Discourse redesign - what do you think?

Help & feedback
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New%20Theme
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To complement the redesign of our main site (http://therestartproject.org/), we’ve created a new look for Discourse, which we hope to launch on the 1st of August (this Wednesday).

It’s nearly ready, but we’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts before we make it the default theme. You can test it by changing your interface theme to Test theme (experimental) in your user settings:

Interface%20theme
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(note: you’ll need to manually refresh the page to reset the top banner)

Some specific questions we have:

  1. Is the new typeface readable enough? (we have some doubts about it at small sizes)
  2. Is the colour for linked text readable?
  3. We’ve tested it on a handful of devices with different resolutions. But does it look okay on all your devices (both mobile and desktop)?

What do you think?

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Hi @james, I really like the redesign - however I find that the new colour palette makes it a bit harder to read:

  • linked text (and titles of embedded posts)
  • number of unread posts in a thread (number circled)

I guess that yellow/orange colour doesn’t work very well with a white background - at least not for me :slight_smile:

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I find the typeface ASAP too small on the default settings, and have increased to 110%. Similar concerns with Ugo about the yellow as a colour for type. Hope we can find a solution because the rest looks good :sunny:

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It would be great to have a style where you don’t have any static stuff at the top that always needs to be scrolled away… or reduce or eliminate this from the main style.

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I’ve changed the colour of links in discussions to black & underlined and darkened various other linked elements throughout the theme - let me know if I’ve missed any!

I’ve increased the default typeface size to 15.75px (from 15px) - it’s now the equivalent size of the main site. If it’s still hard to read, I think we’ll have to ditch the new brand guidelines and find a different typeface.

I’ll add a secondary theme with no banner :wink:

Also worth noting, there will be a dark theme for our more nocturnal members.

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Thanks, that looks much more readable - I suggest you also change the colour of small bar showing your progress in reading the thread, as it’s virtually invisible. And also the title of the thread in the compose reply pop-up window

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Thanks Ugo! Good spots. Updated.

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The new theme is now the default. Thanks everyone for your help in getting it ready (@ugo in particular for spotting a number of difficult-to-read elements)!

@Panda, you can now select the ‘No banner’ theme to remove all static stuff at the top.

1 Like
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This makes such an improvement to usability. I didn’t expect it to reduce frustration so much! You should promote it to everyone. If you can set up a system where you send a message to users a few days after they joined or after a few hours of active use (maybe tied to this badge system - that would make it useful!), then that would be a good time to suggest to users they may want to switch to this no-banner theme.

2 Likes
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Glad you like it Panda, thanks for the suggestion!

I like that idea too - I’ve added that tip to the ‘basic’ badge people get after spending some time reading.