As we grow (technical issues aside) and get more posts, and more members who frequent a select-few forums, I'm experimenting with a way to visually distinguish the forums with a color-scheme.

At first, you may not completely "grok", but as you begin to associate cretain colors with the fora, it may make sense.

Or... everyone will hate it and we'll go back to gray.

Sorry William,

I posted a thread before reading this. My sentiments are expressed there. I was asking about the logic of the color selections matching Forum types, but that is trivial compared with how my eyes hurt.

Please lock the other thread.

I love it, it looks great! It's just subtle enough. Great work.

Guess I have to get a color monitor now
Seriously, it looks great! Certainly worth your efforts.

Experiment #2:

The grey in Column 1 is too dark.

I think just make the colors more subtle and bring a logical connection with the Forums.

I'm no color consultant, but I wouldn't sacrifice legibility for referencing.

Maybe just color the Column where the Forum itself is identified????????

Experiment #3

Or what you just did, namely coloring the first column... that looks effective... but I still think the color codes might be difficult to shift from the sensory register to the short term memory, unles they are inherently logical.

William, it looks great. Nice choice of colors. Maybe add some of them colors in the posting area. It's all gray in here.

They break down the common greys.

[Edited on 22-9-2003 by smirkley]

yeah its better i think, a nice bit of colour.

Masked,

Didnt we have a some form of conversation about neon colors yesterday..

And now 'they' are all over the place..



Makes me wonder..

Fulcrum

Neon lights...

Yes, interesting - in this case I think it's entirely necessary because the number of new Topics generated per day meant we had to have the pagination and referencing of that broken up a completely different way.

I think William will sensibly stop short of color coding the background of every post.

Yes, the priority appears to be moving well away from content rich material, which is not necessarily the best thing since sliced bread, but if correct things are rewarded and incorrect things are punished, the content can improve.

I haven't seen any evidence yet of content improvement in the general Forums. Compare posts of today with the majority of posts of six months ago, and you will see a wider variety in the standard of posting today, with a lower average quality.

As the species tends towards mediocrity, so do most of its products.

Nothing wrong with good, crisp, color coding of the Forums though, and we're not neon city yet. The final compromise seems really good (even though thinking through what color goes best with what discipline could be a neat finishing touch).

I like the coloured forums.



Kinda through my equilibrium out of kilter for a moment, apon first viewing.

The colors are great. It was a little weird at first but they add some color to the place.

Looks great William!! I like it a lot.

Very nice! It brightens the place up a little!!!

When you design any scale or reference any range, you have to make it mutually exclusive.

At the moment, the Today's Posts forum says

1-75
75-150
150 ->

The number 75 needs to be changed to 76.

The number 150 needs to be changed to 151.

God and the Devil are both in the detail.

Have to agree that anything that lessens the grey is a good thing.

I like the colours Brightens this place up a bot. I don't think we can go back to grey now

I love the colours!

Yup, looks fine to me. Although I'd be careful taking it any further. Whilst some may consider grey to be a bit on the 'boring' side, bear in mind some people have a problem when it comes to colours!

I'm slightly colour blind, but the colouring on the main forum listing is subtle enough not to cause a legibility problem.