MyBB Community Forums

Quote:Or you can just leave Wink

Well what a nice response, judging from the size of the community and the # of active users I gather that is what most do.

Quote:I don't see your logic in this. The theme used is what you get when downloading/installing the software.....Why should it look any different from what you get in the package!

I am talking about themes available here on THIS site not what is packaged with the download. As for why you should offer a selection to your users here, well how about the fact that as far as usability and readability goes your community should be considered your *customer* so to speak, why would you not want to make their visits here as pleasant as possible by allowing them to customize their UI?

Quote:Again, I don't see your logic, how does this theme look busy/gamer type?

Fixed width with all content compressed in center of screen while valuable whitespace is wasted on the sides. Lines/grid (unfortunate side effect of table based layout) rather than whitespace to separate layout. Images for links where simple CSS would suffice, oversized images that are not scaled appropriately to the other system components. Too much variability in font size across elements for no apparent reason.

Quote:He's nagging how the theme is to ugly to be used as the default theme on MyBBoard.net

No I am saying why not offer alternative themes to be selected by the individual user depending on their needs to make the site readable and easier to use.

Quote:In the mean time I have only one solution (apart from Zomaian's Toungue), use another theme. Its not like you can't change the theme in MyBB.

I looked in the UserCP for alternative styles to select and found nothing else, are you saying that there are other styles available to select and use on this board?

Quote:Gamer type?? How is this anything like a gaming theme??

Again, the fixed narrow width with everything compressed into the center and of course the table based layout. Your default theme actually reminds me of ikonboard and that is going back about 10 years.

Quote:The default theme is far better than the default theme of some other forums,

Well that is a matter of opinion and I have to say I doubt your ability to be objective on the subject.

Quote:we're not going to add themes here as people will think they come pre included

Are your community members stupid? You must think so if that is your reason for not making alternate styles available on this board.

The bottom line is this, your theme is not very human friendly when it comes to usability and I am speaking as a professional in the field. I am not a *he*, I am a middle aged female software commercialization manager for a Fortune 500 company in NY. I would suggest you get an independent audit of your UI with respect to usability and accessibility and I think you will find it enlightening. That is of course if you accept that fact that your application actually has room for improvement, I am getting the feeling from the responses here that might not be the case. Pity.

The fact that people have asked if the newbars on the index come with MyBB suggests that if themes are available for people to use here, they'll think those come pre installed too, and when they see they're not, they'll ask why. This theme is from 2006, or earlier, and I can't think of any other people complaining about not having another theme to choose from here. If we made changes to the structure of the theme now, every theme for 1.4 would break, and I think you'll agree that's not really a wise thing to do. If you think the default theme is so bad though you're more than welcome to fork MyBB and release it with a better default theme. Of course we think there's room for improvement, why else would we be releasing updates, but overhauling the theme at this stage is going to cause far more problems than it would solve.

So the gist is you basically could care less for providing your users here with easier to use/read Themes. Gotcha.

Consider my suggestion retracted, I will take the first responders advice and just leave.

(2010-02-21, 02:34 PM)Suse Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:I don't see your logic in this. The theme used is what you get when downloading/installing the software.....Why should it look any different from what you get in the package!

I am talking about themes available here on THIS site not what is packaged with the download. As for why you should offer a selection to your users here, well how about the fact that as far as usability and readability goes your community should be considered your *customer* so to speak, why would you not want to make their visits here as pleasant as possible by allowing them to customize their UI?

We try to keep this forum as similar to the default release as possible. Using a theme other than the default, or even providing alternative themes, would give the impression that the themes come with the standard MyBB release, which they would not.

(2010-02-21, 02:34 PM)Suse Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Again, I don't see your logic, how does this theme look busy/gamer type?

Fixed width with all content compressed in center of screen while valuable whitespace is wasted on the sides. Lines/grid (unfortunate side effect of table based layout) rather than whitespace to separate layout. Images for links where simple CSS would suffice, oversized images that are not scaled appropriately to the other system components. Too much variability in font size across elements for no apparent reason.

Except for the fixed width, all of the issues you mentioned with this forum are also issues with the default theme. Fixing those issues requires a complete overhaul of the default theme, but that won't be happening until MyBB 2.0. Work on 2.0's theme has already begun, but only as prototypes.

(2010-02-21, 02:34 PM)Suse Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Gamer type?? How is this anything like a gaming theme??

Again, the fixed narrow width with everything compressed into the center and of course the table based layout. Your default theme actually reminds me of ikonboard and that is going back about 10 years.

The fixed width is a result of matching the forum theme here with the design of the rest of our website. We felt it would be more beneficial to connect the Community Forums with the rest of the website than it would be to keep the fluid default width on these forums.

(2010-02-21, 02:34 PM)Suse Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:we're not going to add themes here as people will think they come pre included

Are your community members stupid? You must think so if that is your reason for not making alternate styles available on this board.

If you look around, most forum softwares do not have additional themes on their forums. The only one that I know of that does is IP.Board, and most (if not all) of those themes are included as part of the download.

(2010-02-21, 02:34 PM)Suse Wrote: [ -> ]The bottom line is this, your theme is not very human friendly when it comes to usability and I am speaking as a professional in the field. I am not a *he*, I am a middle aged female software commercialization manager for a Fortune 500 company in NY. I would suggest you get an independent audit of your UI with respect to usability and accessibility and I think you will find it enlightening. That is of course if you accept that fact that your application actually has room for improvement, I am getting the feeling from the responses here that might not be the case. Pity.

To be fair, the current default theme dates back to 2005, with only a few cosmetic changes made in the meantime. This was done to maintain consistency between versions and make it easier to upgrade your forums between releases.

With MyBB 2.0, we will not be maintaining this consistency. While some elements in the UI will be similar, others will be quite different. As the lead designer, I'm evaluating every piece of the UI in order to create a consistent, clean, and easy to use experience. This will take a lot of work, and that's why I started several months ago - but there's still much work to be done.

Until then, you'll have to accept this forum for what it is, understanding that we, the team, believe there is much room for improvement. That's why we've been planning 2.0 and its interface for months - we want to make it the best that it can be.

Suse, feel free to relay your suggestions to me directly through private message; I'd be happy to hear your comments and suggestions and take them into consideration.

Justin

Yes, we could care less. We could care a lot less. People always get that expression wrong, what you mean to say is you think we couldn't care less, because that would be saying that we currently care as little as possible, saying we could care less says we currently do care.

http://community.mybboard.net/thread-547...#pid389414
http://www.incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html

So yes, you're quite right, we could care less.

Post on the phpBB, SMF, vB and IPB forums and tell them you think they should change their default theme around and see if they will.

Uhh... I think you guys misunderstood...

(2010-02-21, 02:34 PM)Suse Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:I don't see your logic in this. The theme used is what you get when downloading/installing the software.....Why should it look any different from what you get in the package!

I am talking about themes available here on THIS site not what is packaged with the download. As for why you should offer a selection to your users here, well how about the fact that as far as usability and readability goes your community should be considered your *customer* so to speak, why would you not want to make their visits here as pleasant as possible by allowing them to customize their UI?

Quote:He's nagging how the theme is to ugly to be used as the default theme on MyBBoard.net

No I am saying why not offer alternative themes to be selected by the individual user depending on their needs to make the site readable and easier to use.

She is just saying that the themes available for download here are all the same gamer type, etc~ or so I understood from what I've read.

I don't think so, that first bit you bolded means they're talking about themes that we offer to use on these forums that aren't necessarily going to be included with MyBB itself, only here, similar to the second bold bit, saying there should be alternatives to use here rather than just the default.

Getting a bit angry Matt ? Anyways I think we are all taking this topic to seriously it's just one person complaining. If it were multiple people (hundreds) I would get worried .

(2010-02-21, 06:08 PM)MattRogowski Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think so, that first bit you bolded means they're talking about themes that we offer to use on these forums that aren't necessarily going to be included with MyBB itself, only here, similar to the second bold bit, saying there should be alternatives to use here rather than just the default.

The second bit means that she thinks it would be better to offer alternatives than the normal ol' gamer types, nothing to do with the default.

(2010-02-21, 06:13 PM)Zomaian Wrote: [ -> ]Getting a bit angry Matt ?

Not intentionally.