TypeDrawers Updates

James Hultquist-Todd · May 24

As most of you know, the search bar has been broken for a while. The fix was to update our theme. I’ve been working on the update for a little while but if you see anything that’s broken, please let me know.

Mark Simonson · May 24

OMG. What a shock when I saw the new design. Looks great!

John Butler · May 24

The site looks fantastic in your Oculi!

Thomas Phinney · May 24

There was a brief moment when I was confused as to whether I had landed on the correct web site!

It looks both more modern and more refined. Nice!

George Thomas · May 24

I really like the new UI, but I have one request: can you add back the ability to "Mark All Discussions Read"? That was one of the best features on the old site.

Yves Michel · May 24

Bravo! Nice design! And you kept the "Save Draft" function not available (shame!) on some other forums!

James Hultquist-Todd · May 24

Glad to hear you’re all enjoying it! @George Thomas , I’ll look into that.

EDIT:
I’ve put in a request for it to be added. Hopefully, it’ll be turned on early next week.

EDIT 2:

Here’s what I got from Vanilla:

All you need to do is go over any category you want and click the ellipsis, at which point you get the option to mark as read. Which them makes all those discussions within the category read for the user. There isn't a button to do this for every post on the community, the only option is for each specific category.

George Thomas · May 24

@James Hultquist-Todd, thanks for looking into it.

Andreas Stötzner · May 25

I miss the menu bar on the left side and I don’t like the tons of empty white space wasted.

James Montalbano · May 25

I feel as if I am drowning in all the white space

Peter Constable · May 25

Having the Discussions link pinned to the top is super helpful—I've been wanting that for a long time.

Thomas Phinney · May 26

The sheer amount of white space does mean a lot more scrolling.

I have to admit, my first reaction when landing on the main page is… that I want to leave.

I am not completely certain why that is, but I think it is just my personal reaction to Parabolica, the new main-page interface font. It seems odd that the main page headings all use it, but nothing large on the specific thread pages does.

Andreas Stötzner · May 26

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/lp/lqgzqvslm1cv.png

when I start at the main page, ca. 55% of the screen space is used for the header (and a ridiculous large search bar). 15…20% would be optimal; compare with other forums.

On that start page I see only the topmost two topics, anything else is hidden until I scroll like a maniac. With the old layout, at start I saw ~20 menu items on the left and ca. 10 recent discussion topics at once. So, the new layout has not half the display efficiency of the old site, rather 10% of it. That is too bad …

The body text face is nice, but the topics header typeface is just dull helveticaism i.m.h.o., really sad.

I have a feeling that I don’t like any more to be here.

Yves Michel · May 26

As for the use of the fonts, I find it very XXth century (not to say retrograde). Couldn't we move to something modern, and why stick to those "helveticaist" (like Andreas wrote) and other classic fonts?

There are so much modern and easy to read fonts on the market, namely those of the forum participants. Why not use them?

Please, let's move ahead!

Dan Reynolds · May 26

James, it looks great on mobile. Lots of people hate change, no matter what the changes may be. Indeed, some “subscribers” will always leave medium when redesign is put through, no matter which titles one considers. It just comes with the territory. Anyway, I think your update is fabulous! Keep up the good work.

George Thomas · May 26

@James Hultquist-Todd -- Regarding the "Mark Read", I have not been able to find it following their instructions. The only two things that appear for me are "Dismiss" (rarely) or "Tag" (always).

[Edited to Update] -- I finally found it. I have to be on the "All Categories" page to access "Mark Read". Not very efficient, IMHO.

James Hultquist-Todd · May 26

Thanks for all the insights everyone!

As I am woking within the boundaries of Vanilla Forums themes, there’s only so much I can deviate from their design. It’ll continue to be tweaked as time goes on.

James Hultquist-Todd · May 26

George Thomas said:

@James Hultquist-Todd -- Regarding the "Mark Read", I have not been able to find it following their instructions. The only two things that appear for me are "Dismiss" (rarely) or "Tag" (always).
[Edited to Update] -- I finally found it. I have to be on the "All Categories" page to access "Mark Read". Not very efficient, IMHO.

I agree. I wrote to Vanilla Forums about it. I’d rather the option exist on the main menu.

Andreas Stötzner · May 26

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/i7/0k286fwe0fuk.jpg

TypeVrawers

???

James Hultquist-Todd · May 27

Andreas Stötzner said:

TypeVrawers

???

We rebranded.

To be honest, I don’t like the big search bar either. I’m going to spend some time tomorrow exploring ways to make it smaller.

Jens Kutilek · May 27

For my taste, on mobile the main font of the postings is too large. It is much bigger than pretty much anything else, including the headings.

Adam Ladd · May 27

Thank you for the efforts to update the design! Like the new color scheme. I'd be curious about a shade of blue for the red to feel a little more relaxed and less alerting, to me. But it's nice, and just new, so I imagine in time will feel more settled. Just an observation to throw out.

Matthijs Herzberg · May 27

@James Hultquist-Todd I just want to say your fonts are so sick. Elfreth and Oculi are huge inspirations to me. The kind of typefaces that make me say "I wish I'd thought of that".

James Hultquist-Todd · May 28

Matthijs Herzberg said:

@James Hultquist-Todd I just want to say your fonts are so sick. Elfreth and Oculi are huge inspirations to me. The kind of typefaces that make me say "I wish I'd thought of that".

That’s so kind, thank you! I wish interesting display fonts came as to me as they seem to do for you.

Grant Bowers · May 28

Does the favicon need to change to reflect the new TD icon (logo?)

James Hultquist-Todd · May 28

It does; I made a new one but I haven’t uploaded it yet.

James Hultquist-Todd · May 28

@Jens Kutilek I agree with your comment about the mobil font size. The forum software doesn’t give me a lot of granular control over setting type sizes but I’m exploring options.

Adam Ladd · May 28

The changing logotype is a nice touch too... bit of freshness and inspiration. Curious, is that a planned rotating feature between a few (or many), or just experimenting with a couple styles?

James Hultquist-Todd · May 28

Thanks! Just trying to find the right fit. I have been thinking about doing the Typographica masthead thing and opening it up to sponsorship. The only issue is the fonts have to be on Adobe fonts (I can't do self-hosted fonts here).

Christian Thalmann · May 28

A few observations:

The new body copy font is very sexy, but perhaps a bit too exuberantly original for extended reading? Especially in the Italic. At any rate, it seems to be rather underendowed with Unicode coverage; both the capital Eszett (ẞ) and even the most basic IPA symbols (like ɑ) trigger a conspicuous fallback font.
I like the black-and-white sobriety of the main page, as well as the changing title font. However, I find it harder to distinguish read from unread thread titles these days, probably because the font's Bold isn't very assertive.
The name tags are tiny...

Georg Seifert · May 28

I just tried the new design on mobile and it looks good.

On old issue is still there. When you go back to the list of posts from a post page, by swiping from the left edge of the screen, it shows the list page for a tiny bit. But then it does a reload and jumps to the top of the page.

When using the regular back button it works as expected. (iPhone 13 with the latest system)

TypeDrawers Updates

Comments

Categories