I'm not a fan of the new style, but it seems that I'm in the vast minority and I don't hang around here that often any more. The black background with a hundred different font colours on it makes it seem cheap and tacky to me. Along with a few other things. This is my opinion, mine and my own. No offence meant, as mentioned I am in the minority and thus will accept the majorities choice.
Anyway, kudos for changing it, it needed it, just not to my taste.
Banlam
Sho! Big changes happening around here!! :)
Some comments from my side.
* The text on the site feels too large... I am viewing the site from home on the 21" and I have to sit back to read anything...
* The vast array of colours are giving me a headache after only 10 minutes of browsing. I have to agree with Banlam about it being too much... The site now feels too busy.
* Sig sizes have always been kept to the NAG standards. Why is that? I feel that sig file sizes are more important than the actual real estate. Obviously the sigs shouldn't break the horizontal scroll but I recon it's better than 500+ Kb images in sigs.
Otherwise it looks good! :)
Biofreak
I must agree.
They say change is as good as a holiday. Some change now and then can be a good thing. However, while I applaud the intent behind the bold new theme, I too am of the opinion that it has problems.
Not to be too blunt about it -
PCD looks garish.
There is too much contrast between the background and the fonts, which creates a headache-inducing effect after a while of trying to read any volume of text.
Due to the black background, there is no longer any sort of outline 'framework' to tie the various page elements together - everything seems rather randomly spread out, especially when it comes to the navigation bar and the chat box.
Speaking of the navigation bar: there's a reason that 99% of all navbars are on the LEFT hand side of the page - because that's where most users expect to find them (being used to reading from left to right). Having the navbar on the right of the screen may be an attempt to be different, but the non-standard layout can confuse some.
Other issues: the new icon scheme is entirely meaningless. The quote icon could be anything at all - it doesn't look like anything recognisable. The same goes for all the other themed icons used for links, etc. They might look sci-fi or futuristic or something, but they have no direct, identifiable visual interpretation - which makes them confusing. An icon should be a directly identifiable representation of something - otherwise, it maybe as well be a splotch of colour.
Also: links cannot be seen - the same font colour that is used for ordinary text is used for links. This directly contravenes one of the most vital staple visual elements of web design.
And: the font colour for text entry boxes is almost indistinguishable against the background of such boxes (for adding attachments, etc).
I've always been proud of PCD's unique style - the (previous) Christo-modified theme is more welcoming than the bog-standard templates that we see used too often on forums all over the web. Change is good - within boundaries. Too radical a departure can give the wrong message. We don't want to offend or confuse visitors, and unfortunately, I think the new style does both. If offends aesthetically, eventually inducing eyestrain and headaches. And it confuses due to the amount of colours and the seemingly random space between page elements. In my opinion, it would be best for the site in general if we reverted back to the previous theme. Maybe now and again we can change to a different theme for a short time, but overall, I think the previous theme has the best blend of uniqueness and approachability.
With regards to Biofreak's comment about sigs - I agree with it in some respects - there is no need to keep to the 400 x 75 restrictions imposed by another site, apart from wanting to ensure some sort of site-side conformity, and also so that the sigs don't become massively distracting, as is too often the case on other forums - more than once I've decided to skip registering on a forum due the outlandish (and often vulgar) nature of the various sigs and avatars employed on those sites.
In order to promote trust in PCD, we should enforce strict content and formatting guidelines, and those guidelines extend to cover signatures and avatars.
However, in recognising that a larger sig can be more expressive than a smaller one, and - more importantly - that a sig width of 500 or less won't break the horizontal formatting of the forum, I'd say that it might be time to update our formatting guidelines and allow sigs of up to 500 x 150. I'm not sure how much larger an ava can be made before it interferes with the site formatting, so I'll leave that alone for now. Apart from physical pixel dimensions, sigs shouldn't exceed a filesize of (bytesize). This is so that it doesn't take pages æons to load for people with slower connections, and so that it doesn't eat up too much of our admittedly tiny data caps. The exact amount that (bytesize) should be is debateable, but I'd say around 500kb. Sure, I've made a few sigs in the past that exceed that limit, but I'd like to think that I have a bit of leeway, being an Admin and all ;) If anyone wants to submit a sig larger than (bytesize), they should PM an admin to ask for permission.
Conclusion?
Bring back the previous site theme, and
update the formatting guidelines a bit. At the moment, PCD is driving away more people than it's attracting.