New Forum Style
 

Good day,

We've been working on a new style for the forums here, and while it's not [I]quite[/I] finished yet, we think it's at least ready for us to solicit a bit of feedback from you.

Most of the work has involved figuring out how to [I]turn off[/I] some of the sillier features, like decorating your threads with a smiley face or a thumbs-up. We've been pretty ruthless about cutting stuff out, so if there's some feature that you actually quite liked, but that we removed, let us know and it might come back.

Some other anomalies, like default icons that we didn't replace, or ugly layout that only comes up in certain situations, are bound to crop up. Let us know if you find any such stuff.

If you want to try the new theme:[LIST][*]Go to your [B]User Control Panel[/B][*]Click [B]Edit Options[/B] in the list on the left side[*]Scroll down to [B]Miscellaneous Options[/B][*]From the [B]Forum Skin[/B] menu, select [B]Lithographica[/B].[/LIST]
Now you've got it. You should consider this new theme beta, and let us know what you think of it so that we can improve it. You can always get back to the default style by following the instructions above and selecting [B]Omni Style[/B].

Be well, and enjoy.

[QUOTE=wvh]Good day,

We've been working on a new style for the forums here, and while it's not [I]quite[/I] finished yet, we think it's at least ready for us to solicit a bit of feedback from you.

Most of the work has involved figuring out how to [I]turn off[/I] some of the sillier features, like decorating your threads with a smiley face or a thumbs-up. We've been pretty ruthless about cutting stuff out, so if there's some feature that you actually quite liked, but that we removed, let us know and it might come back.

Some other anomalies, like default icons that we didn't replace, or ugly layout that only comes up in certain situations, are bound to crop up. Let us know if you find any such stuff.

If you want to try the new theme:[LIST][*]Go to your [B]User Control Panel[/B][*]Click [B]Edit Options[/B] in the list on the left side[*]Scroll down to [B]Miscellaneous Options[/B][*]From the [B]Forum Skin[/B] menu, select [B]Lithographica[/B].[/LIST]
Now you've got it. You should consider this new theme beta, and let us know what you think of it so that we can improve it. You can always get back to the default style by following the instructions above and selecting [B]Omni Style[/B].

Be well, and enjoy.[/QUOTE]

At a first quick look, I really like the new theme, which looks clean and simple, apart from one thing. The main pane (when reading a thread--not, I note if I scroll down here in the reply mode to look at the previous posts) with the post (white) has rounded corners on the left hand edge. It looks terrible, even more so since it's not matched with rounded corners on the right. I think that might be enough to send me back to the old one.

HTH
Mark

Please switch to a fixed with, at least for the content area. One rule of thumb is that text should never be more than 52 characters wide. Allowing the body area of the page to expand beyond that width breaks several design rules and drastically diminishes readability and usability.

There's a few other things too, but that's a big enough one that I'm not going to take focus off of it.

Also, editing and then saving does not work.

Edit: for some reason the impact of the variable width on the current theme isn't as bad as the new one... I haven't dug much to see why that is.

Perhaps I am missing something, but when viewing the listing of all the forums, there doesn't appear to be any indication of new posts.

[QUOTE=JKT]Perhaps I am missing something, but when viewing the listing of all the forums, there doesn't appear to be any indication of new posts.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I noticed that and was going to post on it. One should be able to see by the date/time given for the latest post, but if like me you are moving around with your laptop, you can't always remember what the time when you last looked was ... and then there's never being sure whose time that indicates Omni's in Seattle/posters/mine here in China. I guess it's the latter but it brings up some weird times.

Mark

[QUOTE=JKT]Perhaps I am missing something, but when viewing the listing of all the forums, there doesn't appear to be any indication of new posts.[/QUOTE]

Plus the New Posts page (search results) is all funky.

A lot of the buttons and some of the text is rather large, while other items are small. Seems strange that the heading on this page "Reply to Thread" is about 3x the size of the nav. "Additional Options" is equally monstrous.

It would be nice if there were "report post" buttons on the New Posts page. Then I wouldn't have to go read posts to report them as spam.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I’ll work on fixing these problems soon, and let you know when there’s a new version to try out.

Another issue that I have with the theme is that the New Posts screen has a really narrow column for the thread title and a huge one for the column to the right of it (sorry, there aren't any new posts at the moment for me to check the name).

Edit: Screen shot of what I mean:

[img]http://homepage.mac.com/jtyzack/.Pictures/screenshots/OmniForumNPissue.jpg[/img]

I'd like to have the option of an Active Topics list across all subjects.

Another forum I frequent, the Irish MUG, [url]www.clubmac.ie[/url] has a pull down menu for active topics in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, week, etc.

It would suit a lot of us who own and use all or nearly all your products...