Announcement New Forum Themes - Share Your Feedback

[SHaines]

Hey there, folks!

We’re very excited to bring new themes to the Tom’s Hardware forums! Please take these new skins for a test drive and share your feedback here in this thread. Keeping all your comments in one place will help us better track any potential issues, so make sure to chime in and let us know how you like them!

To try out your new theme just scroll to the bottom of the forums and click on the Tom’s Hardware link seen here:

From there, just click on the different options and you’re all set!

Make sure to try them out for a while and confirm everything is working as it should, so we can quickly spot any instances of forum strangeness.

Thanks for your patience as we’ve worked to get these in place. We can’t wait to hear from you!

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I would like the old themes back as an option at least. New themes are good but different. I dont like change.

 

[velocityg4]

Now I know what is off. I was using the compact view. It got rid of all the junk underneath the member names. It made viewing a thread much neater. Now we've got huge blank spaces between posts again. Unless someone is long winded enough to fill beyond all the trophies and member stats nonsense.

I'd certainly like a compact view again. What I don't understand is why these new themes couldn't just be additional options rather than replacements of the old ones?

 

[Colif]

Chooser sure beats my guide

 

[Colif]

Dark theme, sub node forum (for example win 10)
Read threads show as white... this is good
Unread threads, whether you replied to them or not, show as red...

why can't we have a different text color for threads you have replied to once but not read latest, compared to completely unread threads?

 

[Glenwing]

Really not a fan of red text for unread threads, standard black text is better, with bold/non-bold used as the indicator of unread status, the way it was before.

It's a doubly poor choice for the dark theme, since "unread" threads use white text instead of black. Since red is perceived as a "darker" color than white, it means that already-read threads stand out more than unread threads, white vs red. Again, it would be better to simply use white text for everything with bold/non-bold as the read indicator. The red text all over the page is just hard on the eyes in general anyway.

Which one of these threads catches your attention over the others? The one I've already read of course! ^.^

Spoiler

Also there is the same issue with the profile info on the left of each post. In dark theme, the user rank is more prominent than the Username itself, because the rank is white while the name is red, white is a brighter color than red. So it ends up being a bit backwards.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Really not a fan of red text for unread threads, standard black text is better, with bold/non-bold used as the indicator of unread status, the way it was before.

It's a doubly poor choice for the dark theme, since "unread" threads use white text instead of black. Since red is perceived as a "darker" color than white, it means that already-read threads stand out more than unread threads, white vs red. Again, it would be better to simply use white text with bold/non-bold as the read indicator.

Agree. The red is also a little annoying on the eyes sometimes and BOLD/normal fonts would be nicer.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Finally.... A native dark theme. I like that instead of bold text it's red. Makes it stand out more. Thanks

 

[Frag Maniac]

Finally.... A native dark theme. I like that instead of bold text it's red. Makes it stand out more. Thanks

Love the dark part, dark enough but not too dark.

Hate the choice of red text. Why? Because you need a display capable of 4:4:4 Chroma to see it sharply, and quite frankly a lot of displays still aren't, including my Panasonic Alpha IPS HDTV.

Any chance there will eventually be more dark theme choices? I'd hate to think we waited all this time to only have a red text option.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Love the dark part, dark enough but not too dark.

Hate the choice of red text. Why? Because you need a display capable of 4:4:4 Chroma to see it sharply, and quite frankly a lot of displays still aren't, including my Panasonic Alpha IPS HDTV.

Any chance there will eventually be more dark theme choices? I'd hate to think we waited all this time to only have a red text option.

It's still more noticeable than when using dark reader and having bold white text that was hard to see compared to the red color

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Also, I don't know when it happened, but I'm glad that the top bar of the site scrolls with you now on mobile. Makes so much easier to open left side bar when at the bottom of a long thread. Thanks for that too.

 

[Frag Maniac]

The fact remains, anyone that knows anything about displays knows red is one of the worst colors for text due to the reasons I mentioned. There are plenty other colors that offer easy to see text without the annoying blur.

So again, can any staff here tell me if this is all we'll get for dark theme options?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

The fact remains, anyone that knows anything about displays knows red is one of the worst colors for text due to the reasons I mentioned. There are plenty other colors that offer easy to see text without the annoying blur.

So again, can any staff here tell me if this is all we'll get for dark theme options?

Well seeing as how red is the main accent color for Toms most likely for now.
But alternatively for those with displays like yours, they might consider a blue and black theme.

 

[Barty1884]

I'm sure other themes are/could be in the works, and feedback posted here will be taken into consideration.

FWIW, I don't love the red on black, but given red is Tom's accent colour, and it means we finally have a dark theme, it's not too bad.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

I'm sure other themes are/could be in the works, and feedback posted here will be taken into consideration.

FWIW, I don't love the red on black, but given red is Tom's accent colour, and it means we finally have a dark theme, it's not too bad.

Yeah. The red looks fine for me on my phone, but that is obviously because it has P-OLED display.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Yeah. The red looks fine for me on my phone, but that is obviously because it has P-OLED display.

Yeah no kidding.

As far as red being the the accent color of Tom's, I get that. It's not a problem with icons like hammers, or even extremely large, bold, well spaced text as per the Tom's logo. Whenever you have smaller text with a lot of close parallel lines though, THAT'S where the bur comes in, which is why 4:4:4 chroma test patterns are always thin red parallel lines spaced closely.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Just got home a tiny bit ago, and have now realized that on the desktop version of the site, although the top bar follows you as you scroll, the side bar stays at the top of the page.
I understand that because mobile makes it pop out, it works there, and since it's already popped out on desktop, it can't pop out again.
But if there would be any way to just get it to follow you down on the side until you reach the bottom at which point the page next to it keeps scrolling, so as not to mess it up lol, that would be fantastic.
Because at this point now, I still have to scroll all the way back to the top of the page just to get to my side bar when on PC.

 

[Aeacus]

While i love the red font on unread topics (easier to spot them) and dark theme as well, the font was changed for some reason. New font is a bit smaller then the old one and changing the font size from Preferences doesn't enlargen the font inside the replies, which is sad.

 

[Colif]

theme feedback should be in here: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/new-forum-themes-share-your-feedback.3491131/

theme still a work in progress so maybe they can change text sizes and colours. I know Red will stay in some capacity as Tom's has been red for ever. I pointed out its hard to tell difference between completely unread threads and those you have interacted with but not replied to yet - they both red.

Dark reader and dark theme makes it look even more dark.

 

[Aeacus]

Last update brought us the dark theme and also red font on unread topics, which i do like.

What i don't like, however, is the font change. New font is a bit smaller than old font was. Due to that, reading posts is harder than before. Also, changing font size from Preferences doesn't change the font size within replies. So, no help from there either. (Note: i'm on PC and not on mobile.)

 

[Colif]

On mobile, not sure if this is new. The up arrow is directly above the share button on posts. Easy to click wrong thing.
Android

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

I see that I have been moved. Okie dokie

 

[USAFRet]

The default red is a bit strong.
But the previous Bold/Not Bold wasn't enough of a definition to tell Read from Unread.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I would rather have a different way to differentiate the 2.

 

[Colif]

Problem i have with dark theme is the white text lines grabs my attention far more than the red ones do, so I find myself only seeing posts I have already answered.

To me, ones I have already interacted with should be less bright than the ones I am yet to answer.

we can't use Blue as that is theme of Tom's Guide, but there must be another way to make the non read threads pop more than the read ones.