Coding What do you believe should be the most important factor in a skin?

[Josie 198]

What it says on the tin! What do you think should be the most important factor?

 

For me, it is always going to be the usability of the skin- that it is intuitive. You don't have to guess where hovers might be lurking or click on a bunch of things to open up the navigation. Everything important is out in the open and not hidden away. I will always, always, always value the functionality of a skin over how pretty it looks.

[Morrigan 1,826]

I'm right with you there on functionality. I also think responsive is important. It's pretty difficult to do but it makes me happy, especially since I do browse sites mobile on a regular basis.

 

I additionally have a love for uniqueness but that is a personal peeve of mine.

 

For the most part most skins are a nightmare to read. I think, even now, the sites I'm on I have to zoom in on them whether it be for font size or for font color being too close to the background color.

[Robmin 10]

I'd say form should always follow function first of all. It should be easy to gather information from the skin, it should be easy to read, and it should be designed in a way it makes sense for people to click on certain things to get to certain things. Once the form is following function dress it up as you will - just remember that your aesthetic design should never trump that the skin is made to provide people some prettification towards their roleplay posts, and the ease of telling a story should always be the biggest part.

[Guest Archaic Cyborg]

Readability, most definitely! No tiny fonts, or complicated styles: cursive handwriting, square LCD fonts, and no pink 3D-effect crap. There should only bearound 3 different fonts in total, for loading speed and easy recognition; it takes time to recognise what's a heading, a subheading, title, body font, etc. 

 

Tying into this would be colour palettes and grphics; fewer graphics, compressed file sizes, small header images, preferably no gifs (apart from affiliate banners). It causes eyestrain to look at crazy rainbow colours or low contrasts, e.g pastel colours.

[Icewolf 258]

The most important thing for me is readability. I like fancy fonts to some extent, because they make a site attractive but they should be restricted only to headers and titles, and be readable. If it's not readable, then it doesn't really do anything for the site, really.

 

I hate tiny font sizes, georiga, times new roman, and courier. I've noticed that on many of the skins I look at, that georiga seems to be a favourite font of designers, as is making text tiny and light coloured background with little contrast with the font. You can also have layouts which have too much stuff on it and it's either a distraction, or you end up missing important information.

 

I suppose readability also ties in with functionality as well as I've come across designs where the C-Box obscures the main typing area (even on one site, a resource site, where the C-Box obscured the submit reply button, meaning that I couldn't even make a post!)

 

Readability is a problem I found on one site when I was advertising the board where the posting text was so small, I couldn't see that I'd missed off one of their requirements and the bbcode was messed up.

[Death Kitten 200]

I can easily argue that most of those things feed into each other. I spend a lot of time using my phone for my browsing, and nothing saps readability and usability faster than a lack of mobile/reactive features to a skin. Pile in bad font choices, hover crap, too low contrast, too much bandwidth needed to load...

 

A majority of people access the web from mobile devices, be it phones or tablets, so it is critical in order to reach the widest audience, that your site be mobile friendly. That encompasses reactive styling, keeping load times low, having high contrast colors (just think, if it's bad on a monitor inside a building, how much worse it is walking down the street on a sunny day), legible fonts that aren't the size of ants.

 

PS. Please use relative font sizes. Do not hard code your font to a certain point, because everyone's screen is different, everyone's monitor resolution is different, and everyone's ability to see clearly is different.

[Morrigan 1,826]

I find this thread highly interesting. Specifically the second poll question.

[Josie 198]

12 hours ago, Morrigan said:

I find this thread highly interesting. Specifically the second poll question.

Yes! It would appear that the majority of people browsing forums (or at least the majority of people on The Initiative, but if we want to act like this is a normal sample population, then...) aren't at all satisfied with the kinds of skins they're presented with. I'm trying to think of a way to articulate this into a series of follow-up polls to pinpoint more specific points of interest, but if anyone else has an idea of how to do that I'd love to see what you come up with!

[Syn 1]

I voted for Readability as I feel that represents most of the other choices as well. If, say, intuitiveness is lacking, readability has probably taken a dive as well. 

 

I need for the site to be easy to read. Roleplaying is a writing hobby (if we're not doing LARP or tabletop), and so it should be remarkably easy to read what is being written. I don't think font size should be below 12, I don't think it should be laden with special effects, and more importantly I want the pertinent information freely displayed. The number of skins I've seen that hide latest posts, sub-forums, post dates, forum descriptions, and more is outrageous. Passive hovers that don't reveal or hide information are great, but so many sites put everything behind a hover.

 

Which ties into the second question. I outright loathe 90% of the skins I come across. There is a very keen "muh aesthetics" culture from the two sites that distribute premades so popularly and I right and truly hate it. Most are nigh-unusable. It often feels like I need to place an ice-pick through my skull just to navigate, let alone use, some of the sites I see. 

 

It is rare for me to like a skin. 

[Rune 1,099]

5 hours ago, Gothams Reckoning said:

Yes! It would appear that the majority of people browsing forums (or at least the majority of people on The Initiative, but if we want to act like this is a normal sample population, then...) aren't at all satisfied with the kinds of skins they're presented with. I'm trying to think of a way to articulate this into a series of follow-up polls to pinpoint more specific points of interest, but if anyone else has an idea of how to do that I'd love to see what you come up with!

Maybe branch out into colours, font size/style, images, category display, etc?

 

I know one of my biggest complaints with sites is that while their colours might look nice together, they don't play nice over a large field and you're left with either a hot mess or too many colours/design choices that don't form a cohesive board but might look nice separately if they toned down some other elements.

 

Also tired of EVERYTHING being some fancy cursive swirly font.

[Hardy 0]

I enjoy simplicity.

 

I've noticed a new trend where sites are starting to become as cluttered and overwhelming as the collection loaded atop the hoarder lady from The Labyrinth. I have no trouble navigating sites with lots of fun, fancy features. I enjoy hovers. I enjoy font awesome icons. I enjoy modern and innovative ways to move forward and challenge what can be done with designing an rp board - just look at what Black did for CFS and how it changed the game. I love looking at what masterfully creative coders can design, it's exciting to me.

 

I do not like clutter. I don't need 12 different things to read about a character or author smooshed above every post, 15 times on a single page - accompanied by an even gaudier signature mess. I don't need 10 different icons and graphics lodged around the post I'm trying to find and read. I don't need a million different patterns and textures and a plethora of different colors clashing all over. I want something smooth, sleek, and minimal. My focus is reading posts - the focus should remain on accessibility and distraction-free reading of stories.

 

This is just my personal preference.