Hold onto your hats everybody… We have a new extra-special theme just for us!
Our designer-in-chief @jordan-vidrine has been hard at work creating a bespoke look for our community here on meta and we have just pressed the button to make it our new default.
To better organise the bug/ux reports for this (and to try out the new Form Templates feature ) we now have the theme feedback subcategory to add the issues to. If you spot something awry please create a topic in there.
After reading a few topics, I can say on a large 32" screen; the background is honestly too distracting for me—especially the yellow spot. Because it’s not uniform and it takes a lot of space behind, it’s very eye-catching. Maybe I need to get used to it, though – will see in a few days!
So first of all: I think it’s great that meta is getting a bit of a refresh!
A few nitpicks, though:
As mentioned by others, the background is a bit distracting at the moment and the page doesn’t render correctly on the left if the sidebar menu is collapsed
I think the content area could be a bit wider on desktop screens (maybe 50px on each side)
I would prefer to have the personal menu/profile icon aligned with the central content block on the right
In general I would prefer to also have the sidebar menu aligned with the content in some way; however the new theme also reinforces my opinion that the sidebar menu in general feels like it doesn’t really fit in well UX-wise. So potentially simple alignment wouldn’t completely resolve my issues with it.
Most of the new theme looks great and is a definite upgrade on the old.
My only aesthetic concern is this section, where the lines and blobs don’t make any sense to me, and the background is generally too “in your face” and busy:
I found one in the colour palettes and have ticked it to be user selectable. It may have been unticked for a reason though, so I’ll look into it more.
To gather and organise any issues for this new theme, we now have the theme feedback subcategory to make bug/ux reports in. (it also uses the new Form Templates feature too ).
If you see something, please create a topic in there. (also, if you’ve made a report in this topic already feel free to resubmit it in the subcategory. I’ll eventually slide them all over, but if you get there first then that’s fine by me )
And thanks for all the feedback so far. Keep it coming.