I was just testing my DC instance by creating some users. I was thrown at first by the activation screen since it is so sparse and there is no clear indication that the “Activated your account” link is a link/button:
My first hit was that “Activate your account” was some kind of heading, and the part that was going to tell you how and give you something to click on was missing.
I realize this is the standard presentation of at least some links in DC, and can be styled easily enough, but I think it should be friendlier out of the box.
Sure - the question was how the button could become more newbie-friendly, since (for people who have not yet spent time with DC’s UI) it wasn’t easily identifiable as a clickable button!
I appreciate the CSS, @Mittineague, but my main point is that something like this CSS should be added to the “base” system (please excuse my lack of proper nomenclature, I’m just getting started in the open source world).
A whole bunch of people will deploy DC right out of the box, with minimal interface tweaks. I think simple things should be done to make that as good as can be.
I see your point, One problem being that it is very unlikely that any changes will please everyone. But a more balanced compromise might come ouf of this discussion, one never knows.
Make the “Activate your account” link more obvious to newbie users that it is a link/button they need to click on. Could be a background color, a prefix of “Click this link to:” or whatever is most DC standard but still obvious to a non-DC user.
It is very important that the new user clicks that button. To some people, especially people who are not ‘computer people’ and who are new to Discourse, it may not be immediately obvious it is a button and that they are supposed to click it to activate their account. This may be an appropriate place for a bit of hand-holding.
We have no actual data showing that this is a problem. E.g. nobody has ever been stuck here to my knowledge. @Barry_Chertov are you citing a specific user who reported it to you or just “a feeling you had”?
(not necessarily opposing a change here, just never, ever heard this particular complaint before from any customers or actual users)
I confess I was perplexed at first. I thought something had gone wrong and I reloaded the page. A few seconds later I thought to check to see if “Active your account” was a link.
If it threw me for a (minor) loop, I’m sure many of my luddite users will find their first experience with this new fangled software I am going impose on them discomforting, even if they eventually figure it out.
Nah, no need to show a button as a link. But Click Here, I guess – it can help in some cases, I wish I had more evidence for this than “Barry had a feeling it could be a problem”
I turned down the “contrast” on my monitor’s hardware settings and now I see the grey! Gosh, I wonder what else I’ve been missing for the last few years! Sheesh!
