Site colors / forum registration

[lajcik]

Could it be possible for you to provide a lighter and plainer theme for RPGFan? Nothing major - just a simple dark on light variation vs the current light on dark. The reason I'm asking is that I have a hard time reading light text on dark background - nothing personal (I actually like the green colors), but there's just something wrong with my eyesight that makes my eyes hurt after a while of staring at this type of color combination.

Of course it never stopped me from reading your site (or any other light on dark site) - applying a simple userstyle reversing the colors does the trick nicely for me so no pressure there :) I thought I'd mention this since it's something that you may not be aware of. I myself wouldn't be if it didn't concern me personally. 

One other thing - the registration process for rpgfan is a bit frustrating. For one thing - you have set a few password restrictions, but don't mention it anywhere on the registration form. The net result is that if a person uses a weak password (for whatever reason) they are bounced back after filling the form with a message that their password is too short, or doesn't have sufficient character variation. This forces them to fill the registration form two or three times because he doesn't know beforehand what criteria his password has to meet. Please consider outlining those on the registration form so that people don't have to fill it more than once - which means filling the captcha boxes and checkboxes again and again... (seriously, 3 bot protection fields and 2 checkboxes on a 4-field form? :P) While I wouldn't want to start a discussion on what makes a password secure here, I'd like you guys to check out one of the latest xkcd comics on this matter (http://xkcd.com/936/) it really hits the nail on the head imho.

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant. Cheers :)

[Akanbe-]

The green is kind of a trademark for RPGFan.  There's always been a ton of green since the site changed from LunarNet over a decade ago.  I'm sure they're willing to discuss it, but the website had a new revision not too long ago and limited manpower (they all do it on their spare time) can make even a small change take awhile.

[lajcik]

I'm well aware of both things, and I personally like the green accents. And it's not really a big issue, with tons of tools like stylish/stylebot it's easy to adjust these things on your own. Just putting it out there :)

[John]

I'll take a look into why the form is resetting - it shouldn't.  What browser are you using?

As well, I'll look into adding that text - it's a standard feature in SMF, so I thought it would add itself.  Odd.

And yes, 3 bot fields.. for whatever reason, we seem to be prime hunting ground for bots.  It's that or manually screen registrations (which is almost a full time job in and of itself).

Color schemes that you can manipulate are something we've looked at in the past - our troubles come from the fact that our pages are static, not dynamic.  Switching CSS styles is not as easy as it seems on first glance.  Maybe whenever we can get ourselves migrated to a database-style website, but I would not hold your breath.

[lajcik]

Hmm, on Chrome and Firefox (just checked) only the username and email fields are retained when backing up to the registration form (pressed the 'back' link). All other fields are reset.

As for CSS switching, you don't really need dynamic pages to do it. Alternate stylesheet support (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/ for example) is perfectly doable on static pages. Some browsers (FF, opera) even support this feature out of the box. Chrome needs javascript to switch stylesheets (I think). It's still quite a bit of work of course.

Edit: I just checked, Webkit browsers not only don't support it, but load alternate stylesheets like they were regular stylesheets. This makes for dirty workarounds or shitty browsing experience on webkit. And here I thought the era where you had to code specifically for each browser was mostly over...

[Mike]

Maybe I should check this forum more often...

I for one would love a black-over-white option, and like many things, we've experimented with it. Had a working method awhile back too, but the biggest issue wasn't even a stylesheet thing, but that we have countless pages with logos made for a black background: http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/eternalsonata/

(It's one of the biggest reasons we switched to the new gallery/review style that doesn't have a logo at the top)

[Yoda]

A new skin choice would be better for the employed RPGfan.

Nothing says you're screwing around at work more than the ole green and black.

[Annubis]

I have a plugin that ignores all CSS style on mine ;)