La Luna
Surviving Ashraful
Premium
join:2001-07-12
Warwick, NY
clubs:
 ·Optimum Online
 ·Vonage
| reply to 93254336
Re: De-emphasizing quoted text in forum threads
I don't have the problem using a darker theme, but I would agree (just going by the screenshots posted) that maybe a darker text color (or maybe a tad larger) would be good. It does look a little *blah* on the lighter themes, which is why I use a dark one. For some reason, white text on a dark background pops better for me, it's always been my preferred color scheme whenever possible. |
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Hall
Premium,MVM
join:2000-04-28
Dayton, OH | reply to 93254336
It doesn't make my eyes water or sting.... I have no complaints about the change. I see yellow background on quoted posts and don't mind it. |
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DracoFelis
Premium
join:2003-06-15
| said by Hall  :It doesn't make my eyes water or sting.... I have no complaints about the change. I see yellow background on quoted posts and don't mind it. And clearly Justin would agree with you, as he seems to believe that these theme changes are "a good thing".
But it is an issue for some of us. I can personally feel the extra eye strain, due to the yellow background (with gray text) used by the new quotes. If I could find a theme that was close to "default", that didn't have this quoting "feature", I would switch in a minute!
How's this for a compromise? Can we make this configurable for the user? That way, those of us who's eyesight is bothered by the new quoting system, can turn it back to the way the quotes used to work.
IMHO the easiest way to accomplish this, would simply be to provide some more options for "themes". For example, have both a "default" theme and a "default old-quotes" theme (repeat for the other themes). Doing things that way, would not require any coding changes, as the "themes" approach should likely already take care of this.
Alternatively, the code could be modified to allow several visual factors (such as how things are quoted) to be controllable by user settings (overriding the theme). This approach would avoid having a lot of "closely related" themes, but it would (unlike the theme approach) require some code changes to the forum software.
But either way, using color schemes that bother people's eyes (or are unreadable on some monitors) is a problem, if there is no way to turn that off. And so if this is going to be a change to the forums, could we please have some way to turn off this new "feature"? |
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GeorgeCr
Funny it worked last time
Premium
join:2003-07-18
Sheffield,UK
clubs: 
·BlueYonder Interne..
|  reply to ghostpainter
said by ghostpainter :I guess I am the only one who likes it.  I like the pale yellow background. Makes it easier to spot at a glance what the newer poster has said.
--
Team Helix | SETI |
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OZO
Premium
join:2003-01-17
|  reply to 93254336
Emphasizing quoted text in forum threads
Ok, guys. If there is no any help with increasing contrast of the blockquote text (making it black instead of gray) - here is a simple solution for those who is using IE7 (I'm sure all other contemporary browsers support it too).
Solution - use your local CSS.
•Create local BBR.css file (see instructions below)
•Assign it in your browser. For IE users instructions are here: BBC - My Web My Way - Windows - Using your own style sheets in Internet Explorer
Now, if you want to make text black (not gray, "#3F3F3F;") - BBR.css file may contain:
.bquote {
color: black !important;
}
.bquote {
color: black !important;
background: white !important;
}
.bquote {
color: black !important;
background: white !important;
border-style: dotted !important;
}
Potential drawback of this simple approach - if some web page on the Internet contains element with the class "bquote" your settings may overwrite it. But I have yet to see such a page :)
One more thing. If you change BBR.css file you have to close and reopen all instances of IE before the change will take effect.
--
Keep it simple, it'll become complex by itself... |
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La Luna
Surviving Ashraful
Premium
join:2001-07-12
Warwick, NY
clubs:
·Optimum Online
·Vonage
| reply to Hall
Re: De-emphasizing quoted text in forum threads
said by Hall :It doesn't make my eyes water or sting.... I have no complaints about the change. I see yellow background on quoted posts and don't mind it. That's nice....but again, not everyone sees things the same, which is the problem using a "one size fits all" approach to something like this. Everyone's eyes (and/or monitors) are different. A lot of forums allow the user to select font color, but I doubt that would fly here either, then there would be complaints about "I don't like the font color Joe Blow is using, make him stop!!". 
As I said before, I use a dark theme, font color is white, so I don't have this issue....just another reason why I like the dark ones better.
--
~~"As long as America is an infidel enemy, terrorizing it is a duty." Sayed Imam Abdul-Aziz el-Sheriff~~
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OZO
Premium
join:2003-01-17
| reply to OZO
Re: Emphasizing quoted text in forum threads
said by OZO :Potential drawback of this simple approach - if some web page on the Internet contains element with the class "bquote" your settings may overwrite it. But I have yet to see such a page  Actually there is a good way to reduce the probability of such event to very low level. It's using long selectors (e.g. "body center center table table table div.bquote").
Check this thread for more options: Tuning default BBR theme. Thread is about increasing contrast of links (making them darker) within default theme, but the approach may be useful for simple tweaking of other themes as well.
--
Keep it simple, it'll become complex by itself... |
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AB
Premium
join:2006-04-04
Leesburg, VA
| reply to La Luna
Re: De-emphasizing quoted text in forum threads
said by La Luna :said by Hall :It doesn't make my eyes water or sting.... I have no complaints about the change. I see yellow background on quoted posts and don't mind it. That's nice....but again, not everyone sees things the same, which is the problem using a "one size fits all" approach to something like this. . . . Is this still an issue?
I haven't seen a yellow post since the first day or two of it. I thought it went faster than it came.
Or am I missing something? |
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Gizy
Have you thanked a soldier today?
Premium
join:2002-08-26
Lake Oswego, OR
clubs: | It is still an issue for me, if I use the default theme.
I ended up changing to a dark theme. Solved the problem for me. |
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AB
Premium
join:2006-04-04
Leesburg, VA
| said by Gizy :It is still an issue for me, if I use the default theme. I ended up changing to a dark theme. Solved the problem for me. Thanks, Giz.
I don't use the default theme, so I guess that's why I don't see it. I sure saw it when it was first implemented, though, and I haven't changed themes.
But probably a minor coding change somewhere changed that.
Thanks again. |
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Mele20
Premium
join:2001-06-05
Hilo, HI
| I don't use the default theme. I use the Canadian theme and I don't want to use any other theme. I love the Canadian theme. The only other one I really like is the default theme.
The Canadian theme produces this very difficult to read yellow background with gray font. I was miserable here until OZO IMed me with the fix. Asking me to take a photo of a forum page with the new, hard to read quotes and post it wouldn't prove to Justin the problem that I have (because it is my eyes that have the problem not his) so I didn't see the point in what seemed to be a useless exercise and I stopped reading this thread. Thus, I didn't know that OZO had posted the fix until he IMed me tonite.
For the record anyone using Fx or SeaMonkey needs to first shut down the browser. Then navigate to their Profile, go to the Chrome folder, create a usercontent.css file if you don't already have one and then use notepad to copy the file Ozo has provided. If you use the third file, the result is to make the forum pages look just like before. Wonderful!
I just wonder why Justin couldn't have provided this tip for us who have been suffering from this change. Is it only default and Canadian theme users who had this change forced on them? You say that after a day or so you no longer saw the change? Maybe Justin just figured that those of us using the default and Canadian themes who were really bothered by this problem should just use another theme? Why are only these two themes affected by this change? I thought the change was for all themes. I didn't try any other themes because the only two I love are default and Canadian and they are both really affected. I'm really grateful to Ozo for the help as now I can read here again without difficulty and keep my beloved Canadian theme or use the default theme again if I tire someday of the Canadian theme.
--
"If you want to do DRM on a PC then you need to treat the user as the enemy." Ross Anderson in "`Trusted Computing' Frequently Asked Questions"
»www.msfirefox.com/ |
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DracoFelis
Premium
join:2003-06-15
| FireFox (overriding your theme setting locally)
said by Mele20 :Thus, I didn't know that OZO had posted the fix until he IMed me tonite. For the record anyone using Fx or SeaMonkey needs to first shut down the browser. Then navigate to their Profile, go to the Chrome folder, create a usercontent.css file if you don't already have one and then use notepad to copy the file Ozo has provided. If you use the third file, the result is to make the forum pages look just like before. Wonderful! FWIW OZO also PMed me about overriding theme visuals. And since I also use FireFox, I was looking for a solution to translate his IE instructions info something that works in FireFox. And my "solution" was a little different than yours.
What I did was look around for FireFox info on CSS, and I found/installed the "Stylish" ( »https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2108 ) FireFox extension. I then used Stylish to install the *.css settings (that OZO helped me with) for the domain "dslreports.com". By using the Stylish extension, I can control which pages (in this case all pages from the dslreports.com domain) get the CSS changes, instead of applying the CSS changes to all web pages period (like your approach does).
Now, that said, I really wish DSLR would make these theme color decisions user configurable, so we don't have to write our own CSS changes to our browsers (which is more of a PITA than it really should be) to override color settings that cause eye strain.
Obviously Justin likes the color/theme changes. However, it's also clear that those changes hurt the eyes of some of us. And that really shouldn't be much of a surprise for those of us who have studied ergonomics, as yellow is a "hot color" that draws the eyes attention to it. As such, it is uncomfortable to some people (myself included) to have yellow as a "background color" (in this case, the background color of quoted text), as that yellow "background" can draw the eyes attention to it (causing extra eye strain)... |
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