Overall the new site is pretty slick but these forums are painful.

Light text on dark background is *very* hard to read and very quickly becomes fuzzy to the eye and gives headaches.  PLEASE change this to a lighter background with darker text.  I'm not making a threat but I just can't read forums that gives me a headache in less then 2 minutes and I can't read.

vBulliten gives an option of various forum "themes", how about this one?  So you can have this as your default theme but then give us an option for a better readability theme (that could actually be used on all of the Stardock forums).

Please once again get rid of the dark background and light/faint text.

Your first reply to this thread would have made any moron on the official World of Warcraft forums proud. So, yes. "Cya" is a troll reply.
 

Since the new look has already changed twice, it seems pretty clear that they're open to feedback and we don't have to "deal with it". As for the rest... as far as I'm concerned you have no bloody clue what you're talking about since you're ignoring the actual complaints and making up what you think you'd like them to be instead, then dismissing those fictional ones.

Was just there recently, and my eyes are pretty good for someone my age. I work with computers all day, and don't have this problem. Hell I switch from here to Visual Studio and the headache goes away. Or to another website. So yes, clearly the problem is something other then the one website where the problem occurs.

So, if I read this forum and get a headache... that's an opinion? If I put a knife through my hand, is it also an opinion that I'm bleeding? Some things are not opinion. If I like the color scheme or not is an opinion. Getting headaches every time I read the site is a fact. Since it's been happening to several people who are long time posters here, it's clearly a problem.

If you're getting eye strain from normal use of a monitor, then either the monitor or the room lights aren't set up right. It's not supposed to happen from normal usage. I can code all day and be just fine, but can't stay here more then 5 minutes at once without using the Firefox layout kill trick to change the colors.

Except that we're talking about getting headaches from the text, not which shade of black we like more, and for that we got attacked. I don't know what's gotten into you lately Raven, but these tangents you go on are getting downright strange.

Except that, you know, the rest of us were talking about eye strain all along. Why you now say you were talking about something totally different is kind of baffling. Hell, it's in the FIRST LINE of the original post that it's about readability.

I never said eye strain wasn't a problem for some people Tridus, give it a rest man, please.

I'm looking at an addon called NoSquint right now: http://urandom.ca/nosquint/

Using it I've rewritten the color rules on the site so that it's black on white. It makes some things look downright silly, but it's pretty easy to read. Here's how my version looks now:

I guess it's not perfect to use an addon as a solution, but it *does* fix the problem. As a bonus, it's also got per-site zoom options, which for people who find the text too small also makes it an easy fix. It also remembers the setting on a per site basis.

You didn't say this?

So when you were saying it was all individual opinion on colors and that people complaining about eye strain (the point of the thread) were really just whining about change, you didn't mean that? You should say what you mean in the future then.

You're calling me a Moron now! The peoples champion strikes again... lol. I would never have guessed you worked with computers all day, your social skills are so honed. No I've never had a problem with this colour scheme, but for the few 'Vocal' few who have, good luck, you're turned the text from a yellow to a muddy yellow.... power to the people!

I suspect your headaches Tridus are due to your stressed state here, rather than the text that most here read fine. Get out more, less time in front of screens, meet girls. Just Friendly advice!

My wife tends to dislike it when I go out to meet other girls. Try again though.

Ok, that plugin totally rules.  It's so easy to use and there are other forums that have the same issue that I can now read without a headache.

Note, if you add *.elementalgame.com to the exceptions list then you can customize just the forums and the rest of the site will remain untouched.

Thank you very much for this plugin.

You made my day with that extension !

Thanks, Tridus. I still hope to see the site eventually be more readable without browser-tweaking, but life's really just a long chain of compromises, innit then?

I've modified the design of the Elemental forums once again.  The columns on the side are gone, the header is slightly smaller, and the forums are slightly wider.  I've also made some more minor color changes.  Let me know what you think

Bara

Thanks! Major improvement over the first iteration. I still find the darker post background to be a bit too dark for my tastes but still a major improvement.

A better colour scheme, but the white reply box is dazzling!

The reply box is unfortunately out of my control for the time being.

I've made a few more minor changes.  A hard refresh should update your CSS files.

Bara