Time for a new Xenforo theme?

[feldon30]

Man, what's with that all this "flat" stuff, anyway? It's hilarious! When I look at the "cool" new "flat" designs, I feel like I've been transported back 20 years. Everything old is new again! It's all flat! Hurrah. No shadows. No gradients. Just lines and colors and words that are clickable but you wouldn't know it because they look just like words that aren't clickable! Bring out the fat ties, baby. They're in again. (See, Martha, I told you if I waited long enough....)

Hey, you'd think with all this simplicity everywhere that our operating systems and software would be getting SUPER FAST, wouldn't you? I mean, there's so much less to process! But guess what? Everything's friggin slower! iOS 6 to 7? Slower! Crippling-my-iPad-slower! Slower! Hey, flat must be FAT! Joke's on us!

I'm so ready for this "flat" trend to end. We have these super powerful computers capable of incredibly beautiful graphics with nuance and context. We've got a palette of 16.7 million colors with full 8-bit transparency on 1920 x 1080 displays, yet everything looks like:

It's cold, impersonal, alienating, intangible, and boring. It's like a modern art museum. There's a reason classics persevere for centuries.

Someone who has done very little customization to the styling on their own forum would probably never understand why people are complaining about the use of gradients.

Transparent PNG solves this problem. IE9+ and all other browsers support it.

 

[jauburn]

I'm so ready for this "flat" trend to end. We have these super powerful computers capable of incredibly beautiful graphics with nuance and context. We've got a palette of 16.7 million colors with full 8-bit transparency on 1920 x 1080 displays, yet everything looks like:

It's cold, impersonal, alienating, intangible, and boring. It's like a modern art museum. There's a reason classics persevere for centuries.

Transparent PNG solves this problem. IE9+ and all other browsers support it.

+1000

I try to keep an open mind about this stuff. But the flat trend is just stupid. I look at my "flat" iOS dumb phone, or my flat Office 2013, and I see no underlines, few visual cues, no indication of which words can be clicked and which words are just, well, words, and I think, "if you ever get convinced that humans are intelligent, just wait a while."

You see, in the world of computers and software, everything *has* to change on a 6-month cycle or so because you have all these people sitting around on their asses in cubicles being paid, and they have to do something. You can't come in one day and say, "Hey, great news, guys and gal [there's rarely more than one]: We made some great software that will be good for years and years. You're all fired."

Me, I'm still using Office 2003 on my main machine. I have 2010 and 2013 on other machines, but for the life of me, nothing in those "better" programs makes me want to switch to them full-time. Quite the contrary: There are plenty of "features" in those newer programs that spell worse. Ribbon bar, anyone? (I'm sure Steve Ballmer is enjoying wiggling his toes in the sand these days.)

And for those who think that a "flat" theme for xenforo will somehow make their forums better, well, let me laugh a little bit and then point out that some of the largest forums on the internet are still using vB 3.x, with the stock blue theme! It's not about the theme. It's certainly not about "flat." It's about content and members. Members, I can assure you, do not give a rat's axe about "flat." They want minimum disruption so that they can do what they came to your forum to do.

I, for one, think the current xenforo theme is quite good, quite impressive in many ways. If the developers give us "flat" in 2.0, I sure hope it's just an option.

It's cold, impersonal, alienating, intangible, and boring. It's like a modern art museum. There's a reason classics persevere for centuries.

Well said, although I do like modern art. Flat, however, is not modern art, IMO.

 

[TPerry]

Well said, although I do like modern art. Flat, however, is not modern art, IMO.

And a 4 year old's multi-hued crayon scribbling isn't either.
Everybody has different tastes - why do you think their are so many different styles of clothes, cars, shoes, etc? Would be a pretty bland place if everyone was singing from the same book.

 

[Divvens]

And for those who think that a "flat" theme for xenforo will somehow make their forums better, well, let me laugh a little bit and then point out that some of the largest forums on the internet are still using vB 3.x, with the stock blue theme! It's not about the theme. It's certainly not about "flat." It's about content and members. Members, I can assure you, do not give a rat's axe about "flat." They want minimum disruption so that they can do what they came to your forum to do.

Speak for yourself, it depends on community to community.

Most of the communities in my niche have very basic looks or bad styling, what attracts many members at first to my community is the customization we've personally done and spent hours doing.

Put enough love and attention to your work, follow the basics of designing and you are golden, whether flat or not. If you have a problem with moving on, that shouldn't bother the developers or a product from improving.

Your opinion is yours, don't try to shove it down others and make statements that would reflect poorly on others opinions and tastes.

I'm not for or against flat, I like to keep things 'un-flat' too, but it has its elegance and will certainly improve the standards of styling if we do away with gradients, and also have a base theme that doesn't make you cry if you wish to create a dark theme (personally we had to do so many manual css edits because the stock XenForo theme just doesn't not support dark styling easily).

As I said previously, since you haven't customized much of your forum yourself you may be making such comments, if you know the pain of it you would understand. As a consumer of styles (without styling your own styles) you should put your suggestions to the developers/designers of the style and not the core product.

 

[sami simo]

Maybe flat design is not the best option for some users, but it certainly will make theme customization a lot easier:
Images, gradient, shadows are very limited. this allows easy changes, and give us a chance to use more color pallettes.
I like the default theme, but the color pallette is too complicated. colors are somehow hardcoded, example:
If you choose to have a red navigation bar, and a grey border and background for the secondary content, sidebar.. ( by setting the primaryLighterStill , primaryLightest..and other colors in different grey tones). you will get the navigation links also in gey.
If you want to change them to white, then you have to use Extra.css and so many ( !important) declarations to specify the color for tablink states( hover, active...).
Why this should be so complicated ?

 

[jauburn]

Maybe flat design is not the best option for some users, but it certainly will make theme customization a lot easier

I like the default theme, but the color pallette is too complicated. colors are somehow hardcoded, example:
If you choose to have a red navigation bar, and a grey border and background for the secondary content, sidebar.. ( by setting the primaryLighterStill , primaryLightest..and other colors in different grey tones). you will get the navigation links also in gey.

I agree with this, but these issues are really not related to "flat" themes.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I'm so ready for this "flat" trend to end. We have these super powerful computers capable of incredibly beautiful graphics with nuance and context. We've got a palette of 16.7 million colors with full 8-bit transparency on 1920 x 1080 displays, yet everything looks like:

It's cold, impersonal, alienating, intangible, and boring. It's like a modern art museum. There's a reason classics persevere for centuries.

Transparent PNG solves this problem. IE9+ and all other browsers support it.

That looks gorgeous to me.

 

[Biker]

This trend is due to more and more individuals using their phones and other mobile devices to access the Internet and websites. A lot of our traffic (50%) is from mobile devices. Hence, many sites are going to a flat theme to accommodate. Even Windows 10 has gone to a theme that's reminiscent of Gnome (which I positively despise).

 

[Jake B.]

We've got a palette of 16.7 million colors with full 8-bit transparency on 1920 x 1080 displays, yet everything looks like:

Definitely, every site needs to be using 20 different colors. I mean just look at https://goo.gl/cSiab7 beautiful, isn't it?

/sarcasm

 

[Enguerran A]

I guess that's the main inspirational source of your next theme Ugli.X (cc @Mike Creuzer )

/HitEnteredTheGame

 

[FromZBwithLove]

When will 2.0 come? I'm building my board now and don't want all my addons to deteriorate :|

 

[Martok]

When will 2.0 come? I'm building my board now and don't want all my addons to deteriorate :|

When it's ready.

 

[jauburn]

This trend is due to more and more individuals using their phones and other mobile devices to access the Internet and websites. A lot of our traffic (50%) is from mobile devices.

"Flat" has to do with mobile? I don't get the connection at all. iOS 6.x was not "flat," but it was certainly mobile.

 

[TPerry]

"Flat" has to do with mobile? I don't get the connection at all. iOS 6.x was not "flat," but it was certainly mobile.

Was is not is.

 

[Lawrence]

I think what ever the team comes up with for a new style, 1/3 of members will like it, 1/3 won't, and 1/3 will be indifferent. So I say leave the theme pretty much the way it is but with less gradients (flatten it a bit), and remove the border radius's.

 

[rafass]

[...]and remove the border radius's.

*{border-radius: 0 !important;}

 

[Lawrence]

*{border-radius: 0 !important;}

Thanks for the obvious tip, but if the default style is going to be changed that means it will be here as well... and I don't think I have access to make your recommendation here.

Besides, what about such things as rounded avatars, and softening of corners on hover? Those would be impossible.

 

[John L.]

Everyone has a different taste in how good or bad something looks. I've seen some horrible marketing creative pushed out to the public that someone obviously approved and thought looked good. So hey, hopefully the XenForo 2.0 style has a nice base. I wouldn't mind it being pretty simplistic in style with a base level structure that gives designers a chance to make some creative styles. We just have to be empowered to make those styles and how the XenForo team chooses to do that will dictate the success of the design. Not necessarily how good or bad it initially looks.

Personally I love the Google Material Design style. It's a good read if anyone is interested (see below) in their concept of the design. Also there are some frameworks based on it out there. I personally think XenForo would benefit from using 1 of the many frameworks out there in the wild to build their HTML structure. Would help take the pressure off of them and having to make their own framework and support it.

Some suggested frameworks:
Bootstrap 4 (In Alpha): http://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/
Foundation (v6 is in development): http://foundation.zurb.com/
Google Material Design Framework: http://www.getmdl.io/index.html

Learn more about Material Design: https://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html

 

[Enguerran A]

I think that XenForo should not use one of those and that goes for any other framework. I prefer to be free to use one of them if I want (by paying a designer of doing it myself) than being forced to use one of them.

And at the end, I would prefer to have no design at all and build it from scratch, the same way you do when you start a bootstrap or a Wordpress. Nothing fancy, just the possibility to make everything you want.

 

[jauburn]

Does anyone even know whether any changes at all will occur to the xenforo style? My understanding was that 2.0 was mostly about under-the-hood changes that would affect (help?) add-on developers.