Forum themes: "Ganz großes Kino theme" - Old (ending Oct 2019)

[Tigersharke]

If you find something that needs improvement, adjustment. If you have some ideas please post them here.

The old thread for reference. How Ganz großes Kino looked for XenForo 1.x
- Red - Blue - Dark - Bright

The present dark theme for XenForo 2.x is pretty close to above. Future edit of this post when screenshot is made etc.

Ganz großes Kino is a figure of speech and expresses that someone put on a great show. It is also used to describe someone who magnificently
failed to accomplish some task. Ziemlich großes Kino is just a big cinema. – Hendrik Vogt

 

[Tigersharke]

I realize that some "indicators" seem backwards. New posts should be indicated in bold or brighter or stand out in a significant way. Posts that have been read or threads with no new posts should be dimmed and/or faded. Eventually I will adjust this. In making the initial post for this thread (which will be updated when time permits) I discovered other blue that I need to excise. Anyhow, I hope that others will make suggestions, especially for color combinations, and other fixes that would make this theme more usable.

Any new discussion such as for a separate theme you wish for me to create (substantially different from this one in layout and/or function, not simply colors) can be started here and I will shift it to its own sticky thread.

 

[Tigersharke]

I realize that some "indicators" seem backwards. New posts should be indicated in bold or brighter or stand out in a significant way. Posts that have been read or threads with no new posts should be dimmed and/or faded. Eventually I will adjust this. In making the initial post for this thread (which will be updated when time permits) I discovered other blue that I need to excise. Anyhow, I hope that others will make suggestions, especially for color combinations, and other fixes that would make this theme more usable.

Fixed. This has bugged me a while now, knowing how backward it was, although the two were distinguished it didn't seem right.

 

[Tigersharke]

Hmm.. Just coaxed some feedback out of someone about this theme:

the font colors need to be not black, you have the bg darkish gray and the fonts black ​

so it almost looks like when you wear polarized glasses so its hard to read and makes ​

me want to try different angles to read the post​

​

I do not struggle to read anything on the site with the text as is, or it would not be. However, if the above is the general feeling about it, I can start by adjusting the boldness of the text to see if that improves readability, and if not, I can make a variation that uses white text or something *shrugs*. Beyond this, I can also use some addon tools to check contrast and such algorithmically.

 

[cobrakiller58]

seems like a reasonable assessment they have made it certainly could be hard to read for some. The bold text in your quote is clearly easier for me to read.

 

[Tigersharke]

Ok. The forum theme defaulted to a low initial font-weight 400 which is rather low, specific areas were bolder (500) or bold or possibly 700. My theme inherited some of this as I did not change things that seemed okay to me. However, now the lowest is 600 which may be too high, and the highest is 900. It might be best if I were to try to get things consistent and only use 3 levels, maybe reduce some to 500 if that is readable. I will likely also separate out all font weight CSS to its own file, so it is easier to see together and combine things where possible (eventually).

Have these changes been in the right direction?

Definitely some stuff is too heavy, the bold is lost in these posts now. Count this as a partial, incomplete, somewhat temporary fix. I mostly did a find-replace and increased all weights. When I separate things out I will be better able to "see" what I am doing.

EDIT:
It turns out that font-weight 400 is 'normal' so had XenForo theme defaulted to 300 or less, then that would be "rather low".

 

[cobrakiller58]

bold in the post body looks fine but it is impossible to tell read post from unread posts now lol the previous setting was probably a better compromise in my opinion.

 

[Tigersharke]

View attachment 28469
bold in the post body looks fine but it is impossible to tell read post from unread posts now lol the previous setting was probably a better compromise in my opinion.

I plan to make better adjustments during my next days off work, starting possibly as early as 3am Sunday, aka 3 hours past Midnight tonight. There are a lot of things I dislike at the moment, the font-weight is the most glaring but I see other things that can look better such as the quoted text box.

 

[Tigersharke]

Hahaha.. plan. Well, managed to bork my system fairly well and it took me until about 4am this morning to get my gui back so I could use firefox. I still have some days off both sides of the coming Saturdays. However, the last time I accessed the site, I looked at it using the Tota11y addon which flags all sorts of stuff for contrast and other issues, so I know there is plenty to adjust.

 

[Tigersharke]

Working on contrast issues. The "header" links and sublinks lines are now lighter: was #646464 now #747474, and separated out the font weight in the testing theme so I can improve that. On testing, the minimum weight is lighter, something closer to normal, I think it is 500. This work may also help to revise selectors where some may have been less than ideal.

 

[Tigersharke]

Slow progress until my next days off, but fixed a few contrast issues that Tota11y pointed out. The font weights are still a bit weird, though I did separate them into the testing theme for adjustment. Before I get a better handle on the font weights, I need to understand what things are and their relationships to other parts of the forums. Tota11y will help me solve contrast concerns which may also eliminate the need for increased font weights,. However, since the weights were already modified, I will still need to get them into better shape (again).

 

[Tigersharke]

Contrast improvements continue. Font weight adjustments as I go, where necessary.

 

[Tigersharke]

Forum migration to the new URL is completed. Continuing my progress on contrast adjustments and font-weight changes as needed. Some of these adjustments have forced consistency that I have wanted to improve. Many buttons have a similar appearance. The read vs unread threads and nodes should be consistent and even include the subforum dropdown. There were some XenForo configurations that I saw which can be set different for this theme. Nothing drastic, many spacing and color settings I've done directly with CSS in my own templates but forced the XenForo configuration to use ALL blue for all things. The fun part about the configuration being so hideous is that a parsing error (flaw in my CSS template file) will invalidate it entirely, causing the solid blue effect.

There are some areas of the forum that Tota11y flags as insufficient contrast but remain readable due to complex CSS that the add-on does not interpret. One was the 'FreeNAS 11.2 Released' announcement banner thingy, and the other is the blue admin band/ribbon to the left of posts. The faded out "Write your reply..." temporary text in the editor is also going to remain as-is.

 

[cobrakiller58]

Is the unread threads one of those things because it is currently the only thing that is really noticeable to me personally, the planned migration testing thread I have not read but i can't tell that in this screen shot.

 

[Tigersharke]

View attachment 28796

Is the unread threads one of those things because it is currently the only thing that is really noticeable to me personally, the planned migration testing thread I have not read but i can't tell that in this screen shot.

It *shouldn't* be, I've tried to make a distinction of read versus unread, the same as on the 'forum' page, but if its not displaying properly when a series of thread titles is shown then I'll have to look more closely. Does it look differently for read vs unread for the New Style theme? I looked at 'inspect' for various thread titles in this forum but I cannot see any CSS selector that would indicate any difference. Only if it works for another theme could there be anything I have to change to make it work for this one, at the moment I suspect it is a flaw in the XenForo software (but IMHO a significant flaw if so).

EDIT:
Ok, I found how its distinguishing them, and its IMHO silly/stupid only because its a completely different way.. The href URL has an "/unread" suffix.

FIXED! There may be further improvement but the font weight is now different for read vs unread.

 

[cobrakiller58]

Yup that did the trick

 

[Tigersharke]

I think I finally have the quote and code boxes in a much more attractive (and readable) state.

 

[Tigersharke]

I have tried to make all series of rows appear in alternating light/dark with the unexpected additional change to posts in a thread.

Although the theme has always looked good as far as my own opinion, the contrast adjustments have surely made some areas more readable. There remain more things to fix, more things to make consistent, some blue to remove. I plan to make a theme very specifically WCAG compliant to the greatest degree XenForo will permit. The theme presently has a 'WCAG' suffix but as it may be a somewhat more extreme variation which would include changes beyond simple color or font weights, I will likely separate it to its own theme parent once it is significantly perfected. For some future forum changes I also plan to make noticeable template changes, however, the bulk of the planned forum changes are yet to be finalized or tested.

 

[cobrakiller58]

Amazingly I JUST noticed the IX community logo does not load on this theme.

 

[Tigersharke]

Amazingly I JUST noticed the IX community logo does not load on this theme.

Yes. I am aware of that but I have not understood why yet. I don't believe it was any change I made since before the new community logo and additions of TrueOS forums, the FreeNAS logo was visible there. Happily it is an aesthetic, the text is there, but I do hope to solve the issue.