New Look, Work in Progress...

[Bok]

After posting in the feedback section i'll repeat here.

This new color scheme really gives me a headache besides making the site very difficult to read.

I would very much appreciate the option to go back because after the change i notice i haven't been here nearly at all, simply because of above stated results.

Seems that the colour scheme is a Adagio corporate decision, so it is unlikely that it will be returned (as stated per the employee in charge above).

Which I can understand from a professional point of view.
After all this is not a private forum…
So we all better get used to it, still the best Tea forum around, no matter the colour.

As for the readability, that pale purple does not have a negative effect on that.
Readability is affected by contrast of luminosity of typeface and background, which in this colour scheme is actually ok.

What makes it less readable is the typeface itself and the spacing of the letters.
Helvetica is always a terrible choice for reading on screen, and spaced so narrow, it is hard to read.

[BW85]

It's interesting, on my phone and tablet I have no issue with readability. It's very easy to read actually and easy on the eyes. Perhaps it was designed for mobile devices and the issue is only on computers?

[Fuut]

After posting in the feedback section i'll repeat here.

This new color scheme really gives me a headache besides making the site very difficult to read.

I would very much appreciate the option to go back because after the change i notice i haven't been here nearly at all, simply because of above stated results.

Seems that the colour scheme is a Adagio corporate decision, so it is unlikely that it will be returned (as stated per the employee in charge above).

Which I can understand from a professional point of view.
After all this is not a private forum…
So we all better get used to it, still the best Tea forum around, no matter the colour.

As for the readability, that pale purple does not have a negative effect on that.
Readability is affected by contrast of luminosity of typeface and background, which in this colour scheme is actually ok.

What makes it less readable is the typeface itself and the spacing of the letters.
Helvetica is always a terrible choice for reading on screen, and spaced so narrow, it is hard to read.

That might be your opinion on the readability. However its the user that has to deal with it, and i don't feel like this is easy to read, or easy to find topic titles, user titles etc. To be honest in my view everything that used to be good is now shitty.

its a bare minimal request to give people the option to change it back, otherwise i foresee i will not be visiting frequently here anymore like i used to. Now you'll probably say, OK go then, but really that's not how fora are supposed to work. - if anything its a rather ignorant way to handle your "possible" customer-base.

Edit: just for sake of adding it; i used to be quiet happy to come here (and checked it out everyday), now its just annoying and gives me a headache.

[Bok]

its a bare minimal request to give people the option to change it back, otherwise i foresee i will not be visiting frequently here anymore like i used to. Now you'll probably say, OK go then, but really that's not how fora are supposed to work. - if anything its a rather ignorant way to handle your "possible" customer-base.

Just one problem with that point of view (I agree on the forum becoming less enjoyable and practical to use):
The people from Adagio do no owe any of us any explanation, it is their house so to speak and thay can do whatever they want with it. They pay for it and no one among us pays anything to use it.

As far as customer base is concerned I dare to say that 80+% of the user have ever and ever will buy any tea from Adagio (simply judging by what kind of teas people are talking about here. So surely not a wothy addition to their customer base. Really surprised that the forum in its current state exists at all…

We can be grateful that they have kept it alive (and presumably paid for it) all this time, it is pure generosity from their part.

And as I said before, if they did a rebrand of their brand, it would be very unprofessional to leave one part out of the whole concept, that does not make sense commercially. Furthermore they seem to have paid someone to do all those changes (done well or not) and will most likely not add more money to go back just because us free-riders ask them for it.

Best we can hope for is that a few more usability improvements are going to be made.
Professionally speaking, the speed with which changes are implemented are painstakingly slow though…

[Fuut]

its a bare minimal request to give people the option to change it back, otherwise i foresee i will not be visiting frequently here anymore like i used to. Now you'll probably say, OK go then, but really that's not how fora are supposed to work. - if anything its a rather ignorant way to handle your "possible" customer-base.

Just one problem with that point of view (I agree on the forum becoming less enjoyable and practical to use):
The people from Adagio do no owe any of us any explanation, it is their house so to speak and thay can do whatever they want with it. They pay for it and no one among us pays anything to use it.

As far as customer base is concerned I dare to say that 80+% of the user have ever and ever will buy any tea from Adagio (simply judging by what kind of teas people are talking about here. So surely not a wothy addition to their customer base. Really surprised that the forum in its current state exists at all…

We can be grateful that they have kept it alive (and presumably paid for it) all this time, it is pure generosity from their part.

And as I said before, if they did a rebrand of their brand, it would be very unprofessional to leave one part out of the whole concept, that does not make sense commercially. Furthermore they seem to have paid someone to do all those changes (done well or not) and will most likely not add more money to go back just because us free-riders ask them for it.

Best we can hope for is that a few more usability improvements are going to be made.
Professionally speaking, the speed with which changes are implemented are painstakingly slow though…

I can see you did not take kindly to my view on this matter.

The whole idea of having this forum is here attracting people who like tea, while at the same time AT the same website selling stuff. I have no problems with this, but give people a headache for no reason and people will suggest a better way.

Giving users an option of a color scheme has nothing to do with mountain high costs. There are free to play games made by a single kid who have this option, don't talk to me about being it too expensive or difficult. Again if anything its incredibly ignorant to just change something and then while having the option to give feedback just ignoring said feedback. Whether you agree or not.

[BioHorn]

After posting in the feedback section i'll repeat here.

This new color scheme really gives me a headache besides making the site very difficult to read.

I would very much appreciate the option to go back because after the change i notice i haven't been here nearly at all, simply because of above stated results.

Seems that the colour scheme is a Adagio corporate decision, so it is unlikely that it will be returned (as stated per the employee in charge above).

Which I can understand from a professional point of view.
After all this is not a private forum…
So we all better get used to it, still the best Tea forum around, no matter the colour.

As for the readability, that pale purple does not have a negative effect on that.
Readability is affected by contrast of luminosity of typeface and background, which in this colour scheme is actually ok.

What makes it less readable is the typeface itself and the spacing of the letters.
Helvetica is always a terrible choice for reading on screen, and spaced so narrow, it is hard to read.

r.e. Helvetica
See #7 in criticism (a grotesque font...):
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/02 ... -use-them/

[wyardley]

Sorry, haven't read all the posts, so sorry in advance if I am repeating anything....
I don't mind the new color scheme, but the orange buttons don't match IMHO.

I think incremental change would have been a little easier for people to get used to. I don't come on here as much as I used to, but have been finding the changes to the UI making it really hard to navigate.

Having the 'save' button on the left and 'submit' on the right [when submitting a post] has really been screwing me up so far too.

[wyardley]

ps - This is how the unread posts notification icon looks for me in recent(ish) Firefox; is this how it should look? Seems kind of odd to me.

[JRS22]

It's what I see in Safari on a Mac.

[Bok]

I can see you did not take kindly to my view on this matter.

The whole idea of having this forum is here attracting people who like tea, while at the same time AT the same website selling stuff. I have no problems with this, but give people a headache for no reason and people will suggest a better way.

I think you misread my post. I do agree with all the critiques. My point was just that I can understand where Adagio is coming from. If you click on the other parts of Adagio, like Tea muse, Tea critic etc. you can see that they all got the new design treatment, only the cooking section is still in the old theme. Might explain why the developper is so slow if he has to change all of them.

In the light of a global design change you can see why they are not going to go back. That does not make sense for the brand, it would be incoherent. So I am saying, that while I do not like what they did, I can understand why they did it.

Ignorance in their part is the lack of communication, it shows that they were either not aware of the popularity of the forum or they just forgot about it.

[Devoted135]

I apologize because this is probably going to come off as though I'm complaining and being super picky.

Thank you for implementing the visual cue for whether there are unread posts in a subforum/thread! I appreciate it, I really do! But, I think a middle ground needs to be found. It's extremely hard to read the grayed out titles, even when you know what they say. And then consider what the forum looks like to a first time visitor. The whole thing is grayed out and almost unreadable. (I know because I got signed out of my session somehow.) This is not a great look for welcoming new people to the forum. I hope the forum software has a middle ground that will be easy to implement!

[JRS22]

I have a problem reading the forum in safari on my iPad. When there's an unread post indicator on its own I can click it and be taken to the first unread post. When the 'lightbulb' icon is also there, which I think means that I've posted to that thread, it doesn't work. I've tried enlarging the image to isolate the icon, and also tried using a very precise stylus, to no avail.

Maybe one icon is overlaying the other one somehow.

[debunix]

I have a problem reading the forum in safari on my iPad. When there's an unread post indicator on its own I can click it and be taken to the first unread post. When the 'lightbulb' icon is also there, which I think means that I've posted to that thread, it doesn't work. I've tried enlarging the image to isolate the icon, and also tried using a very precise stylus, to no avail.

Maybe one icon is overlaying the other one somehow.

I'm having problems with the icons too. I want to go the the latest post in the Active topics list, sometimes when there is a new post, sometimes when there is not but now I'm at the computer and have the time to type a longer reply. Sometimes I can get there by clicking on the icons, or to the left of the text about the posts, and sometimes not.

On my iOS devices, I'm back to using Tapatalk, which is only practical to use when I exclusively follow unread topics, but at least the topics are right there and it's easy to open them up.

[JRS22]

The old icons on ios were huge. This was one of the easiest sites to read before the big change. I'd rather not have to use so many different apps on my ipad when safari works so well.

[pedant]

you also used to have a mod or something that prevented the url bbcode tag from being interpreted for new users as an anti-spam measure

http://www.teachat.com/viewtopic.php?f= ... 72#p287088