Customizing the look of the forums?

[donworth]

Did I miss it? Is there a way to change the colors of the text, etc. in the forums? I find the dark grey text in the forum posts a little hard to read and would like to change them to white text on a black background in all cases. Is that possible?

I love how much faster the forums are!

Will my.lotro.com also get the update to the new look?

[Yaksha42]

No, you can't change the color of the background or text.

my.lotro.com is gone forever, along with the lorebook, skirmish widget and a number of other features.

[beastybunny]

I do not understand the gaming industries love of light text on dark backgrounds. It is very hard on the eyes. I prefer dark text on lighter backgrounds and usability studies have shown it is easier to read. So many forum platforms allow for user customization to allow for the changing of background and text colors. Why wasn't that part of the upgrade?

[Lunasa]

I checked all options and did not find customisation tools. It is rather sad... I can read light grey on dark grey, but those bold white letters in on the forum title page I can't comprehend at all.

Oh, and the text editor inverting colours from black/white to white/black every time when you click outside of the editing area is just terrible.


However, I do like the increased functionality of the forum, browsing speed, ease of access to the Dev Tracker and Lotteries... Hopefully this will soon outshine the drawbacks of the colour scheme.

[Sapience]

I checked all options and did not find customisation tools. It is rather sad... I can read light grey on dark grey, but those bold white letters in on the forum title page I can't comprehend at all.

Oh, and the text editor inverting colours from black/white to white/black every time when you click outside of the editing area is just terrible.


However, I do like the increased functionality of the forum, browsing speed, ease of access to the Dev Tracker and Lotteries... Hopefully this will soon outshine the drawbacks of the colour scheme.

Custom themes aren't likely and a light theme is likely to be a very long way off and very low priority. That said, not all of the styling is behaving properly (no the forum names on the front page shouldn't be huge and blinding white (they were even worse yesterday).

[donworth]

Ha ha - I like the "blinding white" forum names. One man's "worse" is another man's "better" I guess...

[Lunasa]

(no the forum names on the front page shouldn't be huge and blinding white (they were even worse yesterday).

Phew... this is really good to know

[Thranthir]

So far I'm quite pleased with how the new look is except for the grey text in the posts..
It's a bit dark to read comfortable.. I mean I can read it but after reading one page with posts my eyes begin to get tired..

Perhaps (and I would understand it's probably not gonna happen but one can hope ) make the color a tad lighter.. not to much as that would hurt your eyes as well but as it's now #949494 maybe try #BABABA or something in between.. just to make it a bit easier on the eyes..

Cheers

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

I'm definitely going to have to rework the style. I'm thankful that Firefox with the Stylish extension exists for these things.

Everything is so...big and bloated.

[Clarineta]

The text is very difficult for me to see. Add me to the list requesting a change in background and text color to make it readable.

[Namesse]

Tally me as one who doesn't find light gray on dark gray back ground easy to read - and the "blinding white" text is about the only part that is easy to read.

I'll look into the Stylish add on to make this site useable for my eyes.

[djheydt]

Custom themes aren't likely and a light theme is likely to be a very long way off and very low priority. That said, not all of the styling is behaving properly (no the forum names on the front page shouldn't be huge and blinding white (they were even worse yesterday).

Well, I would really really like it if there were some better contrast between the dark-grey background and the light-grey text. It's hard to read.

[Lenton]

Yeah. This isn't very easy to read. Grey text on light black background is not the highest contrast ever.

[dirtyscarab]

White/light grey text on a black background is always an eye killer.

We've naturally become used to reading text on a light background (i.e. books, newspapers, e-readers etc) and for me it's really tough.

Overall though it's a terrific new layout. Would be nice to have an option for a light or dark skin in the future

[Keli]

Seriously Sapience, this shouldn't be dismissed so easily. It is a genuine medical hardship for many people and they may end up being excluded from the forums because of the lack of a light background. Please have a think about it.

[Milithion]

If you are using chrome or firefox you could install the plugin Stylish.

with this plugin you are able to change the .css code for this page.
here is a little sample to get the text color in posts to white:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("lotro.com") 
{
}

.postbit .postbody
{
color: white !important;
}

you could ofcause change alot more with this plugin...
i'm currently working on a new style for me. i'll post the code as soon as i'm finished.

[dori_bolger]

Grey text on a black background. Everyone at Turbuine must have exceptional vision, or maybe they just never took a look at this product before they rolled it out...

[staveisle]

Thanks for the tip, Milithion. I will have to give it a try. This lack of contrast is horrid.

[Sapience]

Grey text on a black background. Everyone at Turbuine must have exceptional vision, or maybe they just never took a look at this product before they rolled it out...

I've been staring at it for 14 hours a day for the past 4 days and many hours before that. It's not exactly where it should be, but is close. There are formatting tweaks we'll be making in the future. Stability and double checking account migrations are the primary concern.

[nonamebrand]

THANKS
FOR
THE
MIGRAINE
TURBINE!

No joke here, after less than a minute of straining my eyes trying to read the posts in the horrid light grey text on a medium grey background I started to get a migraine. Right now most of my vision is blocked out by flashing lights and I feel like I am going to puke. This is one of the worst migraines I have every had. Turbine, you need to (at the very least) let us choose white on black or black on white for the text.

[Will.]

I've been staring at it for 14 hours a day for the past 4 days and many hours before that. It's not exactly where it should be, but is close. There are formatting tweaks we'll be making in the future. Stability and double checking account migrations are the primary concern.

I realize black is the new black, but from a useability standpoint gray-on-black is objectively a poor idea. (10 out of 10 ophthalmologists agree.)

If you guys are dead set on a black background at least give us plain white text--or even that yellowish stuff in the top menu. Thanks!

[Sapience]

THANKS
FOR
THE
MIGRAINE
TURBINE!

No joke here, after less than a minute of straining my eyes trying to read the posts in the horrid light grey text on a medium grey background I started to get a migraine. Right now most of my vision is blocked out by flashing lights and I feel like I am going to puke. This is one of the worst migraines I have every had. Turbine, you need to (at the very least) let us choose white on black or black on white for the text.

Wow. As someone who has suffered from text book classical migraines since I was 13 (more than 30 years now), these forums don't have that effect on me and I have the kind that drop me for 2-4 days at a time.

As I've mentioned, tweaks are coming, but text color right now isn't a top priority.

As you've discovered, you can change your text color if you'd like to change your posts so that they don't have that effect on others.

[SNy-lotrolinux-EU]

Made some adjustments using Stylish, as others mentioned earlier.

Smaller (15% margin left and right), more padding, lighter text on darker background. Smaller headers.

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document
    domain("lotro.com"),
    regexp("https://www.lotro.com/forums/*")
{

    body {
        margin: 0px 15%                 !important;
    }

    .postbit .postbody {
        background-color: #060606       !important;
        color: #FEFEFE                  !important;
    }
    
    /* font size for the post content */
    .postbit .postrow {
        font-size: 13px                 !important;
    }
    
    /* font size for quoted posts */
    .postbit .postrow .bbcode_quote {
        font-size: 12px                 !important;
    }
    
    .postbit .postbody .content {
        padding: 15px 10px 0px 10px     !important;
    }

    .postbit .postbody .signature {
        font-size: 12px                 !important;
        padding: 10px 10px 0px 10px     !important;
        border-top-color: #353535       !important;
    }
 
    .postuseravatarlink img {
        width: 32px                     !important;
        height: 32px                    !important;
    }
    
    .username_container .username strong {
        font-size: 13px                 !important;
    }
}

HTH,
SNy

[Milithion]

I've installed Stylish in my Firefox. Now, could you give some directions on what to do with your code?

sure. if its installed you will find at the left bottom of you browser window a symbol of Stylish, click on create stlye-> new style a window should open. now simply add the code there and give a name for the style so you know what its for.

[J_Howell]

Is there a way to change the default width of the forums? It's annoying to have to scroll from side to side to read every post that's more than a sentence long. (Yes, I could make my browser window much wider, but I'm happy with my desktop the way it is and would rather not have the browser suddenly dominate my entire display...) I hope this is one of the upcoming tweaks to the system.