[Closed] Ooh, looks pretty

There’s a thread for this up with the stickies.

But I must say, apart from the gubbins (as it shall be officially known henceforth) on the right, site looks very neat on the iPad.

I see a couple of sticky threads about the forum, but not about the site. Overall site refresh looks much different. Would be nice for predictive text to work though!

Agree with Jim

Would be nice for predictive text to work though!

There's an issue with Swiftkey I believe.

Oh, and, thanks.  I've passed on your comments.

There’s an issue with Swiftkey I believe.

Like the fact that Google keyboard is free, faster and works? Swipy swipe for the win...

Congrats STW towers. I like the new look, too and the fact I can zoom in on the pages as helped my failing eyesight no end! 👍

Cheers folks nice to hear some positive comments.

It does look very smooth and neat.

Yay, hoping the fact we're on to cosmetics means the database gremlins are mostly in the net.

I'd tweak those big st bottlecaps around the margin to be a bit more visible/opaque though, I've tried to wipe them off the screen thinking it was smudged. Maybe I need younger eyes.

Praise where it's due; I think it looks good - I like.

Yip, I like it too.

I did post up on the sticky thread, but I’ll repeat here, I’m very impressed with the way the forum looks now, my only criticism is the weight of the font, it’s really a bit too light, and the italic version in quotes is almost to thin and spindly to read properly, especially when it’s on the tinted background. I’m reading on a 10.5” iPad Pro, in portrait mode, and I’m struggling a bit, I really don’t want to have to wear glasses to read the forum because the typography is too light for an electronic display.
All that’s needed now are the buttons reinstated above the reply box.
Looks good, very clean and uncluttered, I like it.

Looks good to me, got a 9.7 iPad and looks fine. Seems faster.

Yeah, it's definitely speeding up a little. Phew!! 🙂

Definitely speeding up here too. I've yet to try to post a pic though.

2 thumbs fresh!!! After a bumpy road, it feels just right . Cheers guys.

Looks pretty, but needs darker text. It's close to unreadable on my laptop.

The font inside threads is just WRONG. Will someone please look at a long post (eg. CountZero's up there) and change the font to do something about the readability of it. I mean, I'm really not [i]that[/i] fussy, but when something is THAT BAD it needs to be changed.

Funny how it goes from a nice readable Arial style while you're typing to some wide, gothic, unreadable light grey garbage after you've posted!

Chrome/ Windows /PC monitor

Looks much better, good work all!

Looks great, much faster and great on a a mobile

Thanks guys.

>The font inside threads is just WRONG

This, looks like a font from a book for 3 year olds.

Also the colour scheme seems completely washed out on Safari on my MBP, quite hard to read.

Font contrast has been increased now. Hopefully a bit clearer.

Dezb, can you send me a screenshot of what you are seeing as it all looks fine here. I'm wondering that the stylesheet may need a refresh in your browser. Have you tried CTRL F5 (on PC)

The kids book font works for me as that is the height of my literary experience in the last ten years!

fix the search and the history in profiles and it’s a massive improvement

It is faaaast this morning for me as well as pretty.

Thanks STW_workers.

Agreed; well done. Looks lovely (part from the gubbins) and speed is good. I haven't really tried / have been put off of attempting anything complicated yet, though. I like the colour scheme and font - Century Gothic is really easy to read and stylish.

>Font contrast has been increased now. Hopefully a bit clearer.

Cool, will check it out when I get home..

 fix the search and the history in profiles and it’s a massive improvement

Do you mean the checking threads that you've replied to?

That works now - go to Profile, click on Forums, select Replies Created and click on the '#' next to the posted date and hey presto, there is the thread, and these days it even takes you to that comment rather than the start of the thread.

I’m wondering that the stylesheet may need a refresh in your browser. Have you tried CTRL F5 (on PC)

No, it's the same in IE, when I'm not logged in as it is in Chrome after a refresh. Looks like Verdana 12 pt or something.

This should come out actual size:

Contrast that with the nice font you have while typing:

Oh, that's bloody weird - the images shrink on the iPhone display, so you don't see that the font is big and shitty! I give up

That's the right font. Montserrat although the line spacing looks odd. Too cramped on your screen. We've opened that up already. CSS changes can take a while to come through depending on browsers and caching.

But the font size is right at 16pt text. Any less and Google penalises a site's SEO rankings. The text size in the post window is actually too small and we'll add that to the list of things to fix.

Thought it looked awful on my laptop, fonts were all blurry and messed up, checked my display settings and bumped up the font size to the recommended 200% (my screen is 2560x1440) from 175% and all is right  with the world again.  Looks nice, I like the font not sure if the blue-ish colour adds anything.  However now I have too large native fonts on my speadsheets et al.

Loving the irony of this

(IE11)

The font is the right size? Well why don't other forums use massive ugly unweildy 16pt fonts then?? Jeez, what a mess.

As I've said, I'm no UI expert but even with DeZb's line spacing problems it doesn't seem quite right. Helvetica might be better (given the aim here is to be readable rather than to look fancy)?

The original:

[img] [/img]

Helvetica:

[img] [/img]

I can try other fonts if there are any better suggestions as actually Helvetica seems to be even more cramped (I tried Arial already and not convinced). If anybody can tell me what the font is in the edit box as I CBA searching to find it (I didn't find Montserrat in the styles when I looked!)

edit: fixed image resizing

I thought this thread was about the non-forum parts of the site.

No point in another thread being about the forum 🙂

For what it's worth - I'm not much of a fan of the font (too large x-height), but the line-height on the main site makes it much more readable.
Nice to be able to use the html tags in the page comments though - blockquote worked very well for me yesterday.

Aracer, we are aware of fonts.

This one is the one we have chosen. We like it.

This one is the one we have chosen. We like it.

Awesome. You use your forum then. Saves me a few quid on subscriptions.

Great stuff, well done guys.

Now, where's all the suicidal 'I'm giving up my P' diva's?....

Dezb,

Sorry we disagree on fonts but your screen grabs don't look like anything we are seeing in any of our browsers. Have you CTRL F5?

The font is the right size? Well why don’t other forums use massive ugly unweildy 16pt fonts then?? Jeez, what a mess.

They do (if they're modern). It's largely accepted that 16px is the default font size in these responsive days.
See any article on Medium.com for a highly regarded example of web typography.

Note that they have nice line-height though 🙂

The problem is a little bit deeper than picking a correct size.

See this:

Medium have put a lot of working into selecting the correct type of font for dense, long form bouts of reading - if you see, their font families are all SERIF fonts.

There is argument that you don't need a serif font for a Forum - after all, the BBC uses Helvetica on their site at 16px. However, for what ever reason the BBC's Helvetica renders a lot smaller than STW's Montserrat and it seems more legible (and a touch more mature) to boot.

I don't know if the site is rendering the font wrong, or if Monsterrat is a badly built font.

Font looks OK, but size is a bit large!

or if Monsterrat is a badly built font.

Not all fonts are intended for long form reading. I'm not sure if that makes it badly built. The menu and breadcrumbs look ok to me.

Dezb,

Sorry we disagree on fonts but your screen grabs don’t look like anything we are seeing in any of our browsers. Have you CTRL F5?

You make out like it's just me...

[i]Mark wrote:[/i]

Aracer, we are aware of fonts.

In the same way you know all about software development and testing? 😉

Though I would expect nothing less of you than knowing that you're right.

[i]plyphon wrote:[/i]

However, for what ever reason the BBC’s Helvetica renders a lot smaller than STW’s Montserrat and it seems more legible (and a touch more mature) to boot.
I don’t know if the site is rendering the font wrong, or if Monsterrat is a badly built font.

See my screenshots above - to me at least Helvetica is more readable than Montserrat even without changing any of the other attributes.

edit: though thanks for the Medium font info - Georgia and Cambria both work as standard fonts and I'm currently viewing the forum in Georgia, which may be preferable to Helvetica (when I have time to play tonight I'll implement random font selection from a set of possibles to see which one feels best 🙂 )

On my pad it looks great now, perfectly readable in portrait full-screen, which it natively opens at.
The font looks good too, I’ve always liked Helvetica, although for book text serif fonts are better, I doubt if anyone is going to write a fifty-page diatribe!
Although you never know...
Now all we need are the buttons back to avoid having to repeatedly tapping in square brackets, back-slashes and bits of text just to post a quote, a photo or make text bold, italic... 😬

What’s wrong with the font ???

I think it looks great.

I agree - on iPad it looks ace....

Something odd about Safari on my MBP, looks so much more washed out than Firefox on my work PC. It's a little less washed out than before, but still looks very odd.

Looks good on the phone and it’s growing on me on the desktop. And that’s a 27in desktop so it being a bit larger is no issue for me at all. Also I now know what a Serif font is and there’s a shortcut in Safari for 😎👍

Every day’s a school day. Good effort fellas.