Please let us alter colour schemes!

ExpertSockThrow·Jun 13, 2014·4 votes·1,356 views

I pop in here every few months to check out what's changed, and while I'm still against this going live as Leddit 2.0, there are some things I do like- ease of creating threads, clearly defined sub-communities, and the small concession of an optional flat layout that we have to manually type in to access. :P However, one of my biggest pain-points remains: the super-bright light grey on lighter grey colour scheme.

I know I'm in a very small minority of people that even get cluster headaches to begin with, but I can't be the only one whose eyes start to twitch with fatigue for reading the CB forums for about ten minutes or so. To me, it sucks a lot. I want to try to like this format, and get used to it (though the way comments are sorted is incredibly unintuitive and confusing to me), but being able to spend the time to do that is kind of impossible. It doesn't matter how well-lit my room is, how bright or dark my screen is (I use f.lux to help manage that to mitigate triggers, too!)- this scheme is murder. As I type this I've got that familiar "warning pulse" behind my right eye. I can't spend much longer typing this out... so please, Riot, let us manage the colour scheme, or at least switch to some duller colours. Don't say it can't be done- the wonderful F.E.K. team that's been proving you wrong about your old forums has a "night" theme that makes all the difference for me.

TL;DR: less bright, more dull (or let us customise)

9 Comments

BLU MedicJun 17, 20141 votes

Yes please.

A lot of forums include skins or themes anyway, why not here too?

Hyrum GraffJun 18, 20141 votes

Because a lot of forums are run using 3rd party software, whereas this platform is build from the ground up by Riot.

It's not to say it can't be done, just that right now they have better uses for their resources.

Personally, I'm all in favor of them releasing content that will allow the community to pick up where they have left off (basically, making it easier for projects like FEK to exist).

BLU MedicJun 18, 20141 votes

Why not have both?

In theory, it'd just be a change to the site's stylesheet to change colours, but I don't know how Riot's got their website set up.

Hyrum GraffJun 18, 20141 votes

I think the issue is less with changing the stylesheet and more with making sure everything continues to look good under every view, as they add features

BLU MedicJun 19, 20141 votes

Fair enough.

Hyrum GraffJun 19, 20141 votes

I imagine when these forums reach a 'mature' stage where they're not really developing any new features, then they'll take a nice, long look at cosmetics.

PendragonJun 18, 20141 votes

This actually is a really difficult problem space. Skins work really well for consumer software like vBulletin because there are lots and lots of people who use it - and of the people who use it, some of them make skins. That means that there are enough skins that are pre-built that site administrators have a variety that they can choose from for their players

It's a little more difficult for us. For a lot of reasons - any skin we are going to provide has to be made completely in-house whether it's for these boards or for the forums. Unfortunately it means that any change or upgrade we make has to be made twice (once in each and there's a lot more complexity around things like board-specific background images.

Due to those reasons we probably won't prioritize having the option to switch or toggle between multiple skins. You still have some options though...

You could start support for a community project like FEK to change the visuals
We are aware of (and are actively working on) an eye-fatigue solution if you want to wait for that
You could look for some existing browser extensions (they exist for both chrome and FF, not sure about IE) to do things like color inversion or greyscale

Not the answer you were looking for - but hopefully it's helpful

ExpertSockThrowJun 18, 20141 votes

Yeah, it's not the reply I'm looking for, but thanks for dropping in here Pendragon. :) I'm willing to wait it out see what you guys do about the problem- I know you'll do your best to strike a balance between clarity and fatigue-inducing. I really only use this to test changes now and then, but eventually I'd like to be on this without the eye-strain issue for an extended time. I'm usually wary about installing extensions, so I'll see if I can tinker with f.lux and my alternate monitor to see if I can get a work-around in the meantime. Thanks for the reply. :)

PendragonJun 18, 20142 votes

Add me on pvp.net when you get a chance - I want to run something by you