Revamping TypeDrawers?

Sujan Sundareswaran

Now, I understand that everything here pretty much works, and no complaints on performance, but every time I visit TypeDrawers, it feels like I'm time travelling a decade back.

Is a revamp an option? Making it more mobile-friendly(maybe a PWA?), a more modern look and feel for the UI, and so on and so forth? Does a revamp make sense?

Theunis de Jong

Just so you know: the – ah – mobile friendly re-design of Typophile, with its post titles in 80 pt and the post text in a 7 pt sans in grey, was what finally and definitely drove me away there.

(After stoically enduring the endless font ID requests under all possible sub-fora except for the Font ID Request page itself, the prodiguous amounts of unhandled spam, and necro-posts reviving decade-and-a-half threads on why Helvetica Neue does not suck.)

Jasper de Waard

I agree that typophile's redesign is terrible, but that doesn't mean a redesign of typedrawers has to be. Fwiw, I would not classify typophile as mobile friendly at all.

I think a redesign of typedrawers would be nice, but on the other hand I think it functions pretty well as is, and I foresee endless debate after/before/during the redesign, so I'm not sure it would be worth it.

Chris Lozos

I see no need for a revamp.  The site works just fine as it is.

George Thomas

TypeDrawers works just fine. If it isn't broke, don't try to "fix" it.

Craig Eliason

Bringing back the Like button is the only revamp I need. 

James Puckett

I like that Typedrawers has a simple and effective design. It isn't selling anything and it isn't a showcase for some web trend. It works just fine on mobile. There's nothing that needs to change just to serve current novelty.

Sujan Sundareswaran

Hmm, maybe “revamp” was too strong a word. Maybe “spruce up” would have been closer. What I had in mind was some basic house-keeping: Retina icons, slightly bigger buttons on mobile, threaded replies for posts and so on.

Now, this really wouldn’t warrant a complete rewrite of the whole codebase, just some tweaks here and there.

@Jasper de Waard is right, it’d be impossible to get everyone on the same page for a revamp, but these basic improvements might be easier.

Others, thoughts now?

Ray Larabie

I'd like to see core/system fonts used for the message text font as missing glyphs have impeded discussions.

Vasil Stanev

I agree that the glyph support should be as large as possible, for obvious reasons.
Design and mechanics work fine for me.

Thomas Phinney

TypeDrawers uses out-of-the-box forum software. So, some things are very easily configured, some not so much so.

Agree that extended character set support would be nice. And the icons for flag, etcetera could be retina-friendly.

For everything else... if these things are easily done, then that would be cool. But I won’t be sad if some of these items are not changeable or are considered unimportant.

Eris Alar

I second the motion. Does Vanilla have an app that users can use for better mobile? I find myself using FB Groups a lot, or Slack, both of which work quite well on mobile. 

Vasil Stanev

If we fix what ain't broken, new errors might creep up. The biggest one is ensuring future-compatability for whatever mobile devices spring up in the next 5 years. I would bet my money on robust, not delightful.