying that the text runs off the side too... on my screen anyway....

Thanks for putting the "Thanks" count back in and getting rid of the big titles between posts, Reggie. It is looking better now.

Oh, and I like the checkmarks beside my subscribed posts in "New Posts"! That's neat!

The default grey/orange theme looks great on my N810 - fonts are readable and spacing is nice. On my desktop that translates into kind of large and chunky, but nothing that can't be tweaked with a user stylesheet, I'm sure. Personally I find it much easier to look at than the previous 'dark' theme.

I have been changing some stuff. Are you still experiencing this problem? What browser and version are you using?

I like the fact that I can go to Maemo.org and these forums and not to the old site. It crashes the 770.

I hate to sound like an ingrate, and I appreciate Reggie trying to improve the forum. I'm not wild about the layout, but I think it's already been improved, for example by removing the Subject Headings between every post.

However, I find the Orange Unbearable on my eyes, particularly the non-bold Orange, like for the URLs cited in posts (links), the names of those who clicked Thanks, and the "Quote & Reply" button.

I would really like some other color to be chosen for those.

I have campaigned elsewhere for the Minimalist theme to maintain its old white-on-black look, once I saw that andrewblack is planning to make the Minimalist theme match the colors of this new Normal theme. Please see that post of mine and give your support (if you would like to see the Minimalist theme keep its old color scheme for your own viewing, or believe that not making it orange-on-white, etc., like the new "Normal" theme, would at least be the fair thing to do as it would provide choice.)

Does anybody have a page of the old-style forum they could post as a jpeg? It might help me discern what else it is that I specifically don't like about the new one. I know I really can't stand the Orange. Maybe there is some other complimentary color that could be used, like leaving the orange e in maemo and the bold "Post Reply" button, but making the rest, I don't know, maybe dark brown? (Though I'm inclined to think that links just ought to be blue, like virtually everywhere else.)

(I'm also suspecting that I'm finding the not-very-bold plain black text on the gray background harder to read than I'd like.)