AI-generated summary
This thread discusses preferred Discourse themes, with Foundation being a popular choice for its simplicity and mobile-friendliness. nickdb highlights the benefits of building custom themes using the new blocks API to ensure consistent experiences across devices. There is also a brief semantic discussion where merefield suggests “Theme” is the more idiomatic term than “interface,” which was agreed upon by Lilly. Other users share diverse preferences: satonotdead enjoys the Meta Branded style and is developing a custom theme blending retro and brutalist elements; NateDhaliwal prefers Foundation on mobile and Meta Branded on desktop, citing discomfort with the Horizon UI; and singi2016cn uses the full-width version of Foundation.
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Built our own based on the new blocks api. Going live tomorrow. Being able to create a consistent experience across mobile and desktop surfaces was important. The latest view automatically refreshing for new posts and translations is just more seamless.
Use cases vary but, for ours, a clean and intuitive theme can only be achieved by customisation.
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Arguably the “interface” doesn’t change much between instances. I think it might be better to use the idiomatic word “Theme”.
That said there are a few “apps” and other interfaces that go well beyond theming.
eg > termcourse: read & post on Discourse instances from the terminal
I like the Meta Branded style, I noted that we share some of their overall design (headings in Inter, violet palette as the primary color) from before they implemented it.
In the forum I’m about to re-launch we use a custom Horizon, and we are about to launch our branded version as well, with a fusion of retro/old-school and comic-style brutalist elements. Subtle, along with the unification of several components that we will integrate into our main theme.
I also like Foundation, but I got used to modern interfaces, and I no longer feel comfortable with such simple styles. I am also thinking about keeping a classic view with categories like forums used to be, ultra-lightweight and almost without images. For now, it’s on the backlog; everything is moving very fast, and priorities have to be set.
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I use Foundation usually, like on mobile here on Meta (but use Meta Branded on desktop). I don’t reslly lile the UI for Horizon, so I’d tend towards the forum’s default theme (something custom) or Foundation.
agreed. edited title.
Foundation(full-width)