Life In 19x19

I'm working on a custom theme for the site. It will be built on the prosilver templates for markup (thus hopefully compatible with mods), but will use custom styles, images and colors. I'm using Gresil's logo (which everyone seems to like) as a starting point in terms of style and color.

I've attached a preliminary mock-up. Obviously, it's still extremely rough, and the buttons and icons don't really match, and the fonts aren't quite right, and it's mostly empty in terms of what the content will look like, but I want to post it before I go too much further to get some feedback. I want to get an idea if I'm going in basically the right direction in terms of colors, layout, etc. before I spend days implementing everything.

Like I said, the icons and such are not final and the final fonts will be hinted by your OS instead of Photoshop. I'm mostly just looking for feedback on the general layout, appearance, colors and such. Too red? Too beige? Too neutral? Too colorful? Too round? Too square? Too web2.0ish? Not web2.0ish enough?

A couple specific questions for the community:

Should I go with a fixed-width layout (I'd use a 960 grid optimized for 1024 and higher), or should I make it stretch? I tend to go with fixed-width 90% of the time because it's easier to implement and has superior accessibility. But a the current layout stretches and I will stick with that if it's preferred.

I plan on not supporting IE6 beyond basic functionality. The site will work, but it will look less pretty. Any strong objections? Reasonbly current versions of Firefox, Safari, IE7, IE8, Opera, Chrome, etc. will be fully supported (and probably by extension, any other Webkit or Gecko browser.)

Should I go with a multi-column layout? It's not common on forum sites, but everybody has big screens these days, even on their phone, so it makes sense to make use of all that horizontal space. It also makes the text of posts more readable to have shorter lines. There could be a persistent sidebar on the left or right hand side of the screen similar to what you usually see on blogs (see my club blog for an example).

Wow, the mockup looks excellent, good job so far fwiffo!

My personal preference is also fixed width, just cause that's what I've gotten used to on other forums I'm on/used to go to. However, it's just a slight preference. No objection at all on not supporting IE6 . Lot less headaches. Indifferent on the multi-column layout.

Anyways, looks great and awesome work.

Nice mockup, I like the warm colour scheme. I'd prefer a variable width layout. Quite often I resize my browser window to keep an eye on some windows beneath (progress bars, compiler output etc.) or simply to shorten the length of text lines, so I like flexible layouts best. Multi-column layout might therefore be unnecessary.
And yes, let IE6 go the way of Netscape 4.x

Interestingly, over the last few days I've been looking at the "Who's Online" page, which (for administrators, at least) shows the User-Agent string for each user as they browse. I've noticed something that's surprised me -- I've looked at about 60 different accounts and a single one was using Internet Explorer, of any version. The vast leader is Mozilla and Chrome makes a decent showing. There were even two using something called "Apple PubSub" which I've never even heard of before but is apparently more popular than IE in our little community here.

I bring this up just as a roundabout way of saying -- I wouldn't worry too much about super-perfect IE compatibility... I don't think many of us will miss it.

The mockup looks amazing to me

I like that subsilver2 is variable-width, but I could definitely learn to live with a fixed-width style as well, especially one as pretty as that.

I like the mockup, and have no preference regarding fixed or variable width.

I like the mock up as well. It reminds me of the theme at baduk.pro. In my personal preference though I tend to like "cooler" colors. Thats just my personal preference though.

Looks awesome! I vote for variable width and a single-column layout, because my browser size varies from ~1000 pixels wide to ~2000 pixels wide depending on my mood and what I'm doing. I don't think a fixed-width or a multi-column layout would look as good on such a range of browser widths.

Variable width pls.

Sometimes at home I set half the screen showing a cartoon for my son and half the screen showing L19 for me

I liiiiike!

I'd also prefer variable width.

Really, really nice. But won't the forum be renamed GD ?

I like it too, and will join the variable width votes

ross wrote:Looks awesome! I vote for variable width and a single-column layout, because my browser size varies from ~1000 pixels wide to ~2000 pixels wide depending on my mood and what I'm doing. I don't think a fixed-width or a multi-column layout would look as good on such a range of browser widths.

I agree.

And another call to not worry about IE6. People really shouldn't be using it anyway - and why not give them another incentive to switch if they're not already?

Oh, and guess I didn't add: Nice mockup fwiffo! It looks nice. Good work. Though I am going back and forth about the overall color - almost a bit to "bright" for my taste (though I can't decide for sure...).

Variable width (for the reasons mentioned by the others).

One other request: even though I like the colors I prefer not to have any background images etc... Could having design images made an option in the preferences (if possible)?

- Mich

mic wrote:Variable width (for the reasons mentioned by the others).

One other request: even though I like the colors I prefer not to have any background images etc... Could having design images made an option in the preferences (if possible)?

- Mich

Background images...
Yeah, with (most) people requesting variable width, best to not have a background image. Nothing worse to an aesthetic of a page than a limited background image that has a hard end to it. Or worse yet, one that tiles...shudder.

Glad this was brought up because I didn't think about it at first. And it's one of the things that looks really nice in the mockup, too!

Tryphon wrote:Really, really nice. But won't the forum be renamed GD ?

No, it's T.F.F.K.A.G.D.*

*The Forum Formerly Known As Go Discussions