Layout: Phenomenal | Color Scheme: Terrible

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ID:260922
 
Jan 14 2011, 5:42 am
Thank you for the site improvements. They've been needed. I can't really praise it enough... because I can't see it.

Archonex wrote:
The sun, it burns ussssss!

Really, it does. I'm all for contrasting colors, but this is just absurd. I honestly don't think that I'm going to be browsing the site too often anymore.

It's like trying to read a street sign at night and all of a sudden a car parked under the sign turns on his hi-beams.

From a design standpoint, there are a handful of problems now, due to the new color scheme. The most notable being the fact that it is ugly as all hell.

The white is unbearably terrible and painful to look at. Reason being, and what I was taught in school, is that white on most monitors, especially LCD, has the tendency to drown out other colors due to the fact that white is inherently brighter and your eyes will adjust better to seeing light in the dark than it will to seeing a gap in the light. The white is just too stimulating.

And now there is a problem with the font. When there was a great--and I do mean great--color scheme, the font was tolerable. With the black-on-white color scheme in full negative force, the font is so obviously bland that I can hardly stand to type this.

The layout is wonderful. Great job. But the colors and text look hobbled together, like they received no mention at the board meeting and you instead just used the white board as a template. It looks like a poetry site, circa 1997.

P.S. Would it really have been that bad to have tried the new site with the old color scheme?
Jan 14 2011, 8:12 am
Hiro the Dragon King wrote:
P.S. Would it really have been that bad to have tried the new site with the old color scheme?

Yes it would have. I don't think this color scheme is bad at all -- I quite like it since I'm used to black-on-white websites about now. I do hope they're going to add in some sort of color scheme selector bar so these complaints will stop and everyone can pick their own color.
Jan 14 2011, 8:19 am
I was going to make a similar post but then I saw your post. I agree completely. All this white induces eyestrain. DO NOT WANT.
Jan 14 2011, 8:40 am
In response to Android Data
The color scheme isn't bad, it just hurts my eyes to look at for awhile. I would much rather have forum post go with the light blue one and maybe a darker one. As well as trying to eliminate as much white as possible, more like the gray on the sides etc.
Jan 14 2011, 1:11 pm
I absolutely love the new layout and the color scheme.
As stated before, the blue on white can be a little harsh on the eyes but that's only a minor issue.
I think it's great and you guys really pulled through with this. It's somewhat reminiscent of one of the old website layouts.
Jan 14 2011, 7:16 pm
I think you're mistaken. The white background with black text is just abnormal because we're all so used to seeing darker colours 'round this part.

I don't know about you, but for me and for a long time, this was my most frequented website. So I became very used to looking at darker colours on websites, and when I did venture out and visit a brighter coloured site, it would strain my eyes for a while until I got used to it.

After a years worth of Facebook, I can honestly say that this colour scheme no longer hurts my eyes. And this is on a very bright 27inc LCD monitor.

If it gets too bad for you, you can just turn the brightness of your monitor down a little, you know.
Jan 14 2011, 7:58 pm
In response to Tiberath
Even bright websites tend to avoid using white as a background. Usually it's an off-white or light blue color.

Examples:
http://www.sinfest.net/phpbb2/
http://forums.xkcd.com/
http://forums.screwattack.com/

What I think it should look like:
http://files.byondhome.com/SuperAntx/forum.png
Jan 14 2011, 10:57 pm
Google (Including gmail, google docs, google calendar, and others)
Youtube
Wikipedia
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Slashdot
Amazon


All black text on white backgrounds.


Should I keep going? Because I can keep going. All I have to do is keep going through the list of Top Websites on Alexa.

At first I found it a little too bright, too. Then I dimmed the backlight on my laptop by one unit, and now I don't really have a problem.
Jan 15 2011, 2:16 am
In response to Airjoe
I shouldn't have to lower the brightness on my monitor to make a site bearable.

YouTube doesn't count considering you're there to watch videos, not look at text on a white background.
Wikipedia does have a bad design, I'll agree.
Facebook and Twitter are blog sites, they're all the same in all aspects, so...

Amazon you're doing it wrong if you're just staring.
The point being a FORUM should not have a white background. Or, if you are bent on having one, have a theme-changing option. All invisionfree forums and such offer that.
Jan 15 2011, 2:45 am
Squinting as I write this. I wholeheartedly agree. The layout is great, the white is painful. Off-white, or a very light shade of some other color(blue comes to mind, but I'm not trying to force the old color scheme again).
Jan 15 2011, 3:53 am
I too agree.

In theory, the previous colour scheme should work, as it is the complimentary colours of blue and orange. However, there was too much of each of the colours, and they were to bright, so they clashed.

With the slight bit of orange and white at the top, as it is now, and then with something like a pale blue, then the eye will be attracted to the top, where advertisements and featured games are shown. This is a good thing, because it draws players to the top, giving two things (for non-members at least): 1. More ad clicks = more money for BYOND (if BYOND gets paid for every click on an ad at least). 2. More advertisement for featured games, which will make getting a game featured a much more beneficial thing.

Then the user's eye will drop to the main area of the page, where the information is that they wish to view. Now, seeing as that part is the part that user's are going to view, you don't want to draw them away from the page by a colour that is so bright that it makes reading some of the information almost impossible, or painful on the eye. Instead, the pale blue, being a softer colour than the old blue, makes the black text easier to read, and more enjoyable to read.

You could even add in the BYOND logo as a watermark in the background if you wished too, like is done in the Membership Information page.

Compare the following pages, and tell me which you find easier to read, easier on the eye, and more appealing to look at:

http://www.byond.com/members/?command=membership_info
http://www.byond.com/developer/articles/start

It has to be the first one, right?
(Second was just a page that i found that had a decent amount of black text on white background.)

So, Tom, i am not criticising you. I may not fully understand how hard it is for you to deal with feedback all the time or to for you to satisfy everyone. But a website can falter due to an unappealing colour scheme. So I beg of you, for the sake of BYOND, and for the sake of the BYOND users' eyes, PLEASE change the colour scheme.

On a more colloquial note, lovin the new layout :D. I must say i aint a fan of tags, but hey ho. You own the website, and i can't ask the world of you, considering how much of this you have done for pretty much nothing. So tyvm :D
Jan 15 2011, 5:47 am
In response to Kumorii
You people who say this over-bright colour of scheme black text/white background is so wonderful, are just sucking up to the developers. You can't deny that if you were given the choice between a hard-on-the-eyes black text/white background and something a little darker and easier on the eyes, you would choose the darker colour scheme. No doubt.
Jan 15 2011, 6:30 am
In response to Nielz
As we're on day two and I'm still pretty content, I suspect otherwise. It may be worth noting I've been checking the development site for a few weeks now as well, so my exposure (and thus ability to form a solid opinion on preference) is more than most users.

My only gripe layout-wise is my own blog now looks rubbish, which I should correct.
Jan 15 2011, 6:35 am
In response to Stephen001
Correct the global colour scheme too, while you're on it. ;D

Actually... it would be in the very least acceptable if we could select custom colours for these four things:

-Text
-Background
-Visited links
-Unvisited links

I'm convinced this would make everyone happy. No doubt.
Jan 15 2011, 6:44 am
In response to Nielz
I think Tom probably has more important development priorities, such as the flash DreamSeeker client.
Jan 15 2011, 6:56 am
In response to Stephen001
I like if they Put the Old layout Back up until this layout is fixed its makeing it hard to find things on the site and it seems a bit off where they ads are placed and flash deamseeker tell me more
Jan 15 2011, 8:15 am
I do not care for the visual aesthetics of the site either, though I think it's a bit of a stretch to say "black on white is bad for the eyes." I remember when I used to complain about people using white on black, or green on black or other dark schemes, as it used to hurt my eyes. It's all about what you're used to.

The reason I don't care for it is that it doesn't look so much like a choice of website appearance as it does a lack of choice, as if nobody wanted to put more than a few minutes worth of artistic work into it. Byond now looks like it went to a free "website templates" web page and picked the most basic looking one it could find and did no modifications except to put its logo at the top.

That's my opinion, and do you know how much I care? Almost not at all, because there's more important stuff to worry about. It looks simple, but it doesn't look bad, and we're computer scientists here anyway, not painters. The update is released and the work is done, so be it... now let's please let them get back to the important part. Making the site look perfect and pleasing the maximum amount of users is a good thing, but when it gets in the way of actual development on the product it becomes a very, very, very bad thing.

It's been a decade now and all these silly bells and whistles have caused development to go at a snails' pace. People leave Byond for a year or two and come back to see things just about the same. That's bad.
Jan 15 2011, 8:47 pm
In response to Jotdaniel
Anything but white. Forums shouldn't be harmful on the eyes.
Jan 15 2011, 9:28 pm
In response to Moonlight Memento
Moonlight Memento wrote:
YouTube doesn't count considering you're there to watch videos, not look at text on a white background.

Right, no one leaves or reads comments.


Facebook and Twitter are blog sites, they're all the same in all aspects, so...

We're talking about form here, not function- it doesn't matter that they are "blog sites." Regardless of what they are, both contain lots of text in black on white backgrounds. Hundreds of millions of people use these sites every day.


Amazon you're doing it wrong if you're just staring.

Do you think the average Amazon product description and customer reviews are shorter than the average BYOND forum post? I don't.


The point being a FORUM should not have a white background.

The point is flawed. Your only "point" has been 'it hurts my eyes so change it and I shouldn't have to do anything even though I'm the one bothered.' Why should you have to lower the brightness on your monitor? Because you're the one complaining, that's why.

Jan 15 2011, 11:59 pm
In response to Airjoe
Right, no one leaves or reads comments.

Not for a long enough period for it to be relevant.



We're talking about form here, not function- it doesn't matter that they are "blog sites." Regardless of what they are, both contain lots of text in black on white backgrounds. Hundreds of millions of people use these sites every day.

No one who's at least half-sane thinks blog sites look in anyway appealing anyway. Besides, you're doing it wrong if you're using one that doesn't allow page customization.

Random fact time? (as the number of users was irrelevant...)
Over 117 million people suffer from allergies. This number is expected to rise to 130 million by 2030, increasing by roughly 1% per year.



Do you think the average Amazon product description and customer reviews are shorter than the average BYOND forum post? I don't.

The reviews are mostly balls, anyway.

"This guitar is TERRIBLE! The strap was flimsy..."
- How is this, in anyway, describing the PRODUCT? Let's just take away the fact that not many people use a strap, but that's one insignificant piece of the product. Or...

"This controller? Horrible, the box was in bad condition"
- The box is not the product. It has nothing to do with anything.

Most Amazon reviews are like this. A controller I love a lot has mostly negative reviews. Works just fine for me.



The point is flawed. Your only "point" has been 'it hurts my eyes so change it and I shouldn't have to do anything even though I'm the one bothered.' Why should you have to lower the brightness on your monitor? Because you're the one complaining, that's why.

More than just I are being bothered, unless I cloned myself or something. I shouldn't have to make everything on my PC look like garbage (it has a bad enough lighting issue) because of one site.
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