This is probably the best theme I’ve seen yet! 
Can’t wait for the public release~
3 Likes
Love
Looks absolutely gorgeous – I love how airy, spacious and modern it feels.
This is definitely the look I was subconsciously expecting to see for Discourse today too.
This makes me just want to set up my own self-hosted Discourse again 
I didn’t have the right reason for my own (not enough people for a particular need) but I think I will soon again and I will use this!
Suggestions for Right Sidebar
I like the use of the right sidebar – I mainly just have suggestions for options that would be more relevant to me as a frequent long-time Discourse user.
Bookmark preview
My suggestion is that it might be handy to have my bookmarks mentioned somewhere on the home page – maybe 3 or so, where I can preview 1 line of the bookmarked post and the reason for bookmark.
I do tend to forget about my bookmarks if I don’t have a timer for them, so it would be handy to be reminded about those. But timed bookmarks would also be even more super handy to have.
Maybe it could show the bookmarks that have a timed reminder and are upcoming (e.g. in 2 days, in 1 week, in 2 weeks). This would definitely be relevant for me on the home page.
I’m guessing that these would be customisable too but just wanted to check:
Top topics instead of top contributors
The top contributors list feels a little competitive to me, and it might be the same people every week, so it might not change much day-in day-out.
Maybe being able to see the top 3 trending topics this week would be nice to have as an option in that space too. (Include topic and ~1st sentence preview) This would be a nice handy touch to the Latest page, and would save me from having to switch to Top and switching to ‘Week’.
Drafts
Another thing that I tend to forget about is drafts that I have in progress (like for posts and topics).
That could also be another option, to show the 3 most recent drafts that I have (include 1-sentence previews), so I can finish them off.
Left sidebar
Categories
On Meta, there are a lot of categories and a lot of vertical spacing between each one.
I think for me, the vertical spacing unfortunately makes the list appear a lot longer and a lot more overwhelming than it otherwise would be:
I’m not bothered by having the categories, like having channels to navigate in Discord. But I think that having them with less prominence and emphasis - less vertical spacing, smaller font, thinner column width, and lighter colour (grey instead of black) - would make it feel like it’s not as urgent or pressing for me to look at.
Final remarks
Other than that, I really like how this looks.
If you need me to clarify my suggestions, please let me know. I can also try to do mockups of what I mean – just replying quickly since it’s nearing the end of my day now.
Having those (bookmark reminders, current top 3 trending topics, drafts) could really fill some use cases for me.
I think this theme would also go a long way to making Discourse feel more broad, wider in its use case, like casual as social media / mobile OS (since some people are more comfortable with that air rather than forums — which I used to find that some people would find too cold / distant / too perhaps nerdy even, for them — and too hard to get them to sign up on a brand new forum)
Feels like a beautiful coat of paint for Discourse! 
15 Likes
Search
I just noticed this myself too. I have to scroll back to the start of topic to search a couple of times, which made me feel frustrated at losing my place in the topic.
Incorrect reply icon
I also noticed that the icon for a reply to a previous post now seems to be incorrect (it shows as 
, when it ought to be a curved arrow.)
Consistency with Rounded Edges
I notice that these buttons in the top right have rounded edges:
It would also be nice to have other buttons have rounded edges too. e.g.
I do realise that it might be easier with the Discourse buttons theme component though – but just wanted to bring it up.
Topic slider
On desktop Safari, with a post open, I click the topic’s post navigator (not sure of official term). Here is a pic:
This is what it looks like — the bottom is cut off unfortunately:
Category pages
For the category description, I think that it seems to be too similar to the topic titles, and it was too hard to distinguish — I thought it was a topic title at first glance.
Maybe having the description in smaller font and on a very light grey background would help to distinguish it.
10 Likes
That’s a huge visual upgrade! Everything looks so clean, modern and visually appealing - fantastic job!
I’ve found some minor things:
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If you select “Top” topics, the dropdown Week DEC 13 - DEC 19 seems to lack some padding:
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Even if you don’t enter any bio or webpage, the empty spaces are still visible in the profile sidebar block:
6 Likes
2 Likes
sorry didn’t know
2 Likes
A lovely theme! I’m quite a fan
Something I’ve noticed whilst checking my notifications is that the new icon set and font awesome seem to be mixed up in the notifications when pressing your profile picture.
3 Likes
I noticed the ‘slash’ (/) key does not pop out the search field 
Also very interested in testing this theme on our forums!
3 Likes
Hi, I want to recreate the header separation of the notifications and user which you have done, can you tell me which file you edited? Did you make a theme component or edit the widget/header.js and place in your theme?
2 Likes
TBH this theme is game changer - but it also shows the lack of coherent approach to design system on Discourse (even with the Styleguide). Some components have rounded corners, others have squared ones… “Cool” to see that even on an official level, with an official theme, it’s still an issue 
It’s nearly impossible to have a consistent theme on Discourse, sadly
5 Likes
It appears there is a complication with the utilisation of this particular theme on my Samsung Galaxy Fold 5 (Chrome); other themes function without fault.
The sidebar fails to reveal itself unless I navigate to a topic directly from the homepage.
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Good progress, but I notice you can’t filter topics by views and posts as you can with the original theme style. I know I personally do that in my community a lot, to see how past topics are trending.
2 Likes
I notice the scrollbox being quite bigger than the rest of the content in the theme. It’s also hard to read sometimes.
My [seperate] suggestions:
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Perhaps we could make the scrollbar blue, or a color that indicates position to avoid confusion.
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Or, we can replace the current scrollbar with a tick that looks like a - sign in the middle of the scrollbar.
1 Like
I agree with the comment regarding scrollbars, also the left-hand category menu is really blown out (a lot of spacing, wide scroll bar - it feels cramped yet at the same time seems like a lot of space is wasted. Maybe it could be tuned a bit? The scrollbar has oldtimey windows feel, can it be skinned to look more modern and thinner?
5 Likes
Maybe it’s a temporary effect of ongoing development, but on my 11“ iPad Pro, the side bar menu is currently missing on the front page. I can see it when opening the settings. However, there it is cut off on the right side.
On the 12.9“ model, everything seems fine, though.
3 Likes
Some feedback:
The basic decisions made in this theme are probably some of the best across all of discourse. There’s some major affordance and gestalt issues with it though:
affordance imbalance
On the category page, the actual posts have the least affordance of the entire page, with the Top Contributors section having the most affordance. That means that you have to wrestle your gaze away from the juicy bento box and massive top contributor to stay focused on the posts, which just isn’t helpful for that page. A fix for this may be to give each post a post snippet (similar to the Air theme) to increase their affordance, while also deemphasizing the Top Contributors section and your own profile card. For most intents and purposes, those sections are static and secondary; I visit the “bug” category to see bug reports in them, not to see who commented the most on bugs.
gestalt confusion
Also on the category page, the “New Topic” button in the sidebar belongs to the wrong group. It looks like it’s a tab for a different type of content (like “home”, “messages”, “following topics” are), while the category header itself doesn’t have anything.
It wants to go here:
Something similar is true for the homepage. If you don’t want to have a button inside the “Home” header, consider giving the button a lot more affordance while keeping it in the sidebar (similar to the “tweet” button on twitter), or having a textbox-looking underneath right underneath (facebook, reddit, also twitter if you’re on the home feed) - or both!
(NB: note how twitter’s sidebar, despite doing the same thing as you, doesn’t completely overpower the feed because the items inside the feed are so much more massive on twitter. Even at a minimum size, it’s 3 rows with lots of padding and a bolded name, vs discourse cental’s 2 rows, without any bold text)
12 Likes
Curious to see how this looks with categories.
5 Likes
Neat, the url wasn’t working before with that theme. Doesn’t look bad.
4 Likes
I noticed multiple color schemes labeled Central Dark and Central Light. Is this intentional?
3 Likes