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Topic: Forum Colors

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KeithC
Unregistered

Posted: Dec. 22 2002,16:30

I use Mp3TagStudio frequently -- a great program!

My comments really isn't about that, but rather these forums. You've got to be kidding with the colors used on this message board. Gray text on a black background? Please, if you've any control over this, make the color scheme easier to read (perferably a dark font on a high-contrast light background).

I find the utter illegibility of this forum ruins what could be a great resource and user experience.

THanks!

KeithC
registered studio tag user

Magnus Brading
Almighty Author

Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 2751
Joined: Aug. 2002

Posted: Dec. 22 2002,17:27

The gray isn't used very much at all (and also, it's a light gray hue, making it quite high contast with the black), and the main orange-on-black combination is quite high contrast too I would say. I'm not very satisfied with the colors in the Bookmark Converter forums I admit, but I like the colors in the Mp3/Tag Studio areas. If you'll submit a complete color scheme for the Bookmark Converter areas, I would gladly consider it (I have already asked people for help with that, but not gotten any suggestions, most likely due to the fact that it is much easier to reject a color scheme than to actually create it from scratch

).

Thanks for the input.

--------------
Software author and website owner

KeithC
Unregistered

Posted: Dec. 23 2002,15:15

With all due respect, orange on black is *not* high contrast. It sounds as if you've set your mind (and, not being a user of the bookmark forum, I do not care about its scheme). Furthermore, while you might be satisfied with the color scheme, the point of design is to make your users' satisfied.

You can't really tell me that users don't have trouble seeing this: http://www.keithcollison.com/forum.jpg (What do those buttons say?!?)

As great as Mp3Tag Studio is, I do believe it too suffers from some UI flaws. Tabbed interfaces are often used gratuitously, and I think the same is true of Studio. The options for each tool seem scrunched together, and resizing file listings and such is rather awkward.

Please don't take this critique personally. I find many programmers find UI to be an elusive art. I recommend some research into this field.

This is a great site which covers aspects of design, and here is a peiece they do on color theory:
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/color/

Jakob Neilsen's famous resource:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/

Running a search on "application tab interface" and you'll see plenty of articles discouraging their use. Here's a good one:
http://world.std.com/~uieweb/tabbed.htm

Keep up the good work! And Happy Halloween!

KeithC

Magnus Brading
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Posted: Dec. 23 2002,17:06

First of all, I appreciate your input, no problem. But, I can only respect complaints that do not include an explicit suggestion for a better solution so much. Also, you being a "user" and me being an "admin" doesn't really make our opinions being worth more or less. You are one person who doesn't like the colors, and I am one person who do like the colors. Neither of our opinions represent any other group of people, and since I liked the colors I was hoping that some other people would too, but of course I knew that not all people would.

And I do indeed know something about color theory too. I know that the gray color is not ideal for contrast, but it is only used to a greater extent in the posting screen. The info in the posting screen is not something that has to be read more than one time by each user, and as long as it is not unreadable (I honestly think that it's not that bad), it is actually better to represent such "side information" with more low-contrast colors than the main information, in respect to ease/speed of information extraction for users. That's why the posts themselves have the more high contrast orange color (and you must agree that the orange is more high contrast than the gray at least, right?). And I still have to claim that the contrast between the orange and black is fully ok for relatively easy reading. Of course the maximum contrast would be acquired by making everything black and white, but this would not be very appealing in other ways, so it's a bit of a compromise. I'm sure that even better compromises do exist, increasing both the visual appeal and the contrast compared to the current one, but I just don't have time to find them. Hence, I request either explicit suggestions on new full color schemes, or I keep the old one.

About the tabbed interface issue. There are many situations where it should not be used, but I think the situation in Mp3/Tag Studio is practically ideal for tabs. Each tab is a completely isolated tool, which could practically as well have been a separate program, and the situations that your article discusses is not the same (neither does it contain any real suggestions about how to solve the problems it does dicuss in a better way, for that matter). I actually get quite a lot of positive input about the efficiency of my GUI design. If you do have an explicit suggestion about how it could be done better, I'll be glad to listen though.

Happy holidays to you too, whatever the kind.

Edited by Magnus Brading on Dec. 23 2002,17:10

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Software author and website owner

cupon
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Joined: April 2004

Posted: April 28 2004,00:20

Quote (Magnus Brading @ Dec. 23 2002,17:06)

First of all, I appreciate your input, no problem. But, I can only respect complaints that do not include an explicit suggestion for a better solution so much.

Could you implement skins for this message board so users can choose their own layout?

Magnus Brading
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Posted: April 28 2004,00:41

This message board software supports skins, yes.

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Software author and website owner

cupon
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Posted: April 29 2004,21:16

Quote (Magnus Brading @ April 28 2004,00:41)

This message board software supports skins, yes.

Can you tell me where in the control panel I would go to change the skin? I went to "Account Options" and under the "Board Display Settings" header there wasn't a drop down box to choose another skin.

Disposable Hero
Old Board Geezer

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Posted: April 30 2004,01:19

This discussion means it's definitely time for a new beta MP3TS version 3:-)

Magnus Brading
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Posted: April 30 2004,13:48

Haha Disposable Hero.

Getting closer...

And about the skins, I don't think I have any other skins installed than my Mp3/Tag Studio skin and the Bookmark Converter skin at the moment.

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Software author and website owner

cupon
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Joined: April 2004

Posted: April 30 2004,21:17

Quote (Magnus Brading @ April 30 2004,13:4

And about the skins, I don't think I have any other skins installed than my Mp3/Tag Studio skin and the Bookmark Converter skin at the moment.

When you have the time can you please consider uploading some new skins with softer color tones (dark writing on light backgrounds). Even the default ikonboard skin that ships out the box would be helpful.

I'd like to participate in the forums, but the color scheme is visibly harsh and difficult to maneuver. These pages do actually cause my eyes to hurt slightly. It's similar to the feeling you get when you get too much water in your eyes and it burns.

Thanks for providing such a quality product and maintaining your support presence on these boards.

Edited by cupon on April 30 2004,21:20

Magnus Brading
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Posted: May 01 2004,14:36

I just looked into it some more, and now I remember why I didn't enable the multiple skins. The reason is that this messageboard software doesn't allow me to set different default skins for different forums if I allow users to change the skins, and I want the Mp3/TS forums to have have the Mp3/TS skin by default, and the BMC forums to have the BMC skin by default.

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Software author and website owner

cupon
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Joined: April 2004

Posted: May 01 2004,22:56

Quote (Magnus Brading @ May 01 2004,14:36)

All I, or anybody, can ask is that you reconsider or compromise your position. Please take into account the perspective of your users and if you're willing to forego one preference setting for the sake of accessibility.

Disposable Hero
Old Board Geezer

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Posts: 188
Joined: Aug. 2002

Posted: May 02 2004,20:46

I'm going to have to side mainly with the skin requesters on this one. Content is about content, presentation is about personal preferences. If the presentation of information is such that it impedes the use of content for any significant percentage of users, a change should be considered. Plus it's cool to let people do what they want, within limits

That said, expanding presentation choices should not become a new developement task, and users need to accept reasonable limits and acknowledge time constraints of the developer. Put simply, time spent fiddling with skins and responding to board presentation issues is likely to be time taken away from MP3TS development, which would suck and effectively detract from the value of your investment in registering MP3TS.

I say throw some skins out, but that's that - no tedious BS like "I wish the subheader blue was #253C65 instead of #121E32.." etc.

So there's my 2 cents.

moid
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Joined: Mar. 2004

Posted: May 07 2004,04:41

I personally have a really hard time with the orange on black. Maybe it's my monitor (a 19" flat screen), but it hurts my eyes to try and read any of it. I much prefer a dark color text on a lighter colored background, or white text on a blue background also "feels" good to my eyes.

I was here looking to see if there's any word on the new beta with command-line interface but honestly can only stand about 5 minutes with the current color scheme before I start getting a head ache.

johnber
Board Newbie

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Posts: 6
Joined: May 2004

Posted: June 02 2004,02:42

Magnus ! People have been thought since childhood to read from books with black characters on white background.
(or dark characters on light background)
this is what looks and feel most comfortable for us.
ocasionally a different scheme may look interesting Birthday cards, reminders, advertising..etc.etc.. But prolonged exposure to it is definitely a turn off.
Even though I do not have headaches watching your forums I do agree that it has some repelling factor attached to it.
If you are bent on having orange in it look at the winamp forums:
http://forums.winamp.com/
But personnaly standard forums colors like: http://forum.digital-digest.com/ are the way to go!
it is relaxing and easy on the eyes.
overalll a pleasant experience.
I don't know how easy or difficult would be a changeover for this forum, but i would consider it. :agree:

Magnus Brading
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Posted: June 02 2004,03:47

Yep, I will change forum software when I get the time, to enable custom skins that still support default forum skins, but as mentioned above this will most likely take quite some effort to do, and being limited in time I'd rather put my efforts into the software itself right now. Please hang in there though, one day it will be done!

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Software author and website owner

Llamatron
Unregistered

Posted: Aug. 18 2004,19:43

Hi, folks, from another big fan of the Tag Studio software. I have to agree with the readability issue (it's kind of humorous that this is the first topic I've ever read here, and it was because of its subject

). I also recognize the limited time available to Magnus Brading, between coding two commercial programs, keeping up support activities, and managing an active forum.

I have a temporary solution that's also useful for all other websites in general, and it's called a "bookmarklet". The one to "zap colors" in particular works with Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Opera. (Some digging on the Web might turn up a variant for Netscape, I'm not sure.)

It's basically a tiny snippet of JavaScript code set up as a bookmark, which (when selected) acts on the currently-displayed page. It can be put onto the Links toolbar of Internet Explorer for instant usefulness. (You may get a security warning from IE, which is normal. You can examine them before actually using them by right-clicking and selecting Properties.)

Description: "Makes text black on a white background, and makes links blue and purple." (It also removes background images from a page for maximum readability.)

Link: http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html
For further browsing: the page that started it all.

You'll find a wide variety of bookmarklets out there for a boatload of purposes other than just browser display customization. They're a great invention! (BTW, the linked page says they're for "annoying" web pages, but that's no slap intended against this site -- colors are just a personal preference that often vary greatly from one person to the next.)

Llamatron
Unregistered

Posted: Aug. 18 2004,19:50

Nuts -- I checked more carefully and the bookmarklet I linked isn't the exact same one I use. Rather than spending a lot of time hunting for the original website, I'll just post the code from my "zap colors" bookmarklet and you can use it if you care to:

Code Sample

javascript:function%20C(w){var%20ss,styl='*%20{background:white!important;color:black!important}%20:link,:link%20*%20{color:#0000EE!important}%20:visited,:visited%20*%20{color:#551A8B!important}';if(w.document.createStyleSheet){w.document.createStyleSheet('javascript:\''+styl+'\'');}else{ss=w.document.createElement('link');ss.rel='stylesheet';ss.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styl);w.document.documentElement.childNodes[0].appendChild(ss);}}C(window);try{var%20f=document.frames;for(var%20i=0;i<f.length;i++)C(f[i]);}catch(e){}

There. That'll do exactly what I described above, at least for Internet Explorer.

Magnus Brading
Almighty Author

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Posts: 2751
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Posted: Aug. 19 2004,22:08

Hehe, cool bookmarklet, thanks.

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Software author and website owner

Llamatron
Unregistered

Posted: Aug. 20 2004,23:07

Glad to help.

It's the least I could do to "give back" a small something towards MP3 Tag Studio. (Since I'm unemployed right now, I can't do anything more financial.) :ashamed:

Llamatron
Unregistered

Posted: Aug. 27 2004,19:29

Guess what -- some of the new IE6 SP2 defaults block bookmarklets. That's not automatically a bad thing, and you can change the security settings, but here's a workaround: go to the Tools menu, Internet Options, and look at the bottom right corner of the dialog for the Accessibility button. After you click it, the first checkbox is "ignore colors specified on web pages".

It's not as easy to get to as a bookmarklet, and it's "permanent" until you change it again, but if you want to keep the new security options it's a good compromise.

Llamatron
Board Veteran

Group: Members
Posts: 67
Joined: Sep. 2004

Posted: Oct. 21 2004,19:24

Here's an item that'll work with any Internet Explorer version later than IE5, OS, and service pack: Clarify Button. It resets the current IE window to default colors and removes any background image. It's temporary, only until you either refresh or click a link. (The "permanent" solution is still in the Internet Options described above.)

Hope this helps anybody that gives a rip.

Edited by Llamatron on Oct. 21 2004,19:26

21 replies since Dec. 22 2002,16:30

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