Site: RHDN 3.0 Site Refresh Launched!

[Spooniest]

Ok so you changed the way the site looks? That's...fine I guess...?

Cool

[KaioShin]

Prefering lighter or darker themes is of course, a matter of personal preference. I'm sure Nightcrawler is gathering feedback and we'll have a darker alternative or the old themes back asap.

One thing I'd like to address though are the "it's hurting my eyes" comments. Guys, setup your monitors correctly! Even Perfect white is as easy on the eyes as any other color if your monitor is calibrated properly. Most monitors are setup too bright out of the box because they want to grab your attention on a crowded store shelf with 20 other monitors. But that's not an apropiate setting for daily home use!

[slidelljohn]

Is it possible to view the desktop version from my iPhone?
Hopefully I'm not stuck using the mobile version from my iPhone. There should be a option to choose the desktop version.

[varikares]

I don't care that it's bright, I just think the layout is more difficult to use than before.

The links from the left hand side of the screen that I thought were gone are apparently still there, but only if you make the window very large. The links just disappear if you make the window slightly smaller than normal.

This is very annoying, because I usually use half of my screen for browsing and the other for multitasking in other programs. I know many people who browse the internet this way.

All that stuff with the little boxes about "newest hacks, newest translations, random images" should be kept on the home page. I can see how it would be handy for quickly checking what the newest things are, but when you've already picked what section of the site you want to browse, all that stuff does is take up space.

I think the links that are on the left are much more useful for quickly navigating the site than annoying dropdown menus or the new boxes on the right. If the links didn't disappear I wouldn't mind this redesign at all. Maybe instead of hiding them the stuff on the right could be hidden instead. Or change it from 2 columns to 1 in small windows. That stuff takes up nearly half of the page.

EDIT: I noticed the stuff on the right DOES change to 1 column if you make the window really small. If that happened before hiding the links on the left then the layout would be fine.

That's just my opinion anyway. I'm not making any demands

[ushilives]

It would be cool to include to most recommended Rom Hacks too, could do that by possibly using most positive reviews maybe. There are so many Rom Hacks here that i don't know which ones to try out as i have limited time to play games.

[mziab]

Personally, I'm not quite as opposed to the new layout as some people here. In general I think it's a move in the right direction. Adopting modern standards and practices like responsive web design or AJAX is generally a good thing. What it all boils down to, however, is execution. As such, I'll try to list some of the usability and technical issues with the new layout I have noticed, hoping some of this will be taken into consideration.

First off, I'm not a big fan of the two-column sidebar on the right in desktop mode . I don't remember seeing many (if any) websites which implement such a layout. I understand this is to keep the sidebar shorter than it would've been with just one column. However, this draws attention away from the main content, especially with how much is going on in that sidebar. The root of the problem is that there are so many items. Some of them are frankly of little practical use, Random Hack Images and Random Translation Images in particular, which are just a collection of thumbnails with no other information to glean. I'd much rather see Recent Forum Posts moved to a more prominent position in the right column or even better in the left column, so I could just hide the second sidebar column entirely and be done with it.

Ideally, the site would allow you to choose what sidebar items you want to display and where, but I realize this is probably more trouble to implement than it's worth. I'd settle with each item in the sidebar having an unique ID, which can be hidden with user CSS or Adblock. Sure, you could do the same by counting child elements, but there's really no reason not to add those IDs.

As far as the mobile layout is concerned, I don't have any major grievances when using it in horizontal orientation. I think it is sufficiently functional. However, I've run into some snags in vertical orientation:

Firstly, the hamburger menu icon (show-menu) is done using an Unicode symbol which isn't guaranteed to be present in the font it's using. It displays fine on my desktop, but fails to do so on my tablet, which lead to some confusion until I clicked the blank space under the logo to display the menu. It would be safer to use a webfont like Font Awesome for this, or just pure CSS. Here's a snippet (I tried making it as close to the current symbol as I could, but feel free to tweak it):

Code Select Expand

.show-menu:after {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 20px;
    height: 2px;
    background: lightblue;
    box-shadow: 0 7px 0 lightblue, 0 14px 0 lightblue;
    content: '';
}

Speaking of mobile navigation, I personally think the Message Board should be a top-level entry instead of being hidden away under Community. The forums are probably the most often used section of RHDN, at least from my experience, so it would make sense to have it easily accessible even in mobile mode.

The forums are also a fair bit crippled on the smallest breakpoint. Since the right sidebar is hidden, you don't even get a link to view the most recent posts nor a search field. I also don't see any indication of unread private messages, either in the mobile or the full layout. Ideally, those could be displayed in the forum header under the breadcrumbs bar. Moreover, the topic listing in mobile mode doesn't even show any info about the last post in a given topic, just who started it, making it considerably less useful.

Last and not least, I would really appreciate another color scheme with less white/light-grayish backgrounds. Are there any plans for a theme that's similar to the old RHDN Pro plus the new responsive layout improvements?

[UltraYahweh]

I noticed that I can drag and drop items in dropdown menus which causes visual glitches.

[Shadic]

We've still got a dark theme, so I'm happy. Jazzy looks decent.

[Chronosplit]

Where?/How? I can't seem to find the themes.

Theme dropdown is on the left column of the main page.  It changes message boards.

[abw]

As the saying goes, you can't please all of the people all of the time. The new default theme was a bit of a shock at first sight, but after spending a bit of time with it, I don't have any strong desire to go back to the old default theme. As others have mentioned, there are a couple of rough spots to smooth out, but I'm feeling generally positive about the new default theme.

One thing I'd like to address though are the "it's hurting my eyes" comments. Guys, setup your monitors correctly! Even Perfect white is as easy on the eyes as any other color if your monitor is calibrated properly. Most monitors are setup too bright out of the box because they want to grab your attention on a crowded store shelf with 20 other monitors. But that's not an apropiate setting for daily home use!

+1. I normally run with my brightness set to 0 and contrast to 50 (adjusting for ambient light conditions as necessary; if you're used to 100 brightness, you might need some time to wean yourself off - try starting by dropping to 75 for a while), and the bright theme looks pretty sweet from here.

As mziab alluded to, applying your own user CSS is always an option on any site if you want to customize its appearance (now, obviously this is easier for people who already have a background in web design, but I would argue that acquiring some understanding of and familiarity with how web pages and the internet in general work is beneficial in multiple ways even to casual web users, and with the plethora of resources available online, the barrier to entry is fairly low). If you go that route and come up with something that looks great, I suspect staff would be very willing to consider adding it to the available themes; even if they don't, there's nothing stopping regular users from sharing their own custom themes with each other. I've actually done this myself to make the forum topic pages take up a bit less vertical space.

I like it, I just wish I knew how to make it have the old Metroid theme.

The theme selector still appears on the main site (I don't recall whether it was ever available on the forum or not) at the bottom of the left column and themes are still applied on the forum, but unfortunately the theme selector gets hidden along with the rest of the left column on screen widths < 1400px. That's one of those rough spots.

I'm not a big fan of the two-column sidebar on the right in desktop mode ... Some of them are frankly of little practical use, Random Hack Images and Random Translation Images in particular, which are just a collection of thumbnails with no other information to glean.

I actually like both the new Random Hack/Translation Images secions and their layout in a second column beside the Newest Hacks/Translations sections. I feel this change does a good job of highlighting both new and old contributions to the site, which was probably another motivating factor in its genesis following recent discussions on that topic. I've already used both of the new Random sections more than anything else on the front page!

[nesrocks]

I really don't get the complaints. The links are all there and are the same. If you can't see because you're still using 1024x wide monitors... you can scroll. And if you're on a cell phone... Why do you want to browse hacks on the cell phone? Do you have roms and a patcher on mobile?

[rainponcho]

Was getting bored of 2.0 after several months here. So 3.0++ for me. Want to try something new after awhile.

[Spooniest]

Theme dropdown is on the left column of the main page.  It changes message boards.

Not appearing for me. I'm on Google Chrome on a Windows 10 comp, just so you know...

[cj iwakura]

I would also prefer a darker theme... the main page also seems kind of crowded? But it's definitely more visual, especially with the screens.

[Kea]

Yeah, I'm not seeing those link boxes nesrocks mentions at all - not even a horizontal scrollbar.

[SleepyFist]

Profile > Account Settings > Modify profile > Look and Layout

[varikares]

I really don't get the complaints. The links are all there and are the same. If you can't see because you're still using 1024x wide monitors...

the point I was trying to make is that the links on the left are much more useful than the links on the right, and they should be given higher priority for staying visible on the page as the window size is reduced

[Tsukiyomaru0]

Profile > Account Settings > Modify profile > Look and Layout

There's nothing like that. You should have mentioned you have to HOVER over Modify Profile. It's a Guide Dang It to change themes.

[RealGaea]

The design, yes. I like it. But I got used to the light blue background, it's more relaxing.

This white damages my eyes when browsing at 1AM... If you can fix that, i'll aprecciate it.

[xnamkcor]

The design, yes. I like it. But I got used to the light blue background, it's more relaxing.

This white damages my eyes when browsing at 1AM... If you can fix that, i'll aprecciate it.

Monitor brightness or color can be adjusted in your Operating System, Graphics Driver, or Monitor settings.