Euro dark [completed]

R

r3naissanc3r

Honoured Citizen
Citizen
One of the most common requests by our members, both in the forum feedback survey we distributed a few months ago and anecdotally, has been the addition of a dark variant of the Euro bright skin.

After a long period of experimentation and deliberation with the rest of the admin team, we have settled on four candidates. Here are screenshots of the index page, under the four candidates:

candidate 1
candidate 4
candidate 8
candidate 9

A partial and experimental implementation of candidate 9 is currently available as "Euro dark". I selected this one for the first partial implementation, as it seemed to be the one preferred by a majority of admins. Depending on your feedback, I will try to add partial implementations for the other candidates.

Please take a look at both the experimental implementation and the screenshots and let us know what you think. In particular, let us know which of the four candidates you prefer (including whether you dislike all of them). Also, let us know about specific changes to any candidates that you'd like to see.

Note that the existing "Euro dark" theme is a partial implementation. We know that there are a few things that are still leftovers from the bright theme, e.g., a big part of the post writing page. I will try to fill these in progressively, either for this skin or for whichever candidate has the most support.
 
One thing I forgot to mention in the OP is that we have settled on some design constraints for the dark theme, which will be satisfied no matter how it turns out. Specifically, the following elements of the dark theme must remain identical to their Euro bright counterparts:

1) Forum header.
2) Category header background color.
3) Font type and size .
4) Forum layout.

We'd also prefer to keep the forum button color and design the same, but we're amenable to partially editing it.
 
I'm a Euro classic lover, and that's unlikely to change. However, the #8 version is my personal preference, for whatever that's worth. I like the blue.
 
I definitely prefer #9, and I'd make that my standard theme if it's fully implemented.

I noticed #1 and #4 have the older header links.

EDIT: using Euro Dark now. I'd prefer for the gray font to be lighter (makes it a bit tricky to read). Also, a lot of images with white backgrounds are unattractive. Otherwise, I'm a fan.
 
Rand said:
I noticed #1 and #4 have the older header links.
Click to expand...
That's merely because when I made those candidate skins, we were still using the old header. As I said in the OP, it has been a long process :p .

The header will remain in its current form if either of those candidates is selected for final.

EDIT: using Euro Dark now. I'd prefer for the gray font to be lighter (makes it a bit tricky to read). Also, a lot of images with white backgrounds are unattractive. Otherwise, I'm a fan.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree about the font. I'll (eventually) adjust it at least in posts.

Regarding the images, as far as I can tell all skin images work fine with both the bright and dark skins. User images though, such as avatars and signatures, are outside admin control.

User images looking bad under one or the other skin will likely be a persistent issue. Users tend optimize their images (and other designs, e.g., post formatting) to look nice under the skin they are using, and often don't bother with the other skins. This happens in all sites that have both bright and dark skins, including NS (a lot of the user-generated content is unreadable under the Dark Rift theme).

Hopefully, our users will grow more conscious of this, and try to select avatars and signatures that work under both the bright and dark skins.
 
I'm partial to 8.

With some quick viewing under Euro Dark, there do seem to be strange effects. The gray font is a touch too dark, but only likely needs to be brightened a little. However, words/names/titles that are in color seem to have issues. It actually hurts my eyes to look at my name above my avatar as the blue didn't seem to be able to separate itself quite enough from the gray background and as such seemed to 'pulse and blur' a bit. Similar can be said when looking at the image of the FA header in the thread I was reading.

Now this could be a monitor/graphics driver issue, but it'll be the first time I've ever encountered it in any shape or form on any site or platform.
 
It's a contrast issue. The Euro blue used in the FA header and the blue used in the Minister usergroup do not contrast well with the background gray-ish color. As a result, your eye has trouble separating them.

I'll need to adjust the gray palette used by the current dark skin (candidate 9) to work with these two blue hues. We can change the one for the usergroup, but the Euro blue is a constant feature across all of our skins.
 
I'll likely stick with Classic, but I prefer #4 of the choices.
 
The "Euro blue" is fine for me everywhere but the usernames. I'd prefer for either a lighter shade of the blue-gray for the main body or a lighter Minister/Deputy Minister name color.
 
I like the 9. My only problem is that in the new Euro Dark theme it is really hard to read names in the Endotarting page.
 
I've been using the experimental Euro dark as my full-time skin. I don't mind the little bits of Bright here and there.

Some of the smilies show up with white outlines on the Euro dark skin:

flail.gif :popkorn: :wub: etc
 
The quotes and textbox are part of the reason why this is still a "partial", experimental implementation ;) .

To add to Rand's issue, i also note that a few of the Presidential medals have a white/bright background. For those, it's easy to just remove that background. Fixing the emoticons will be harder, especially the moving ones.
 
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