User Selectable Themes - Including Dark

I have the eye of an artist - I keep it in a matchbox on my desk to remind me how bad I am at art and design. The visual design of the forum’s color scheme is something called ‘Clown Vomit’, and is as you’d expect it to look knowing the name. We do what we can.

In yonder years of lore, someone once asked if we could do user-selectable themes, especially a ‘dark’ theme for those based in PC powered caves, where the day-star light no longer shines and their Gollum like eyes need the rest. As of today you have that like this:

  1. Go to your preferences by clicking top-right on your avatar:

  1. Hit the ‘cogwheel’ icon (Exhibit A of my red arrow - wasn’t kidding about lack of art skills):

  1. Scroll down to the bottom of your user preferences, and look for ‘Theme’ under the tab/section ‘Interface’.

The new themes to select are:

  1. ‘Default’ - Clown vomit, including the offensive to the eye logo and blue menu buttons from the crimes against art design we use on the main articles site. Use this for ‘please keep my cheese unmoved’ as it’s the default.

  2. Light. A minimalist version of Default, with less clutter and vomit.

  3. Dark. Like light, but dark. It’s hard to describe obviously.

  4. Material Design. This is a bit of weird one, so expect chaos, but it changes everything to use the Google design guidelines of something called ‘Material Design’. I included it for a lark, but it’s worth a play.

  5. Simple. A no clutter, even less bile than Light simple forum view with less of everything.

Anyway, go mad - enjoy. In theory we can add all sorts of themes, and if you know what CSS means then you can check one out here:

Here’s an example of ‘Dark’

We’ll try to do something better about that big ugly white logo too.

7 Likes

AHHHHH! MY EYES … actually feel great with the dark theme. :+1: Thanks!

1 Like

Great stuff! but the logo’s do look a little out of place in dark mode :stuck_out_tongue: Since Mudspike choose the timeless classic colours of black and white, I inverted them for you so you might be able to use them for the darkmode theme ( I kept the red bullseye red though)

5 Likes

Yep, I’ll use those, thank you! Just some styles jiggy to do and I should have Dark updated with those soon.

3 Likes

Cool, but a dark theme? Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise?

3 Likes

Shhh, there is nothing wrong with the dark side…

7 Likes

Ok, for the Dark theme, nicer logos without a hint of offensive #ffffff. If you choose the theme then remember - you have the high ground!

1 Like

Special graphic designer note there, always have you logos with a transparent background and Black and White text options for easy adjustment to most any background colours :slight_smile:

2 Likes

You can see the change from black to the actual website background colour, although you’ll have to strain yourself, exactly the thing we’re trying to prevent. If we make the background transparent here, will it default to white or use the actual webpage colour as the background?

2 Likes

I’ll give it a go - 2 secs. Edit - Ah, It’ll let the dark in from the background, so no good.

The header background color is #111 (RGB 17,17,17) so we’d probably need that for the two logos as the background color.

EDIT 2 - Got it to work - @Sryan, can you do the two lined one as well please?

3 Likes

Excellent - done.

Thanks for your help! :jenneke:

2 Likes

Added Google’s ‘Material Design’ to the themes selection. Not sure if that was a good idea, but it’s worth a look if you like rounded boxes and enormous blue buttons.

1 Like

Added ‘Simple’, which for category view makes it more like a very plain forum. I can see the appeal, so added it to the themes.

PS The idea with these is basically that different people like different things, so having a few themes is a nice thing.

1 Like

Actually it’s better we don’t have one for Kate Upton…

7 Likes

YESSS, this goes great with Adwaita dark. You are a champion among men!

2 Likes

Great stuff…! Thanks @Sryan and @fearlessfrog for the improvements in functionality. Can’t wait to check it out in night mode this evening…

3 Likes

Mudspike, where I actually learn how to use the internet. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

A post was split to a new topic: Airbus Theme and Text Size

Added a new selectable light theme called ‘graceful’ which is sort of minimalist, as was in there to tidy up the Tomcat stuff anyway.