Love the all-round look of your boards — it’s refreshing to find such a stylish bit of design in a forum! — but feel I have to mention that for the failing eyes of the older user, this pale, spindly grey font is REALLY CHALLENGING. Not meant as a complaint, more in the spirit of user-feedback, because it’s something that wouldn’t necessarily occur to anyone who doesn’t have issues with legibility!
And your boards are awesome. It would be a shame if they’re not read and enjoyed by as many people as possible… : )
ETA: sorry, I know this doesn’t really belong in the Wish List, but couldn’t figure out where forum-feedback belongs!
I tried, but I was unable to get the plugin to work in Vivaldi. Regardless, it does nothing for iOS devices, which where I usually read and post to the forums. I can’t tell the difference between a comma and a period when writing in this font.
Please consider changing your forum font to something more legible.
I’m using Vivaldi as well; I installed from the Chrome extension repository some time ago. I do note however that I’m on version 1.8.2 instead of 1.9, though now I’m afraid to try updating it because I don’t want it to stop working.
As for iOS, do you use a blocker? If so, the ones I’ve tried come with an option to block fonts—that seems to be working for me (iBlockify). I’m the sort that would rather a more vanilla look to the Web anyway, so I don’t mind that setting applied universally.
The issue itself on the list already though, given the initial feedback threads posted after the new site roll-out.
I had a feeling this must have been discussed somewhere, but failed to find it — my bad!
Ah. Thanks for putting this issue on your radar. Not sure my skillset is up to using themes (or browser plugins!), but might give it a go when I have a moment. Slightly reluctant to add anything to my basic software repertoire: experience suggests that the more handy modifications one incorporates into one’s workflow, the more things there are to go pearshaped at the next upgrade (grin). (I’m STILL picking up the pieces after abandoning my beloved Snow Leopard laptop last October!). But I appreciate your taking time to provide a crutch for us visual cripples.
Oh it’s quite all right! They are buried beneath a mountain of posts that have been made since Scrivener 3.0 for Mac and Windows 3.0 beta were launched.
As for extensions, well I guess it is matter of perspective. 8) To me, visiting the “modern” Web without a very carefully tuned phalanx of security and content-blocking extensions is by far the most pear-shaped condition a browser can be in!
Hadn’t really thought of that. It’s true that until upgrading to my new EvilMacbookAir, I haven’t really had to think about this, b/c all my software was so outdated it couldn’t run half the garbage on your average webpage anyway (didn’t have a working flashplayer for years, f’rinstance). And of course, I tend not to see a lot of what’s on the page anyway (grin), including the ads the data-miners are optimistically beaming at me…
But I can see I should probably bone up on sensible precautionary plug-ins now. Any suggestions welcome!
As for going pear-shaped, my worry is not so much that the plug-ins will mess things up as that they will become yet another indispensable part of my routine which will then get blown up by the inexorable march of lock-step upgrades. The way that more and more things became incompatible with my old laptop until I had to turn it in for a shiny new OS — only to find that all the software that still worked with the old one had to be jettisoned instead! I’m still in mourning for Snow Leopard and Word 2004. And of course the dozens of ways I’d tweaked and customised and got handy at my old software have all had to be reconstructed — where that’s even possible! coughWordWordMenucough So I’ve kinda vowed not to become attached to anything else, lest it be taken away from me. What the hand didn’t install, the heart won’t grieve for.
Sorry, I sound like a terrible old crank here! Just trying to get my head round this mutable new world we’re in, where we’re seduced all the time by the extraordinary possibilities for remodelling our virtual lives the way we want them, only to be told to embrace something newer and unfamiliar and supposedly better (stylish grey fonts anyone grin) over and over again…
Have to say though, the thin grey font really is kinda pretty…
Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I have the opposite problem. When the forums were first released, they used Effra consistently throughout. Because of complaints for legibility, the CSS stylesheet slowly got “contaminated” with fonts like Tahoma or Verdana as stop gaps. So I made a Stylish theme to ensure Effra is used consistently!
I note that it seems there have been some recent tweaks of the CSS to use Effra again in more places, but for those of us who are lovers of Effra, my theme will ensure it is used consistently! Also I make sure the light weight of the font is NOT used in the editor, where I think it was the cause of many complaints (period vs comma was hard to distinguish, not the case for Effra regular).
i envy you your eyesight Because I agree that Effra is lovely to look at. Legible fonts are about as classy as neckbraces.
I can see I have to try to get my head round this whole theme thing. Not currently in my skill set.
Are these themes applied on a site-by-site basis or is this a global skin for the browser?
ETA:
Exhibit A; the accidental lower-case ‘i’ at the top of my post. Missed that until it appeared in my actual post, because it’s pretty much invisible to me in the smaller display size of the composition window! (True, I would have caught it in Preview if I hadn’t been sloppy and posted straight off… (grin)). But it’s a classic example of the personal pitfalls of low-legibility.
I’m using Firefox on Mac. I just went to the Firefox add-ons, searched for Stylish, and installed it. I then went back to the forum conversation and clicked on one of the style links, and Stylish asked me if I wanted to install it.
Refresh the L&L forum pages, and boom.
I believe these styles include some sort of scoping mechanism so that it only kicks in for specific sites that the author defined.
Well I can’t speak for Safari. I tend to avoid Apple software for precisely that reason—it’s changing all of the time for often no good reason I can see—but with Firefox/Chrome/Vivaldi, in my experience updates that mess up extensions are few and far between, and when they do happen they are prepared for that scenario and the extensions simply disable themselves. They otherwise update in the background automatically along with the browser. I can’t really think of the last time I’ve had a serious problem with them. I don’t use many though.
If I were to narrow it down to just one, it would be Ghostery. That one at least blocks most of the things that can bog a browser down, and it blocks most of the attempts to track your browsing behaviour. It does so in a way that doesn’t tend to cause the site to stop working—it’s kind of fire and forget in my experience.
I use about half a dozen, most that just do one small thing that makes browsing better to my taste. There is one for example that forces all links to load in the same tab. No more do sites force a dozen new tabs if I click a dozen links. I’ll decide if I want a new tab, thank you very much. Another tosses cookies after five minutes unless I click a button and approve the site. Another forces a secure connection if possible. That kind of stuff.
What did you set it to? I tend to use small fonts, and on a retina screen it all works but I probably should make the default larger then I can override personally…
Yes, this is important, as you want to make sure it is specific. Ioa’s theme applies to all of literatureandlatte.com, but I wanted mine to be only applied to the forums, so I use the more complex (regex) scope of https?://literatureandlatte.com/forum.*
This site specific CSS/JS/preference used to be built into Opera many moons ago, and it was all native so blazing fast. Now we have to use extensions to get back similar functionality. But extensions are still a really big improvement to the basic browser experience. Extensions I can’t live without:
Lastpass: passwords synced over all my devices (accepting the security/convenience trade off).
uBlock: the most robust, open source and regularly developed ad/security blocker.
12VPN: essential for using internet in China (paid VPN though).
Markdown here: write in Markdown, it converts to HTML email for you.
Instapaper: Sync and save articles of interest, so when I’m on the metro I have something interesting to read.
Google Translate+Mate Translate: again essential for living in China.
Stylish: customise your web sites.
Lazy Scholar: a great tool for Academics, many functions.
Woah, the cool things you learn by hanging out on forums. Fascinating glimpse under the bonnet here… Just beginning to realise how much I’ve missed this way of life, since the boards I used to hang out on went the way of the last decade! (grin).
Oooh, useful to know — thank you!!! Now that I can’t rely any more on my obsolete software to block most stuff, Ghostery sounds just the ticket.
Fab, willl try this out.
When you say “one of the Style links”…? (Sorry to be such a rube!)
In this thread in previous messages, AmberV and Nontroppo both posted links to the custom styles they created. Click on one of those links once the Stylish add-on is installed in your browser. You should see Stylish offering to import the style.
Thank you, AmberV, aka Ioa! I have finally switched to Safari on MacOS and installed your Stylish theme! As well, I’ve installed iBlockify on my phone and my iPad. At last I can post on the forums without wondering whether I messed up the commas v periods. Again.
Actually I had to switch from Vivaldi to Safari for other reasons—I just signed up for Setapp and for obvious reasons am using Setapp-provided utilities wherever possible. I replaced my Lastpass subscription with Secrets via Setapp but Secrets doesn’t work with much of anything except Safari.
Because I agree that Effra is lovely to look at. Legible fonts are about as classy as neckbraces.
can read the forums without feeling like I’m squinting.
I replaced my Lastpass subscription with Secrets via Setapp but Secrets doesn’t work with much of anything except Safari.