Suggestions

I'll wager this is not the first time this has been raised

What is the reason for the turquoise-on-white, pale grey-on-white colour scheme?

I'll also wager that I am not the only person using this site who has vision problems.

What would our roads be like if traffic signs were turquoise or pale grey text on white backgrounds?

In order to read the discussion boards easily, I have to enlarge the font to a size that makes the page not fit the monitor ... and that means I am constantly having to slide over to the right to read what is there.

In fact I prefer a small font ... my visual acuity is not the problem so much as a loss of colour and depth perception

but with these faint colours, I have to make the text big enough that it jumps out at me.

Do the designers not consider the users at all?

has no one realized that the median age of users of this site might be just a tad older than your average Twitter user for instance, and more of us might appreciate nice crisp contrast in what we are reading?

This is truly one of the worst colour schemes I have ever seen on a website.

JoonieC .....................


this was raised when the site was redesigned some years ago .........................



you might not believe it, but the current colours are a MAJOR improvement on what the (obviously young) designers thought "modern"



Several members ended up leaving because that colour scheme gave them migraines, and even in one case brought on an epileptic fit :-(



Bad as it is ....................... this current colour scheme is much better than the youngsters thought suitable :-)




Maybe, they will pay attention to the complaints in a future re-design :-)




and .................. pigs might fly!

Ooh juat seen as pink flash fly past my window!

Oops not a pig, OH just fell off the roof, wearing only shorts he he...... :-D :-D

:-D

just reading this board ... there is truly no other website I have used in my life, and I have been on line since the early 1990s, that I have seen so many (valid, sensible) complaints about

(well okay, there is this women's interests forum website I sometimes frequent that is just as buggy and that is just as visually problematic ... but it's obviously an untended area of a commercial website just designed to get traffic for the commercial content ... hmm ............)

there are many genealogy chat boards out there, some even free of charge to use, that seem to be able to set up boards that function consistently and have good visual design and user-friendly functions, including clear instructions easily visible to users about how to use the forums

not rocket science ...

and when it comes to colour schemes and fonts and such, there must be so much information about readability available at the click of a mouse that anyone responsible for this sort of thing (who didn't already know about it, don't people study website design?) would have no trouble finding it ...

there is at least one free genealogy sites where you have a choice of 3 or 4 colour schemes AND font size

that's really the thing I should have specified ... I would like to be able to increase the font size without blowing up the entire page so it doesn't fit my monitor :-)

but really I don't want bigger font (although I know that would help many people enormously so I do want it too) ... just text with enough colour saturation that it stands out from the background better!

oh my ..., techno wizard here just figured out a workaround

in Firefox,

View > Zoom > select: Zoom Text Only

it works, I just have to stretch this reply box each time to make it usable.

is this something everybody but me knew? or should I share it more widely? :-)

well, I didn't know it ..............

but then I don't have a problem with the text size .......................


having cataracts removed does help certain vision problems .........

............... especially when they change your vision from very short sighted to long sighted :-)

I would suggest using a 10" tablet font size can be enlarged easily enough and easier to read ....well I think so

jax I use a desktop with two nice big standard-size monitors :-)

I have enlarged the font here w/o enlarging everything on the page now ... but the setting applies to all other web pages too, so for instance I can't enlarge a different page now to see pictures bigger and such

it really isn't the font size ... it's the lack of colour saturation in the turquoise print ... it's easier to see when it's larger, but I actually prefer a smaller font as long as the contrast between text and background is sharp enough

the grey text here is a shade too pale, and the turquoise text like for the names of threads and the authors of the OPs, in the forum lists -- where it is not bolded the way it is on the column headers like 'Last Post' 'Views' 'Replies' -- is just too faint when I reduce the font size ...

I know those with better eyesight would not likely find it problematic, but it also wouldn't be a problem for them if the colour were stronger!

when we were complaining about it ............... we were told this was "a modern clean look" ............


in other words we were old fogeys :-P


I had helped with the look of other sites, and had also spent years editing a small journal .................... and knew about colours, saturations, good background colours etc etc


but I was just "an old fogey" ................ the young designers knew better.



I for one, prefer a beigey background .................


but even the one we now have is way better than the pure white one that the "modern designer" foisted off on us ......... until the rampage started!


If you can believe it ....... the colour contrast was even worse.

the background was bright white. The turquoise was paler


it was YUK!


people actually left due to the problems it caused for them.

Joonie have sent you a screenshot... Have tested it on my laptop and thats how I see the text to fill the screen

hm hm, jax :-)

first, you can't do thumb-and-finger enlarging on a desktop monitor :-)

it is a lot more hassle when you have to work the slider with a mouse ... you can't pick what section of a page to centre it on, and once you have enlarged the page then every time you go to another page you have to reposition it all over again with the bottom slider, to see what you want to see on the right-hand side of the page and not the bumph down the left-hand side

as I said though, I got smart and discovered how to enlarge just the text on the page and not the page ... but that affects every internet site I visit, and it is really annoying me on other sites that I had set just the way I wanted them before and now they're all different ...

the text in your screenshot is waaay bigger than I need or have in mind ... I guess it's just that ordinarily I prefer quite small font so I'm not constantly scrolling and I just like a size up. I'd say I'm reading maybe 12-point Arial now. What I'm lacking is intensity in colour perception ... but I reallly don't think this is me, it's the site design, it's just worse for me than for some.

check this, though, when you type a reply in the box below. See how the text you are typing is a darker grey, basically light black, than the text in the messages already in the thread? that's how I want to be able to see what I'm reading.

then scroll up to the top and see how

Post Date

is a darker denser turquoise than

JoonieCloonie Report Edit Delete

It's just the very worst on the My Threads page where all the thread titles and OP names are turquoise (and no line of grey text from the post shows below the subject lines as it does on Find Ancestors e.g.) and there just is not enough definition

What can I say. I hate it! I just want to go back to my normal size font and normal browser settings and be able to see :-)

Joonie, sadly Sylvia is probably correct that despite your quite reasonable request for consideration of a change - NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

It's noticeable that posts on these various 'suggestions' boards have reduced markedly over the past couple of years as members got fed up with even bothering to put finger to keyboard to make their suggestions - as GR has IGNORED virtually everything anybody has ever said.

Once upon a time I thought we could actually get some improvements to the design of the tree pages but, yes, it was just a fairy tale.

Oops, there goes another flock of pigs...

Hi JoonieCloonie,

At present we have no plans to redesign the site, but will be consulting members when any changes are made to ensure that users receive the best possible experience.

Simon, I assure you that suggestions from members are noted.

Regards,

Shelley

hmmmmmmmm


I seem to remember that members were asked for suggestions the last time the site was redesigned ..................



Many of us, including myself, even took part in a test run of the new colour scheme before it was unleashed on the main site



as I said above, we were told we were old fogeys who knew nothing about visuals, and the young egos knew better.


I HOPE members suggestions and comments will truly be taken into account this time .......... and weight applied to the fact that end users may well know better about colour schemes than a designer.

more flying pigs?????????????

well there we have the confirmation :-)

funny how some of us have likely been using the internet since before some of them could read

and of course just reading in general since before their parents were born ...

somebody linked to an old website the other day from something I was reading, with the comment
'yes, we really did put in backgrounds like that. It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

http://www.whrc-wi.org/americanpie.htm

so thank heaven for small mercies at the hands of the cool kids, I guess!