Envisioning an ultra minimal theme for Discourse

[meghna (Meghna Jalan)]

My next theme will be an ultra minimal theme which will remove/hide all the advanced (power user) features from Discourse and will be a sort of beginner theme. I wanted to collect some feedback/suggestions before starting work on the theme.

Here’s how I am envisioning it:

Homepage

Poster avatars column and Views column will be removed.

Before:

After:

Composer

Preview pane and toolbar will be removed.

Before:

After:

Topic page

The topic map, footer buttons, suggested topics section and the username (next to full name) will be removed.

Before:

After:

The above screenshots are raw mockup and the final theme should look much better.

Any more ideas on what more to remove/update for a minimal theme?

[meghna (Meghna Jalan)]

Here’s the theme in action:

Modest, a minimal theme for Discourse

This aims to be an ultra-minimal theme for Discourse. Various elements of the UI has been removed in favour of simplicity. Some of the removed elements: Homepage (topic list) posters avatar column Homepage (topic list) views column Composer preview pane Composer toolbar Topic map Topic footer buttons Topic timeline footer controls Homepage: [Screenshot 2021-02-25 at 11.18.21 PM] Homepage with composer open: [Screenshot 2021-02-25 at 11.18.43 PM] Topic page: [Screenshot 2021-02-25 at …

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

For this to work, we need to obliterate entire classes of functionality in Discourse. Mercilessly.

Remove any UI that is even a little complex.

Reduce everything to little more than a slightly fancier Whatsapp. Unless it is absolutely essential, it is GONE.