Coding Least Favorite Skin Trends

[Yume 99]

This low/no contrast trend with crazy light skins. Pls. Pls no.

 

I dislike the carousel banners that are so common - or w/e they're call. They're enormous and you over over them and things happen. And they're cool! for about five minutes and then it's like urg.

 

... The huge banner trend in general, really. Like if *I* go to your site and the banner takes up most of the visible space, man. Just. No. My screen is too big for you to be doin that.

 

EDIT:

also. can we talk about people's tiling banners? because no. NO.

I dont know if this is a mistake or if it's intentional but it looks tacky.

Edited September 10, 2016 by Yume

[Guest Ember]

Teeny tiny font that's light colored on a white background, or dark colored on a black background. If I can't read it, how am I going to decide whether I like your site or not?

[Dusty 55]

Animated image overload. 

 

I especially dislike seeing an animated signature in every post in a thread that is three times the size of the actual writing part. 

[Josie 198]

I'm not at all a fan of the trend where an image moves diagonally over the forum when you hover over it. The sudden movement makes me feel a bit nauseated.

[Crea 5]

My biggest pet peeve are giant banners.  I can understand a panorama type banner, I guess (one that's extremely long vs tall), but do you really need a banner that's 800 pixels tall?  It's distracting.  Also, tiny cboxes...I don't know why, but they annoy me.  I don't mind hovers, but I do mind when you have the link hover that's a mile long.  You don't need that many boards, I don't think, especially when half of them aren't in use or are only there for one singular thread.

[Crea 5]

Another pet peeve are dead cboxes because the site went to discord or skype.  I have nothing against either, but chatting and active cboxes are part of how you advertise to others.  Dead cbox to me = dead site

[jenneral_jennson 154]

I don't know if anyone said this because working and lazy, but teeny tiny font. This applies to thread temps too. If I've got to crank the zoom up to read it odds are I'm not staying. Also second or third? Fourth... the light skins. I usually end up highlighting everything to read it.

[Ferret 1]

Huge banners and small fonts, and an outrageous number of IC forums such that I have to scroll forever to find the bottom of the board.

[Crea 5]

On 1/13/2017 at 0:06 PM, Ferret said:

Huge banners and small fonts, and an outrageous number of IC forums such that I have to scroll forever to find the bottom of the board.

It's like this huge challenge to have enough boards to make the forum world feel dynamic and not have a mile long board.  Skins that use columned boarding are a blessing, but so few exist that don't ruin it with a banner so huge you can't even find the boards.

 

[Rune 1,099]

Overly fancy cursive fonts. All over the site.

Sure, use it here or there. But there is no need for literally every single header to be extremely curley cue font that is impossible to decipher.

[Kit the Human 758]

Fixed width boards. Some of them have even disabled zooming out on your phone, so you can't actually use the site on your phone.

 

On that note. People who don't check their themes on their phone. I've come across one that forced you to use a mobile theme.....and the background was black. So was the text.

 

So good.

[xexes 108]

Minimum effort in customizing a free skin.

 

Outrageous (C) copyright claims/protection where content is either stolen or unoriginal

 

Cboxes that block content and don't collapse

 

[Dusty 55]

Monochrome skins that use 6pt font size in tiny description boxes.

 

Or purple and lime green fluoro with pink hover-overs/highlights, tiny unreadable fonts and animated images that appear to be flashing. Well, maybe not all those things at once but sites that sure make it feel like it.

Edited February 18, 2017 by Dusty

[misfit 0]

Giant banners and waaay too many hover, sliding, twirling code!! Please make it a little simple. I don't need all this sass.

 

Little font. LITTLE FONT!! WHY! All caps, little font. WHYYY

Edited March 23, 2017 by misfit

[Sage 289]

Jumping on the huge banner and tiny font bandwagon. Though Im fine with small fonts as long as they're not in actual posts. I usually don't read forum descriptions and stuff anyway.

 

I hate info banners that are on every page. Like with the site rundown, stats, staff, announcements, etc. LEAVE IT ON THE INDEX. I don't need to read what the site is about if I'm making a post. I don't care about the staff if I'm reading through apps. It's an extra thing, past the banner, I have to scroll past to get to the content.

 

Staff information at the top of every page. You're not so important that you need to plaster your characters and your blurb across the top of every page. Put that shit in your footer so it's there if someone needs it, but isn't glaring you in the face all the time.

 

Buttons that aren't buttons, where only the text is clickable. I should be able to click on the whole button! That's just bad coding, man.

 

Non-static topbars. I like to have my links always available. I always want to be able to get to my settings, inbox, or back to the previous category. I hate scrolling all the time.

 

Overly elaborate post templates. If you want to jazz your posts up a little bit, go for it, but I much prefer the mandatory no post templates template.

 

Hovering over avs for necessary information. It's fine if you put fun stuff there. Go ahead and put spaces for zodiac and mbti and whatever. I don't actually care. But put the member group and useful stuff outside the hover plz. Where it's easy to see.

 

Grid layouts. I just don't like them on a forum. They confuse me and idk why.

 

Cbox's with the notification sound automatically enabled. I don't care if someone is chatting, and am usually assaulted with a noise that i don't know where it came from.

 

A billion images in mini (or regular) profiles. please stahp. My computer sucks. If it takes me 3 years to load a thread, I'm out.