Skin Critique

[Danie]

caninenight.proboards.com/index.cgi

How did I do?

[Troxy]

You should probably post this in the "Get Opinions About Your Board" forum. You can see it on the main page. Otherwise, this is just advertising and it'll have your thread deleted or moved to the right board anyway.

[Danie]

Jul 17, 2010 18:36:39 GMT -8 Troxy said:

You should probably post this in the "Get Opinions About Your Board" forum. You can see it on the main page. Otherwise, this is just advertising and it'll have your thread deleted or moved to the right board anyway.

No that board is for going over the whole forum read the sticky thread in that board. for a basic skin critique you're supposed to post in here.

[Troxy]

Why not get a whole board critique instead? -trying to cover up shame for being wrong with a super duper question-

Lulz, anyway, so answer your question, I really like it, but with the cat font being so big plus the catbg being the same as the windowbg, that bit just looks a bit odd D: I'd make the font a bit smaller, and the catbg a different color than the boards.

[Danie]

Jul 17, 2010 18:43:39 GMT -8 Troxy said:

Why not get a whole board critique instead? -trying to cover up shame for being wrong with a super duper question-

Lulz, anyway, so answer your question, I really like it, but with the cat font being so big plus the catbg being the same as the windowbg, that bit just looks a bit odd D: I'd make the font a bit smaller, and the catbg a different color than the boards.

lol because my site isn't finished yet. and i just want to know about the skin.

oh and do you know how to change the title bg? i took off the forum name|topic|posts so that title is gone and thats the only title bg you can change.

[Anselm]

Jul 17, 2010 18:36:39 GMT -8 Troxy said:

You should probably post this in the "Get Opinions About Your Board" forum. You can see it on the main page. Otherwise, this is just advertising and it'll have your thread deleted or moved to the right board anyway.

Please don't mini-mod. The report to mod feature is there for if you think a post breaks the rules - and in this case there is no rule break.

[Tumbleweed]

Jul 17, 2010 18:29:11 GMT -8 Danie said:

caninenight.proboards.com/index.cgi

How did I do?

I think you did fine. I do think it looks pretty much like all the other role-play forums which is maybe what you want.

I do like that you used dark cyans for the over-all forum colors but I'm not a fan of the lighter cyan as the accent color (text/graphics). It is a little hard on the eyes.

Also the hierarchy of your text is way off, which also seems to be the trend with roleplay and I don't know why. Your banner name should always be the most noticeable and it isn't. You can hardly read it and I really had to look carefully to read what was on the bottom of your banner.

Then you have your side table graphics text that is just as big and more noticeable than the name of your site (because it is against a dark background). It's fine if you want the eye drawn to the side tables first (before the categories/boards/name of your site) by having the text larger (more noticeable) but the difference in size is huge compared to the boards/cats....which is saying the boards are not important at all.

Using paw-prints for the on/off icons is cute but was very over-used for a long time so I'm not a fan of them but they work with your site genre.

Truth be told, role-play forum designers don't seem to care about the things I mentioned and you designed a pretty forum that will hold up in the role-play community. I can tell you worked very hard on your site so don't let my critique make you feel bad. I'm sure your members will love it.

[Danie]

Jul 19, 2010 1:13:30 GMT -8 Tumbleweed said:

Jul 17, 2010 18:29:11 GMT -8 Danie said:

caninenight.proboards.com/index.cgi

How did I do?

I think you did fine. I do think it looks pretty much like all the other role-play forums which is maybe what you want.

I do like that you used dark cyans for the over-all forum colors but I'm not a fan of the lighter cyan as the accent color (text/graphics). It is a little hard on the eyes.

Also the hierarchy of your text is way off, which also seems to be the trend with roleplay and I don't know why. Your banner name should always be the most noticeable and it isn't. You can hardly read it and I really had to look carefully to read what was on the bottom of your banner.

Then you have your side table graphics text that is just as big and more noticeable than the name of your site (because it is against a dark background). It's fine if you want the eye drawn to the side tables first (before the categories/boards/name of your site) by having the text larger (more noticeable) but the difference in size is huge compared to the boards/cats....which is saying the boards are not important at all.

Using paw-prints for the on/off icons is cute but was very over-used for a long time so I'm not a fan of them but they work with your site genre.

Truth be told, role-play forum designers don't seem to care about the things I mentioned and you designed a pretty forum that will hold up in the role-play community. I can tell you worked very hard on your site so don't let my critique make you feel bad. I'm sure your members will love it.

no i appreciate your opinion I also think the title didn't stand out very much and had second doubts about that text but chose it because i only had that one at the time that worked. Time to go back to dafont I guess also what do you mean by the lighter cyan for the text or graphics? darker wouldn't be readable. And the on and off icons i had question marks for new posts and exclamation points for old posts but it looked off to me so i changed it.

[Tumbleweed]

Could you just use a very subtle but a smidgen darker outline on that text on your banner? I doesn't need much to make it stand out a bit more.

Last night when I did the critique my eyes were already tired so my judgment may not have been as good as I'd like. Looking at your site today, you main text isn't as bad as it seemed last night.

Still, text is bad when you can see vibration. If you don't know what I mean take a look at these examples. (Since it is a graphic the render may not be as accurate as on your site.)




In example 1: I used your current background color and # 3 is your text color. Number 1 is pure white. Number 2 is pushed toward cyan and lighter than your text color (#3). Number 4, 5 & 6, sequentially, get darker than your color #3. Number 7 is pure back and would be a fairly good choice on this background.

I don't know if you can see this but #1, white, vibrates a lot as does number 2. Three is still vibrating or another way to put it is it is looking pixely. When you look at #4 and #5 the vibration is much better with #5 being the best. Number 6 we are getting to close to your background color so reading it is getting hard.

Since you have a graphics program I assume you have a color picker similar to example 2.

On example 2: "X" marks where your background color is located on the color picker. If you look at the numbers in example 2, they representing the text colors in example 1. The ones with the least vibration and still readable are #4 and #5 but now those colors have gone from bright cyan to gray-cyan, which maybe not what you want.

To get that more cyan look you can simple go across the color picker area directly above your background color. So obviously, when you go to pick a text color in the same color range as your background your best bet is just to pick a color in the same tone but a lighter density. In the examples those are numbers 8 & 9.

I hope that helps and looking at my graphics posted, the render is definatlely not as clear as it would be had I done this in HTML.

[Danie]

So i should choice a darker color right?

[dude]

Jul 19, 2010 23:01:39 GMT -8 Danie said:

So i should choice a darker color right?

No you should choose a colour that is both aesthetically pleasant and easy to read. The jagginess of the edges will merely be a result of the contrast between the 2 colours i.e. how easy it is to read. You can't a choose a colour that will give you both. That diagram is also quite a poor representation as its using photoshop's anti-aliasing rather than what you'd expect from a browser which is usually entirely different if you're on windows.

[Danie]

your confusing me with your big words!

[dude]

Jul 20, 2010 3:06:57 GMT -8 Danie said:

your confusing me with your big words!

Basically, you can't have a font colour which is both easy to read and free from the jaggy edges described so just go with whatever you think looks nice and is readable.

[Tumbleweed]

I disagree with the previous poster but whatever. Eye fatigue is important and having too much of a contrast, with some color combos, can cause problems. Black text on white doesn't have that vibration or ragged edges. White on black is horrible.

I put some examples up on my test site. If you look at samples 1, 3 & 4 notice how they almost stand out from the page? That is what cause eye fatigue. Especially #3.

Number two appears to meld into the background. It isn't "in your face" so to speak as much as the others.

The two darker colors are best of all but when you want a certain color, like a cyan for the aesthetic reasons you just have to try to find the best one.

I want to repeat what I said before. After looking at your site the color wasn't as bad as it seemed when my eyes were tired the night...well... early morning before.

Ultimately, it is up to you and what you like. I don't want to cause a debate here or anything. You have a pretty site and I think you did pretty nicely with much of it.

[The Dark Knight]

I'm not a fan of side bars, especially when they take up 1/3rd of the page size. Otherwise I think it's a pleasant forum, nice colors and nice rollovers, although you should try changing the Category font and size a little.