# שיפורים לגלישה בתצוגה מקדימה של ערכות נושא **URL:** \ **Category:** Feature\ **Created:** [2 במאי,‏ 2021,‏ 9:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improvements-to-theme-browsing-and-previewing/188928 "2021-05-02T21:59:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![oshyan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/oshyan/32/212644_2.png) [@oshyan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/oshyan)\ **Post date:** [2 במאי,‏ 2021,‏ 9:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improvements-to-theme-browsing-and-previewing/188928/1 "2021-05-02T21:59:57Z")
Hi Discourse team! I would like to humbly request some improvements to the theme browsing and preview experience. I searched a bit and didn’t find another topic on this, so apologies if I missed it and this is a duplicate. I also recognize that this could be considered multiple “feature requests”, but I’m including them all here because they’re all related and are different ways of improving things, not all of which I imagine will be implemented, if any. I’m hoping you prefer this to me posting 5 different feature requests of each of these separately. ## A Way to View Just Full Themes in Thumbnail View One up-front challenge with the current Theme category is that, although the main category view shows thumbnails (yay!), it includes theme components as well as full themes, and even broken stuff (marked as such). There is a tag for full themes only, but it does _not_ display in thumbnails: [https://meta.discourse.org/tags/c/theme/61/theme-full](https://meta.discourse.org/tags/c/theme/61/theme-full) So there is no way to view only “full themes” with previews (as far as I can see, anyway). So I either have to sift through the “all theme-related stuff” view, or I have to do without previews. Both approaches are less efficient and pleasant than a filtered “full themes” view with thumbnails would be. ## Thumbnails/Images for All Themes Another related issue is that some themes don’t seem to have thumbnails, whether because no image is included, or the preview is not loading correctly from included images, as in this case: > [@Alien Night Theme - A free Dark Theme for Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/alien-night-theme-a-free-dark-theme-for-discourse/54175): > > discourse2Summary Discourse Alien Night is a dark focused clean theme with the Dark/Light toggle component in mind to enhance your forum!eyeglassesPreview [Preview on theme-creator.discourse.org](https://theme-creator.discourse.org/theme/B-iggy/alien-night-theme)hammer_and_wrenchRepository Link [GitHub - B-iggy/alien-night-discourse-dark-theme: A night friendly dark Discourse theme - dark/light switcher inclusive](https://github.com/B-iggy/alien-night-discourse-dark-theme)open_bookNew to Discourse Themes? [Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/beginners-guide-to-using-discourse-themes/91966) Note: with the release 4.0.0 I redesig… or the preview image as shown in the topic preview is just not useful: > [@Grogu, a theme inspired by "The Mandalorian"](https://meta.discourse.org/t/grogu-a-theme-inspired-by-the-mandalorian/174758): > > On this New Year’s Day I present you the theme which is closest to my heart. heart The theme is inspired by [Grogu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grogu) from (my favourite) [The Mandalorian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mandalorian) TV series. I travelled far across the galaxy to fine tune the colour scheme to match Grogu’s appearance and maintain [Star Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars) aesthetic all-around. This is the way. [Disney\_Mandalorian\_S2\_Helmet\_H3] Homepage with composer open: Full page search: Topic page: … I realize some of these themes are posted by 3rd parties or are otherwise unofficial, but it’s also clear that _some_ moderation is being done in this category. So it would be nice if that could include making sure there is a working preview image. There is this 3rd party site appears to at least categorize things in a _previewable_ (i.e. thumbnailed) way by theme vs. component, etc: [https://discoursethemes.dev/themes/](https://discoursethemes.dev/themes/) However it is not an official source, it comes up lower in the Google search results (Themes in Meta here is naturally higher up), it’s unclear how well updated it is (although it may be drawing straight from the Themes category here on Meta?), and it has the same lack-of-thumbnail issue that exists here (presumably because it’s drawing its data from here). ## Theme Picker _in_ Theme Preview Instance Another thing that would help is just to have an instance of Discourse (which you already have, to somehow dynamically preview themes) which has all these themes setup in a _selector_ of some kind. As it is the previewing is clunky, you have to navigate to each topic here in Meta → Theme and click a link to preview. A small thing, certainly, but when you’re trying to compare numerous themes it is definitely a bit clunky and something of a time sink. ## Theme Browsing/Previewing and Install Within Discourse Of course there is also the theme install function within Discourse Customization settings itself. But it only shows links for “popular”, it’s not a full directory (I realize this is intentional), it lacks previews, and it too mixes components with full themes (with no way to filter). Again I understand this is intentional design of the “popular” category in the theme installer, but I’m suggesting that since there _already_ appears to be such a connection that dynamically populates a list of popular themes (presumably from Meta), I hope you will consider in the future adding a _full_ list of non-broken themes, ideally _with_ previews, and filterable by full theme, component, etc. In fact both of those could just be added in two additional tabs on the left side there, just beneath “Popular” and above “From your device”. I.e. - Popular - Full Theme Directory - Theme Component Directory - From Your Device - From a Git repository As a workaround what I do now is just to install all the possible themes I might want to use. Lacking a real directory within Discourse, this is a manual process, and also requires installing a theme component to really make it functional (for theme switching - I know you can do it through preferences, but that’s not ideal for testing many different options fully). It’s workable for now, but it took me a while to come around to realizing this is the best current solution (AFAIK). Other new users would certainly benefit from some enhancements to how themes are listed, previewed, etc. Thanks for reading and considering any of this! I know some of it may seem nitpicky, but as a relatively new Discourse admin, I think this is one area where it could stand to be friendlier, and some improvements might not even take much effort. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/improvements-to-theme-browsing-and-previewing/188928)._