Forum Feedback

Ronyn

Commander
Staff member
Community Manager
Director of Marketing and Community
Jul 26, 2016
723
2,704
93
#1
Greetings Reapers,

Welcome to version 2.0 of the Em-8ER and Crixa forums.
Do you like the new look? Happy with the new pictures? Have concerns about any part of it? Let us know right here in this thread.

Ronyn
 

DinsdaleP13

NEW - SHIFTER
Jul 26, 2016
458
542
93
121
Arizona, U.S.A.
#2
It's hard to tell when a new reply is posted on a topic. The pinned topics look like what I think new replies should be. I don't think we need both the pinned icon on the right, and the red bar on the left. If possible, could we have that red bar moved to threads with unread replies?

Also, I like to preview posts before posting them. If possible, could you guys make it easier to differentiate from the preview, and where you're writing your post?
 

EvilKitten

Well-Known Member
Ark Liege
Jul 26, 2016
777
1,557
93
#3
Admiring the new forums, had a couple observations here...

1. It is no longer obvious when a topic has an unread post or not.
2. The graphic backdrops in the front page make the text a little hard to read, can the graphics be desaturated or something to make the text pop out a bit more?
3. Concerning the above, has this been looked at by someone who is colorblind, for same above reasons.
 

Pandagnome

Kaiju Slayer
Fart Siege
Welcome Wagon
Happy Kaiju
Jul 27, 2016
7,724
10,078
113
Island of Tofu
#5
What i like:
1) The share icons are clear very nice
2) Em8er poster header is beautiful this stood out straight away
3) I like the Er what smiley o_O


what can be improved:
1) Font colour/background could change or an option to change?
2) The words/icons are smaller would be nicer if it was a bit more larger, but can easily change size with control and mouse wheel hmm
3) Titles could be in bold to stand

Overall good job so far :cool:
 
Jul 29, 2016
4
7
3
#7
It looks like it was designed to be shiny first, and usable maybe 3rd or 4th. It's VERY pretty, but:
- the front page fails WCAG miserably;
- contrast in some sections is horrible;
- moving image backgrounds make it harder to read text;
- no obvious option to change back to a list layout;

This is all from the front page btw.

Examples:
CAPTURE.PNG Contrast fail

CAPTURE.PNG an example of WCAG failure, 9 errors isn't so bad and hopefully easy to fix, but those contrast failures :(
(contrast is part of WCAG, but it's so egregious I had to list it twice, sorry)

Here is a list of WCAG checkers you can use: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
The usual advise is to pick one, and standardise your team on it as they're all subtly different.
 

Nakiato

Well-Known Member
Jul 26, 2016
95
261
53
#8
It looks like it was designed to be shiny first, and usable maybe 3rd or 4th. It's VERY pretty, but:
- the front page fails WCAG miserably;
- contrast in some sections is horrible;
- moving image backgrounds make it harder to read text;
- no obvious option to change back to a list layout;

This is all from the front page btw.

Examples:
View attachment 1486 Contrast fail

View attachment 1487 an example of WCAG failure, 9 errors isn't so bad and hopefully easy to fix, but those contrast failures :(
(contrast is part of WCAG, but it's so egregious I had to list it twice, sorry)

Here is a list of WCAG checkers you can use: https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
The usual advise is to pick one, and standardise your team on it as they're all subtly different.
Awesome write up, it's really appreciated.
 

Faeryl

Omni Ace
Staff member
Community Manager
Kaiju Slayer
Jul 26, 2016
901
2,604
93
Planet Earth, USA, East Coast
discord.gg
#10
As I said earlier, the forums overall new look is AWESOMESAUCE!

WHAT CHANGES I LIKE:
- All of the art displayed on the front page.
- The overall feel and clean look of the forums.
- The layout and placement of text boxes; and cell padding.

WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT:
- Any BOLDED text does not show up, at least for me, at all in my posts; though underline and italics are working.
- The color themes. As I mentioned in Discord to Grummz, if it's possible, to give users a choice between using a default, a dark, a light, and 1 or 2 other theme colors.
- The blueish theme color that was pulled from the art is not dark enough behind the white text here. I think flipping the two colors (dark blueish and light blueish - keeping the white font), would work better, as @Wyntyr mentioned in the other thread.
- Am I missing the tag that tells you which threads are new, or does it not exist currently?


That's all for now, keep the momentum going TEAM EM-8ER!

8 FOR EM-8ER :cool::cool::cool:
 
Jul 28, 2016
98
87
18
spiralofhope.com
#11
Regarding the front page: https://forums.em8er.com/

The "art and design updates" was abysmally slow to begin animating properly.

The color selection makes text hard to see.

- Background images makes text hard to see.
- DIscord chat, on the right, has bright blue links. These are hard to read on an already-blue background.
- Dark blue text, like the Can't find a topic? on the right are also hard to read.
- In the forums, white text on a bright blue background is also hard to read. I'll go looking for another forum color scheme.
[edit] I couldn't find anything.
 

Terricon4

Base Commander
Base Commander
#12
Well, my biggest issue is the color. Vastly prefered the darker color with that shifting pictures in the background (those were nice, and didn't get in the way much, especially on the main forums page they were nice, new one is rather... empty). Current thing is bright and besides being far less readable, and irritating to the eyes if I look at it awhile, is purely from an aesthetic perspective rather bad and I doubt I'll be randomly reading or posting in the off topics here with it being like this.

Next, with a similar issue on readability, the front page is just kinda... bad. It's hard to tell what the different categories for the forums are with those pictures behind them and that weird layout. It's just hard to read the titles, not to mention I can foresee some very weird stuff showing up on the front page when people make certain types of posts (the types mostly found in off topic in particular). If you want the pics, ok, but at least make it so the text is clear and readable. And preferably shrink it down a bit, and the end of the day usability wise it just means I have to annoying scroll in order to see the different stuff more than I would with the older simpler setup, so unless you can make it visually polished enough to really feel good and engaging, I don't think it's worth it (and it's definitely not there at the moment in my opinion).

The "Home" and the "Forum" buttons both go to the same page. It's quite odd that "Home" doesn't go to the homepage, and that you have that separate "website" tab for that. It's just an extra spammy button at this point.

Edit: And as a functionality bug, if you make a post you can't click on the drop down arrow bellow a persons name/pic/title, until you refresh the page.
 
Likes: spiralofhope

Maven

Kaiju Slayer
Max Kahuna
Philanthropist
Jul 26, 2016
262
1,197
93
#14
Might need to merge threads. Right now there's two different posts (the original forum update post and this one) on which feedback is being provided regarding the forums. There's no obvious indicator where you are supposed to go to provide feedback.

Of course it's possible to monitor both threads. Suggested a merge for ease of reference and use.

Or perhaps make it so that the original thread with an announcement be locked after the first post and a separate feedback thread be set up where all the critique may be collated. Or perhaps set up a 'Hot Topics' section which puts the spotlight on relevant threads that you need the community to respond to.

Nonetheless, I'll repeat the same feedback I gave earlier on the main thread:

Nice work on the re-design.

A few notes:

1. The color scheme could use a bit of work, it's a bit too monotonous.
2. The text portion of the forum page could do with having the darker shade for sake of clarity.
3. There are two buttons - SIGN UP and Register - which do the exact same thing. Redundancy. Unless they have another purpose that's not immediately obvious.
4. The color of lettering right below the forum post header makes it extremely difficult to read due to the color scheme. The same applies to the Member info drop down.

Snap.JPG

5. There's a problem on the mobile version (android) where a reply to a post with video inset causes the video thumbnail to spill over outside the quote box into the reply text section. Screenshots attached.

Screenshot_20180410-094039.png Screenshot_20180410-094113.png
 
Likes: lOrD gHoSt

EvilKitten

Well-Known Member
Ark Liege
Jul 26, 2016
777
1,557
93
#16
Looks like the design is still being tweaked, just wanted to mention that with the current scheme as it is this moment (1216 PST) the dropdowns under the filter menu (as an example, assumed elsewhere as well) are acting very strangely. When first used it's very light colored background with almost the same color text. If I click on another window while the dropdown is open and then click back, suddenly just that specific dropdown turns a dark color. Any other dropdown stays the light color until I do the same action. If I refresh the page they all go back to pale greyish text on pale blue background.

(Should comment that I am really digging the new color scheme updates so far)
 

Grummz

$6k package
Community Manager
Ember Dev
Jul 25, 2016
808
6,719
93
#17
Looks like the design is still being tweaked, just wanted to mention that with the current scheme as it is this moment (1216 PST) the dropdowns under the filter menu (as an example, assumed elsewhere as well) are acting very strangely. When first used it's very light colored background with almost the same color text. If I click on another window while the dropdown is open and then click back, suddenly just that specific dropdown turns a dark color. Any other dropdown stays the light color until I do the same action. If I refresh the page they all go back to pale greyish text on pale blue background.

(Should comment that I am really digging the new color scheme updates so far)
I was making changes live. You probably got caught up in that. Forums colors have been tweaked now.
 

EvilKitten

Well-Known Member
Ark Liege
Jul 26, 2016
777
1,557
93
#19
I was making changes live. You probably got caught up in that. Forums colors have been tweaked now.
I just went and looked again, the text is a bit more obvious but it still does the strange color thing. Unfortunately since I can't keep the dropdowns...er dropped i can't screenshot what is going on :(
 

DinsdaleP13

NEW - SHIFTER
Jul 26, 2016
458
542
93
121
Arizona, U.S.A.
#20
I just went and looked again, the text is a bit more obvious but it still does the strange color thing. Unfortunately since I can't keep the dropdowns...er dropped i can't screenshot what is going on :(
Sounds like a personal issue. Works fine for me. Try clearing (not eating) your cookies?
1523407417176.png

What does suck though is that I can't keep the wide format. Every time I go to another page on the forums, it shrinks back down. It's annoying. Is there anyway we can set it to stay wide?