noglider 

I'm not a user interface design expert, but I know a bad layout when I see one. The colors and the font are hard to read, and I strongly urge you to change them. The font might be fine once you change the yellow background color. I urge you to consider this strongly. I don't consider this a small inconvenience because there are many users of the forum. Eye strain can be subtle enough that a person stops reading earlier than they would. Some will give up, and it won't be directly attributable to the colors etc., but I'm sure it is happening anyway. I can't read the forum for the same amount of time that I was previously able to.

Take some lessons from current best practices. Look at well established, popular web sites. This will be worthwhile. Taking your own guesses from your own impressions isn't good practice. See what others have done.

CliffordK

I actually like the black text on the current version better than the blue & grey text on the previous version. I had some issues with the low contrast text. And while I miss the old photo manager, it had an issue with white navigation buttons on on a light blue background which were almost impossible to see.

As far as the background color, what is the true intended color? On my laptop, if I look at a window directly, it seems to have a pinkish hue, whereas if I tilt the screen, I see the yellow hue. Neither is particularly offensive to me. As far as functionality, I think black on white may have the highest functionality, although a little color is aesthetically pleasing.

It doesn't make much difference to me (other than the white on light blue).

joeyduck

Thanks admin for getting the notifications fixed!

Rollfast

I'm glad they work for you, now I found the settings and shut mine off. They were off by choice before.


I still can't see where the yellow thing came from...perhaps that is the good part about remaining on Windows 7 and IE 11. No real surprises.

Rollfast

PS To everyone complaining about font size: 2 points or whatever is default for vBulletin through 4, have never seen 5. You can increase the size (magnify) by using your browser's controls (you may have to enable this in Windows/IE) and sure it's a pain but a couple bumps up and you are fine...

@noglider This platform was originally designed in the 1990s. vB3 was introduced in the early 2000s. Nearly all versions of 3 through 5 have a recently found security hole or two that is supposed to be patched. Internet Brands did not create vBulletin, it was bought by them several years ago when they were expanding their business and I guess decided they should have a proprietary platform for their comments (IB also owns Cars.com, among a few dozen other properties, with both web and print formats).


Maybe if we would all search for the Wiki on vBulletin Solutions and just use a search engine for a brief few minutes it all would become apparent. I can't type it over and over, and I'm not going to live forever either (and that thought makes me miss Tom a lot more than any grief over my personal mortality).


Google copiously, and 3 works better than 4 in my browser, I do indeed have about 20 years of internet use on my own accounts and first used it in 1995.


Maybe this is why I turned down Tom's request to become a moderator...sigh.

PatrickGSR94

Holding down Ctrl while moving the mouse middle wheel also makes web content larger or smaller.

noglider 

I'm fine with the font size now that you've increased it, and thank you for that. I'm referring to the font face, and maybe it's not really a problem. Maybe it's just the yellow background. The choice of background color has nothing to do with the software or its history, does it? In other words, we're not stuck with yellow, are we?

I'm familiar with vbulletin. I installed it at work a few years ago. There are also other forum apps available, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

PatrickGSR94

To me, the font looks the same as it's always been.

joeyduck

The font seems fine to me also.

It is the yellow background I don't care for. It wasn't yellow on my laptop with Windows 10, but it is still yellow on my Win 7 and Android.

IBxAnders

Should the background be blue or grey gradient instead of yellow?

PatrickGSR94

Didn't each post used to alternate between a light grey and white background? Or was that another forum? It was pretty subtle but made each post stand out on its own quite well.

PatrickGSR94

And I'm not saying this site should be a copy of another site, but Honda-Tech's color scheme (another IB site) is pretty easy on the eyes. It uses subtle flat color shades for each area, instead of actual lines like we're using here, and no gradients.

IBxAnders

Not really - it was just white (no background). The problem with fixing the yellow is how subjective the feedback has been - ie. some want this color, some that, some don't care and others want none. I am just worried about flip flopping because there is no definitive solution.

PatrickGSR94

Maybe 2 or 3 different styles to give people a choice? There is that "Style Chooser" thing at the bottom left.

himespau 

I liked it when the style choose allowed you to choose whether you wanted the default white background or the yellow bikeforms style. Was that more computationally expensive?

IBxAnders

We don't use multiple styles because tech and business will forget that there are multiple skins installed and we'll end up having issues where some styles are totally forgotten and features not added, broken ads and etc. So, we normally maintain 1 Desktop and 1 Mobile for that reason. I can try shifting towards just grey gradient and see what the feedback is like - what do you think?

Scooper

FWIW, the color is more "peach" than yellow on my display, and I sorta like it. It would never have occurred to me that it's pee colored without someone calling it that.

3alarmer

.
...after about a week of seeming improvement, the site is now back to about where it was in terms of lockups and shockwave crashes in the four or five different forums I regularly visit. I still think it's related to the video advertising.

The only practical workaround I've found is to let a page load and then quickly stop the rest of the loading that seems to go on sometimes for a looooong time. FWIW, I'm using a Windows 7 home version machine....with an abundance of processing power, and the latest version of Chrome as my browser. This generally happens only on this site, and I do visit plenty of others.

eschlwc

a few will complain about color no matter what it is.
.

jimmuller 

Peach or whatever people want to call it is not a good framing color for ride pics wishing to highlight a blue sky. YMMV.

Jadesfire 

+1 to all of this. I'm using an almost brand new Windows 10 Pro at home an Windows 7 at work (of course, only on my lunch break ). I started seeing shockwave crashes at work today, and the site has been very slow to load on my home computer for the past two days. More updates or changes going on that would affect it, perhaps? But there is a LOT of video advertising as well.

noglider 

Asking which color to use is not a good approach. Learn from the experts. Become an expert. Stabbing here and here will get injured results.

himespau 

I have to say, getting premium membership did the most of anything to improve the loading of this site for me (not why I did it, I had some stuff to sell, but no ads is one of the reasons I keep the membership).

JBHoren

Ref: Living Car Free

"Zombie" threads have suddenly begun appearing in LCF. Specifically, 26" Slicks and Converting Mountain Bike to Hybrid. I've never noticed this happening before, so I assume it's related to the recent software upgrade. Observe and Report...

jimmuller 

While we are on the subject of User Interface issues, why is the UserCP link on the far left of the page??? Just about every other link one uses (or at least that I use) for everything except browsing the threads of a forum is on the right. Log in, top of page, quote, next or other page, edit, last entry in thread, show all subscribed threads, log out, scroll bar for the current page, etc., all are on the right. But checking for new entries on one's subscribed threads just before logging out requires moving the cursor back to the left. It's a minor detail but an inconvenience nevertheless that could have been done differently. On the previous pages "Settings" was on the right. Why can't UserCP be there???