I feel that the website and especially the forum feel relatively ancient. Could it be possible to modernize the looks of the website and forums?
i don't know what to say really
how's the fw reddit page doing?
this is as smooth and readable and fast-loading as a real forum gets, it needs no improvements
go check some modern crappaforum systems like tapatalk, then come back and feel how golden this one is
fw still teaches all forums what a forum should feel like on a pc
I agree with Flying Phoenix. This is a classic forum for classic games, no need to pretend we are modern and make the forum bloated.
I do plan on updating the forum at some point, but only because this version of SMF will be discontinued some day and stop receiving security patches.
Would be nice for the main site to be redone (at the very least so it is mobile-friendly), but it would probably be somebody else who ends up doing that.
The only thing I'm not too keen on is the brick background. I don't know what it is about it--that it's small? The bland grey? Would red bricks be too loud? I'm thinking the ones in Mario Bros. in particular: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/i.retroachievements.org/Images/001925.png
Yeah the bricks look maybe a bit simple or colourless and while those Mario Bros bricks looks better, I'm not sure about using strong or dark colours for backgrounds. One can always use the same tiles but with other colours from the Famicom's color generator (https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=233739#p233739) though.
Final Fantasy (https://www.spriters-resource.com/resources/sheets/10/10564.png) and Zelda 2 (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/Zelda_II%2C_The_Adventure_of_Link_%28North_Temple%29.png) also have nice bricks (http://www.spiffy-entertainment.com/Zelda/images/temple.gif).
Quote from: P on May 17, 2019, 01:36:45 ambricks (http://www.spiffy-entertainment.com/Zelda/images/temple.gif).
I like the idea of black bricks with a red outline.
Quote from: Jedi QuestMaster on May 19, 2019, 11:24:50 am
Quote from: P on May 17, 2019, 01:36:45 ambricks (http://www.spiffy-entertainment.com/Zelda/images/temple.gif).
I like the idea of black bricks with a red outline.
Again, these mini changes will make pages look even worse. Higher contrast and more off colors = more confusion
Quote from: MaarioS on May 20, 2019, 04:47:01 am
Quote from: Jedi QuestMaster on May 19, 2019, 11:24:50 am
Quote from: P on May 17, 2019, 01:36:45 ambricks (http://www.spiffy-entertainment.com/Zelda/images/temple.gif).
I like the idea of black bricks with a red outline.
Again, these mini changes will make pages look even worse. Higher contrast and more off colors = more confusion
Perhaps we could have a forum with multiple themes? I know we can choose different smileys.
I think there's no need to redesign this site at all. It looks great as it is, remember that we're talking about retro Famicom games, and a modern looking forum for that is very unfitting. Yellow and grey colors are neutral and easy to the eye; replacing them for more vibrant and modern colors would be very distracting.
Personally, I find too much white hard on the eyes, which is why I thought inverting the bricks might rectify that.
I find the darker tone of NESdev much more pleasant: http://forums.nesdev.com/index.php
But if I'm the only one, I guess I'll just have to keep turning the brightness of my monitor down. :'(
Speaking personally and subjectively, I would love to see the bricks switched to flat black...
I don't think the site needs a fresh style revision. It's months & months of work, for an unclear gain.
As a retro site I agree it doesn't need to look fresh, modern, flat design or anything like that. It is of an age.
Quote from: Jedi QuestMaster on May 22, 2019, 06:54:40 am
Personally, I find too much white hard on the eyes, which is why I thought inverting the bricks might rectify that.
I find the darker tone of NESdev much more pleasant: http://forums.nesdev.com/index.php
But if I'm the only one, I guess I'll just have to keep turning the brightness of my monitor down. :'(
I heard of some hypothesis that black text on white background is actually healthier and more natural for the eyes as it derives from reading books and paper. Some laboratory confirmed that perhaps, I just heard xP. Maybe leaving this color theme and keeping it default as is and adding another darker toned one or more will be a good idea. You will have the choice
I would disagree with that for screen use - as the difference is paper is not illuminated from behind ;)
So I do find white glaring and generally much prefer a dark mode whenever I can use one, but FW would be weird to me in black all of a sudden. If we were going to change the colours I guess I'd imagine red, gold and white first!
Quote from: boye on May 15, 2019, 11:44:10 am
I feel that the website and especially the forum feel relatively ancient. Could it be possible to modernize the looks of the website and forums?
Disagree.
Quote from: togemet2 on May 20, 2019, 04:53:26 am
Personally I like the site and forum how they are. It sets it apart from every other site which just looks the same.
Agree.
Now that I think about it, a redesign would probably be a bad idea if enabled by default. We don't want another Digg V4 on our hands, right?
I know it's settled now but personally I like this site and I am probably the youngest person on here which to some would make it seem I would like a redesign but as someone who was not able to experience online forums before reddit, it's nice to be part of an old style forum while it's still around. The site attracts those who are passionate about its subject matter and a redesign may shatter that passion. What's the old saying? If it ain't broke don't fix it.
A retro design for a retro forum. Why change it?
Yeah, yeah! >:( Quit rubbing it in. I get it. :upsetroll:
Quote from: MaxXimus on July 29, 2019, 03:49:56 pm
A retro design for a retro forum. Why change it?
Because the software maintainers dropped support for the old version and I need to update it to keep receiving security patches :-[
It doesn't get any more official than that haha. :p
Lock the thread? Dead horse has been beaten to glue at this point lol.
Threads dont get locked usually.
yeah we thread the locks here
(https://i.ibb.co/jb3mYP5/SA017.jpg) :crazy: