General Chat

Too bright for me. There should be an option to control the background screen colour. It is too bright to study my tree properly. Suspect this has been done to aid printing so that there are not too many colours but that could have been done differently. Reminded of the change to friendsreunited which is just a disaster. Friendsreunited was much much better the way it was before. :-(

Both Phil and Estelle have posted on the following thread

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/suggestions/thread/1307219

You don't need special glasses just to view this site....you need these glasses for computer viewing of all sites!

I just want my smiling faces back.

The word Emoticons is there but no faces for me

I did complain but they told me in a reply email to clear my Cache and that

should fix the problem but it did not.

Anyone got any idea how to get my icons back ...using windows 8 XP Home Add.

suex

Edit
I suffer with Glaucoma and this site is now dangerously to bright for me,I see my eye spec on the 22nd will ask him for advise

I wear "multi-focals" with "auto sunglasses".

They cost over $1000 Aus.

They are fine for every site except THIS ONE!

If I bought a pair of "computer glasses" they'd have to go on top of my own glasses!

Why should anyone have to buy special glasses, just to see this site?

I've had enough of the faffing about. :-P

If this new set- up hurts your eyes, are you viewing the screen through reading glasses?................. they are just not good enough. Specs for computer use only are what should be used, certainly makes a difference Cheap enough if you buy them online, £10-£15, you don't have to pay any more.
Nobody is going to see you and perhaps laugh at your choice of cheap frames!

Rubbish.

So it does KenSE :-)

Wend, they are certainly bright against this background! They have lasted very well in the garden also :-D

Well I have no ads on mine .

Thank goodness for your Sweet Williams, Rose, is all I have to say. Really cheers the page up :-D

well it's obviously NOT the case that GR is not abe to change the colour slightly because they have been doing so ! I had 'pop ups ' blocked and it just queried if I would allow them , which I did and have a variation on the colour :-S

The reply box did show pink before, and now it isn't :-S

I have just had a thought - do Bright Solid have shares in Rayban????? :-)

Just got a hell of a shock when I logged on! It is rather bright on here, I hope they'll tone it down a bit. Haven't had time to explore yet but apart from the brightness it looks ok. I'll let you know later when I've had a nosey around.

K...nothing was wrong with it - that's why they changed it because if the members like it it can't be right - right?

Oh Gawd, here we go, another change.....it's not easy on the eye, this one.

My question to GR is.....
......WHAT in heck's name was wrong with the old colour scheme?

Rollo - are you spying on me? 'cos you have me spot on...

I am 50+

I work full time so I'm on here early in the morning, late at night and the weekends

I am not a technophobe but I like simplicity. I don;t want to change the colour scheme simply because GR are so blinkered they won't listen to anyone

I come on here to indulge my passion for FH and to have fun. GR have made my time on here "not fun". I had a similar issue with A..they introduced their "new search" which was the default and which I find (as horrible as the GR new tree) horrid. I told them I hated it and that I would not renew my basic membership unless they provided a fix that allowed me to choose their much superior old search. They did. I am now a worldwide member. A site that listens to its members. GR could do worse.

Jude

Rose - spot on :-)

The look n feel is set up using something called a .css file. Gru will download their css files into yr computer. The browser then takes instruction from the .css file for colors, fonts and layout. Different browsers and versions will not all "render" the .css / html in the same way. That is why the emoticons have vanished from IE8.

All browsers offer the possibility of assigning to any site a custom .css file which will override the site settings without affecting any other sites. The details of how to do this vary from one browser to another. In any case it does not involve overwriting the site css. These custom css files are kept in the User folder for the browser.

Opera offers a set of built in alternative styles. One of these has white-on-black instead of b-o-w and another is for visual problems. However both of these stop the tree being displayed at all.

If you have anybody with enough know how to create a modern web page (from scratch, not using a point n click tool) then they'll be able to set up a suitable .css file for setting the colors / fonts to yr liking fairly quickly and add it to yr browser..

Another approach is to use one of the many customisation add-ins.

Unfortunately posting .css files here is fraught with problems. I myself override the native css for sites such as Ancestry and this one which at least makes for a quiet life.

The browsers themselves have bugs of course. Firefox has one going back a long way which causes small graphics to disappear when the site css is overridden. Relevant in this context as it stops the M/F pix being displayed on the tree..

Changing the colors for Gru themselves is a trivial exercise. Offering (say) three alternative color schemes would also be very easy. They could even build in some wonga type sliders for color and intensity without much effort. It is just that they seem to have a certain obstinacy so they don't.

Something like 70% of the membership are over 50 - FH is not something that appeals to most younger people and those 30-60 tend not to have much time for it unless they are at home a lot. This is exactly the age segment who dislike trendy difficult to read displays in print or on the net. They are also likely to have a display at 1024x768 rather than the larger and widescreen displays now popular.

It is simply not possible to please all of the people all of the time on something like this. As it is easy enough to offer a choice that is the obvious solution. It is maybe not a great business decision to get so many paying users upset when a fix is so easy to do. Especially not after 9 months of chaos and bugs and especially not when there are plenty of issues still not sorted.

Jiminy - FR - that's why it's free now because it's rubbish compared to sites like FB.

Don't disagree with the comment "drab dirty green colour" but there are degrees of change....and this isn't it. Your (cricket's) eyes probably cope better being compound ones :-)

And as I say, for me, it's not about how the new tree performs...it's just that I do not like it. It could be the best performing family tree in the whole wide world but it's not a format I like or find easy on the eye.

And a lot of members agree with me it seems - certainly more seem to complain about it than support it. But if we can't have both I accept that only the new all-singing-all-dancing tree can be supported. For GR's sake, I hope they retain enough paying members to justify their leap of faith.