A new theme for MeFi: Modern September 24, 2014 2:23 PM Subscribe

Today we're unveiling a new theme option for MetaFilter. Yes, it's a new design option for MetaFilter for the first time in over a decade, which we are dubbing the "Modern" theme. The new theme is strictly opt-in; no one is being forced to use it and the Classic and Plain-text themes remain as options, so your view of the site won't change unless you want it to. To try out the new theme, select it in your preferences. There is much to explain and show off in this new design and I'll do my best to describe all the thinking that went into the process below.

Eagle-eyed members might recognize this design as loosely based on the 2008 design I showed off in my GEL presentation linked on the About page of MeFi (originally designed by pixelmatrix). We cleaned it up, flattened it out, and I realized it's a pretty good simple layout for MeFi several months ago. Early this summer, matthewmcvickar coded up some prototypes to test out and started building the rest of the templates in earnest.

Why do this?

While MeFi’s basic design has served us well for over 15 years, the increasing demands of mobile devices was making it harder to maintain current layouts and functionality while also allowing for infinite options on new displays. We’ve also gotten a steady stream of feedback from non-members (including Google) that our design makes the site look dated and neglected, and the information on the site may be untrustworthy as a result. I felt it was time to take a step back and figure out if we could start fresh with a new, forward-looking template option that could solve a lot of existing problems. The goals for a new theme were (1) a responsive design for the varied device landscape, (2) be easier to use and nicer looking for newcomers, and (3) offer easier future maintenance. This is an understated design, and that’s intended as the content is front and center, as it has always been. Design guru Edward Tufte once said “Simple design, intense content” and that’s very much the theme here.

Screenshots and quick notes

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like while logged out:

The design was built mobile-first, and serves as a significant upgrade from the previous mobile version of the site, offering a lot of fixes for small problems we had through the years on smaller devices. Here's a screenshot of the site on mobile:

The mobile design features a set of menu options (hamburger on the top left for all subsites, user tools on the upper right for your logged-in features) to make jumping between and around sites easier. Different tab views and sidebars are enabled for mobile via quick drop-down links in the body text, and user tools reflect the desktop view, letting you make new posts to subsites on mobile devices.

The new design is fully responsive, letting us maintain one new template for all devices. You can see the "tablet" and "mobile" layouts by shrinking your desktop browser to narrower widths, and we've tried to optimize the design for the space allowed. For instance, the top menu fully stretched shows names and icons for every option, then drops to just names, then just icons depending on browser width. Fonts are Google web fonts and sized optimally for different display resolutions.

What has changed

We've aimed to change as little of the underlying HTML as possible in this new design. Our goals were to not have to rewrite the entire site for a new layout, be able to support existing layouts, as well as allow continued support for existing tweaks/hacks/tools written for the site. Greasemonkey and similar scripts should continue to work, but in some cases minor HTML changes might require small updates to those tools.

The menus at the top of the page are very similar to the Classic template, just rearranged; in a few months of testing this new design out, I believe the new organization is more intuitive after an initial acclimation period.

The all-subsites menu is now below the logo, and we've hidden the lesser-used options like the Podcast, Best Of blog, and Labs in a submenu. The order of the names is similar to how they used to appear in the top. We've streamlined the menu of options within a subsite and further we've made custom pages of just the related FAQ items for a subsite, a custom About and Popular page for each subsite, so the options really are subsite-specific now.

There is a new User Tools menu on the upper right green bar that houses links to your profile, preferences, MeFi Mail, Favorites, Recent Activity, New Post forms, and finally ways to logout (while signed out, it shows login and signup options). The biggest change here is moving the New Post (question/job/project/etc) menu option to a user tools group from the subsite group, but in using the new design, it puts the option always in the same predictable place and once muscle memory is overcome, it should become second nature.

Layouts are very similar to the Classic theme, though there is now a max-width to make line lengths end at a reasonable upper bound. The footer has been redesigned to include a bit of the About page text, a more obvious contact form link, as well as the location of the donation/pledge information that was previously in a top-bar message on the Classic theme. Sidebars are a bit more prominent and readable due to a more consistent look and feel across the sites.

The new design relies on web fonts and uses sizes optimized for each resolution. In order to minimize layout problems, there are no custom font settings for the design and if you’d like text to be larger or smaller, you can use your browser’s built-in font zoom controls.

What's completely new

There are a lot of little new aspects and I'd like to explain a few of them.

Subsites have tweaked color schemes. The old MeFi blue and greenish yellow have been tweaked and the blue is more mellow and the greenish-yellow is more greenish than it was and serves as the subsite-wide accent color. Most sites will seem familiar, but some like Jobs, IRL, and FanFare have brand-new palettes. FanFare is a brilliant purple, Jobs is going for a corporate pair of khaki tones, and IRL shares shades from a sunset to remind us all to get outside and meet people once in a while.

When scrolling deep into a thread, we realized the new design lacked a bit of subsite personality — it was easy to mistake Metafilter for Metatalk or Ask Metafilter, etc. — so we created a small static header top bar to remind you of current location and offer quick menu options to jump elsewhere without having to scroll to the top or bottom to see your choices.

Here's what the static header looks like when you scroll down the page:

For those users not into the "blinding white" aspect of the new design, we've also enabled a new Dark Mode widget on the homepages of the subsites. Click it, and you'll see a more familiar dark page with light text/links layout using the new color palettes and it should remain via cookie on your browser until you turn it off. You can also enable it if you're, say, using the FanFare site in a darkened room after watching a movie or TV show.

Where we go from here

This has been a massive engineering effort behind the scenes and we've tested this internally for the past few months, even asking a few dozen testers to take it for a spin over the last few weeks to find and fix obvious display bugs. We've incorporated a ton of their feedback into the design and as I've instructed every tester to date, I would ask people trying it out for the first time give it a couple weeks of use before sending feedback and suggestions (immediate feedback can be worthwhile, but I HATE IT isn't super helpful when a couple weeks of use can change your mind).

If you spot bugs by all means take a screenshot and let us know what browser/OS/versions you are running and what you did when the problem arose. Keep in mind that older versions of IE (IE9 and below) may present layout problems and it would be best to use a different browser. We'll leave decisions about look and feel and preferences off until after everyone's kicked the tires for a while.

The plan is to incorporate feedback from this thread for further tweaks to get the best possible out of this new design before we make it the default new design for logged-out readers of the site as well. Don't worry if you still want the old design while logged out, we will have a one-click way to enable the Classic theme while still being logged out.

So in summary, new opt-in template option has been enabled, will eventually be the default for non-members (and there will be a way to switch to Classic for non-members), all the while maintaining the Classic and Plain-text themes as options here for those that dislike the new layout.

We hope you'll like this new option! To check it out for yourself, go to Preferences, scroll down to Pick a Theme, and select Modern. Once you're seeing the Modern theme, the option for dark mode (if you prefer it) is located on each subsite’s front page sidebar. The feedback to date has been overwhelmingly positive, so I hope you find it makes your experience using MetaFilter better as well.

posted by mathowie (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 2:23 PM (1248 comments total) 96 users marked this as a favorite

I think….I think I like this.
posted by Brainy at 2:26 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

zOMG WTF BBQ?!?!!!
posted by mazola at 2:26 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Dated and neglected? Google can suck it.
posted by pibeandres at 2:27 PM on September 24, 2014 [87 favorites]

Your theme is good and you should feel good
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:27 PM on September 24, 2014 [57 favorites]

Ooooh! Shiny, pretty thing!
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Looks very professional.
posted by grahamparks at 2:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [12 favorites]

Professional white background. Finally.
posted by Gary at 2:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Love that it's opt-in - can't wait to give it a try.
posted by Twicketface at 2:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

If Anil shows up and gloats about the professional white background he requested/demanded/prophesied can he be kicked off the site? Or tarred and feathered. One of those.

(seriously, it looks... whoa. So shiny and new. It's going to take a while to get used to it enough to have a more constructive take.)
posted by norm at 2:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

some funky alignment here: http://i.imgur.com/OIzXIWD.png
Also, that green feels super odd after years of the gold. </2¢>
posted by potch at 2:29 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

With Dark Mode on, I KNOW I like this.
posted by Brainy at 2:30 PM on September 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

We’ve also gotten a steady stream of feedback from non-members (including Google) that our design makes the site look dated and neglected, and the information on the site may be untrustworthy as a result.

*Siiiiiiigggghhhhh*
posted by Melismata at 2:30 PM on September 24, 2014 [34 favorites]

Dark Mode is Zool.
posted by iamabot at 2:31 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

stoneweaver, I haven't seen that in my tests. Can you let me know which browser/OS you're using?

Just a friendly reminder: if you spot glitches it'd be very helpful to know which browser version and OS version you're seeing the problem on. Things can vary wildly on different setups.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:32 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

love dark mode!!
posted by nadawi at 2:33 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

No clue whether this is related to the new theme, but when I went to my profile just now, there was a broken image next to the edit profile link that references

"http://%3Ccfoutput%3Ed217i264rvtnq0.cloudfront.net%3C/cfoutput%3E/images/mefi/icons/stockholm_mini/edit.gif".

This is *before* switching themes. I'm using Chrome 37.0.2062.103 m on Win7.
posted by metaquarry at 2:33 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it a lot except the font size is a lot bigger than I prefer and I can't find how to change that setting?
posted by shakespeherian at 2:33 PM on September 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

+1 for dark mode
posted by one4themoment at 2:33 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

ohhh font size. hmm. i might have to go back. i have so loved having titles smaller than the fpp...
posted by nadawi at 2:37 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

With Dark Mode on I KNOW I like this.

I was really digging it even when we didn't have Dark Mode during testing but was constantly feeling like, man, I miss my colors, I love my colors, can we have some colors, and man I've been digging it more since Matt and pb got that implemented. Been going back and forth between classic and new on a couple computers and there's a couple of muscle memory things to overcome (primarily where the Recent Activity link is, though I prefer the new organization now at this point) but all in all I have been happy with both and really relieved to feel like the new theme works really well despite not being my familiar old companion.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:37 PM on September 24, 2014 [10 favorites]

Ooo -- mobile gooooood. :)
posted by mazola at 2:37 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is neat and I like the way it looks but I'm not sure I will really use it since I'm so stuck in my ways. Basically I am now my father and this re-design is wearing denim sometime other than in the woods or garden and everyone who uses it is the children I appreciate for being cooler than me.

Also, I'm a white background user, but the phrase "Dark Mode widget" is sexy as hell.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:37 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

Oh now I see the advisement to use the browser's zoom-out feature which is a solution I dislike. Frownyface.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:37 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thanks metaquarry, that profile page problem should be fixed.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:38 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Whoa, I have a lot of unread MeMail that's suddenly popping out at me.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:38 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

I really appreciate the change to a 1200px wide container. It's nice being able to go fullscreen without every line of text becoming 1920px long.
posted by Lorin at 2:39 PM on September 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

I LIKE THIS.

... now back to lurking for years.
posted by zerolives at 2:39 PM on September 24, 2014 [35 favorites]

I use the white-background theme when logged in and have done for, like, ever. That said, a default ~~anildash~~ white background makes me scowly. I can't usefully articulate why.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can't wait to try this out out here in the world! And very happy about dark mode. I will take this pony out for a stroll around the paddock!
posted by rtha at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Whoa, I have a lot of unread MeMail that's suddenly popping out at me.

I already submitted an internal pony request to pb to add a "mark all as read" button for mefimail at some point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

Is it possible to have the old design/white background version display when logged out?
posted by griphus at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Kudos to the entire team on a huge project that seems to have yielded amazing results. I may not have articulated it very well, but all I was ever trying to advocate for was a look that was approachable and familiar to people who had never been to the site before, but would surely have been delighted to discover what a special place this is, despite its intimidating first impression. (And some members' penchants for really never letting a tired old joke go.)

I hope all this work yields a vibrant and thriving new era for MeFi, and especially that it helps bring the site back to being a solid business. The white looks nice.
posted by anildash at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2014 [70 favorites]

Dark mode engaged. This is good. It will take a while for my brain to tell me it's Metafilter, though.
posted by zardoz at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Thanks for putting all the work into this.
posted by michaelh at 2:41 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

"mark all as read" is already there! Look for the button at the bottom of your MeFi Mail Inbox.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:42 PM on September 24, 2014 [13 favorites]

Chrome's zoom mode is surprisingly not that terrible.
posted by smackfu at 2:42 PM on September 24, 2014

okay, maybe I'm just dense, but where's the Dark Mode widget?
posted by jazon at 2:42 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

"mark all as read" is already there! Look for the button at the bottom of your MeFi Mail Inbox.

IS THERE NOTHING YOU CAN'T DO
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:43 PM on September 24, 2014 [19 favorites]

Yep, I'm dense, just found it. Dark Mode is GO!
posted by jazon at 2:43 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I didn't even know about the whole "Contact Activity" thing... while the new theme makes it super obvious... do people know when you make them a contact?
posted by one4themoment at 2:43 PM on September 24, 2014

right hand side, jazon, after you switch to the new mode...
posted by nadawi at 2:43 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is really nice. And even using the textarea here is cool. I love the text selection colors. But so Google gave feedback about the visual design, and they didn't say anything about the NSFW content aspect? I had wondered if their safe search stuff wasn't part of the reason for the ranking decline, so I was a little surprised to hear it was some visual design thing.
posted by circular at 2:44 PM on September 24, 2014

About that internal pony, though...
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:44 PM on September 24, 2014

In the footer, the "(Hide)" link next to 'Fund Metafilter" doesn't seem to do anything.
posted by smackfu at 2:45 PM on September 24, 2014

The only thing I don't like is how the top bar animates in when you scroll down from the top of the page. I find it visually distracting. I think I'd prefer if it just changed without the animation. But this might be something I will get used to.
posted by zixyer at 2:45 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

I approve.

*starts slow clap*
posted by jeffamaphone at 2:45 PM on September 24, 2014

Also, in Chrome 37 in Windows 7, after I post a comment in Dark Mode, the whole screen flashes white for a second. Maybe showing a non-dark div?
posted by smackfu at 2:45 PM on September 24, 2014

In the footer, the "(Hide)" link next to 'Fund Metafilter" doesn't seem to do anything.

True, that hide link shouldn't be there. We'll get that fixed.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:46 PM on September 24, 2014

so would it be css or greasemonkey or something else to shrink titles and change the font? i've not messed with any of that, but would be willing to look into it to keep the new fancy design but also have smaller titles.
posted by nadawi at 2:46 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hated it for two seconds because my reaction to change on Metafilter is please no...

but then I really liked it. It's really pretty.
posted by Lutoslawski at 2:46 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I like it on mobile with dark mode. I dislike it on desktop, especially with the animated bits. Having classic as an option is very much appreciated.
posted by Gary at 2:46 PM on September 24, 2014

Dead-white background is definitely too bright for me, but love love love dark mode.
posted by JanetLand at 2:46 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Safari on iOS 7.1.2 on an iPhone 4 has sluggish scrolling. That being said, I have an iPhone 6 on the way, so this issue will be resolved soon (at least for me).
posted by infinitewindow at 2:46 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it. I wish the profile pages had a Professional Dark Mode background, though.
posted by Mad_Carew at 2:47 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is there a way to choose one mode on my phone and another on my laptop, or is it simply "one mode per customer?"
posted by tzikeh at 2:47 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

I FEAR CHANGE
posted by jonmc at 2:47 PM on September 24, 2014 [32 favorites]

Ooh, I want Dark Mode to join forces with f.lux so I know when it's time to go to bed.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:47 PM on September 24, 2014 [10 favorites]

One bit of feedback:

With the old themes, when the "Underline Links" preference was checked, that only applied to inline links in posts, not to the links in the toolbars and other bits of navigational UI (toolbars, menus).

For the new Modern theme it seems to apply globally. I would like to have links underlined in posts, but the underlines are not at all necessary in the top bars and footer links.
posted by jeffamaphone at 2:48 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is really promising. I have far too much invested in my collection of Greasemonkey/Stylish tweaks right now to use it full-time, but I hope to do so as the bugs are worked out.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:48 PM on September 24, 2014

But so Google gave feedback about the visual design

To be clear: Not directly. There is no behind-the-scenes secret scoop. Rather, some of Matt Cutts' public comments about the situation mentioned that the visuals of the site made it look old.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:49 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is there a way to choose one mode on my phone and another on my laptop, or is it simply "one mode per customer?"

I'm pretty sure the cookie is set per device (like I think it used to be) but I'm only basing this on my undependable memory and a sample size of me just now.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:50 PM on September 24, 2014

Is there a way to choose one mode on my phone and another on my laptop, or is it simply "one mode per customer?"

Yep, you cookie your design choices by device. I have always used plain text on my mobile devices, but classic on my desktops and it supports that.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:50 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is there a way to choose one mode on my phone and another on my laptop...

Yes, the theme you choose is a Display Preference. Take a look at the paragraph that begins, "When you click Save on your Site Preferences..."
posted by pb (staff) at 2:51 PM on September 24, 2014

It's taking some getting used to, and you're right about the muscle memory being A Thing, but overall I like it a lot. Not only does the site look more modern, but it kind of matches with MeFightClub, although that's probably just serendipitous.

Absolutely infinitesimally unimportant issue: in MeMail/Messages with Dark Mode enabled, the bottom of the "Reply" button kind of disappears into the background.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:51 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

so would it be css or greasemonkey or something else to shrink titles and change the font?

If you installed Stylish on your browser, you could figure out the class for titles and tweak it however you wanted from there.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Speaking of, I love modern on my phone quite a bit.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hated it for two seconds because my reaction to change on Metafilter is please no...

but then I really liked it. It's really pretty.

That was basically me too. I was beta-ing it for a while and had a hard time going back and forth but I'm stoked to have it all live and usable.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Just wanted to say a hearty thanks for the dark mode. I'm sure that was a lot of extra work, and I just don't think it would feel like Metafilter with white backgrounds everywhere.
posted by smackfu at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2014 [23 favorites]

Feels good! And somehow faster?

The only things I don't like are:
- The heavy default font
- The Outlook/Word-style menu triple beam is still there and still overwhelming.

But overall, yeah, definitely an improvement. Great work.
posted by ignignokt at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2014

The colour for selected text in dark mode is always green on dark blue, no matter the sub-site. That seems like a bug or incomplete feature?

The dark purple background on fanfare is really nice.
posted by Gary at 2:53 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

I was a beta tester and I am SO RELIEVED that this is finally sitewide and I can talk about it! My eyeballs panicked at first but now I like it a lot, especially with the COMPLETELY HYPNOTIC dark mode button which I could just push-push-push-push all day. I had a really hard time getting used to the relocated Recent Activity button but I eventually made it over the hump!

The MeFiQuote greasemonkey script hasn't worked during the beta test, nor howlsofoutrage, but my other scripts have been fine. (I do not know a lot about scripts so I don't know if this has to do with the redesign or the beta part.)

The one pony I meant to ask for and forgot is, I want a "recent activity" button in one of the left-hand drop down menus, since that's the thing I click the most often and most often go looking for mid-thread. (WAIT I JUST FOUND IT ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT DUDE DROPPED DOWN)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:53 PM on September 24, 2014 [11 favorites]

If you installed Stylish on your browser, you could figure out the class for titles and tweak it however you wanted from there.

awesome! thanks! i really do love the redesign.
posted by nadawi at 2:54 PM on September 24, 2014

The mobile design features a set of menu options (hamburger on the top left for all subsites, user tools on the upper right for your logged-in features)

It took me three tries to parse this because I was looking for the sarcasm.

It seems to have made the Live Preview a bit strange when I turned it on and off on this one. (Line appearing between the comment and the "posted by" line.)

Yeah, this is happening in my Live Preview too and I haven't touched my preferences yet.
posted by ODiV at 2:54 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Breath of fresh air, that's for sure. It's weird to see the logo in Monserrat. I almost feel like it should be League Gothic to keep it closer to the original. Weird thing to be sentimental about, I realize.

It did feel like mobile was an afterthought and it's such a joy to have a proper mobile layout now.
posted by O9scar at 2:55 PM on September 24, 2014

I want a "recent activity" button in one of the left-hand drop down menus, since that's the thing I click the most often and most often go looking for mid-thread.

It's in the right-hand drop-down menu of the floating static header.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:55 PM on September 24, 2014

(Not that I mind or anything, but there's a visible line there.)
posted by ODiV at 2:55 PM on September 24, 2014

I don't think that the nav.secondary menu doesn't need to be showing all the time. The site looks super clean without it.

Maybe it's worth hiding until shown via an option in the main nav?
posted by ignignokt at 2:56 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

What browser/OS are you using, ODiV? And which theme?
posted by pb (staff) at 2:56 PM on September 24, 2014

And now I just noticed that the username shortening makes me "zombieflan..." That makes me sound grotesquely delicious.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:56 PM on September 24, 2014 [17 favorites]

LOVE IT.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 2:57 PM on September 24, 2014

the Fanfare background color change script is doing odd yet interesting things now.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:58 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

So far loving it on iPhone and iPad. Breath of fresh air. Will look for bugs/irritations, but me likey.
posted by middleclasstool at 2:58 PM on September 24, 2014

If you installed Stylish on your browser, you could figure out the class for titles and tweak it however you wanted from there.

OK, so making sure I understand: If I don't want titles to display, I need Stylish?
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:58 PM on September 24, 2014

> I was a beta tester and I am SO RELIEVED that this is finally sitewide and I can talk about it! My eyeballs panicked at first but now I like it a lot,

You are me! Or maybe, and better, I am you? Anyway, yes. And this quote script I have works, as does mefi navigator, but I think the deleted threads one is broken. And I seriously love it on my phone.
posted by rtha at 2:59 PM on September 24, 2014

Just need to figure out how to change the text font and I'll be happy. This embedded one does not look great in Chrome unless DirectWrite is enabled (and that makes a lot of other sites look worse.)
posted by smackfu at 2:59 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hot diggity damn. This is beautiful.

Great work!
posted by Tevin at 2:59 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

i have adblock disabled across metafilter and previously i was seeing thedeck ads. i noticed after switching to modern i couldn't see the ads anymore, so i went to thedeck and disabled adblock over there as well, and voila, ads show up here again. just in case anyone else does something similar...
posted by nadawi at 2:59 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

especially with the COMPLETELY HYPNOTIC dark mode button which I could just push-push-push-push all day

MetaFilter will never run out of ways to show me that the strange things I do are also normal behavior for other people. I may stay in Modern always just for this reason.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

So when I click the subsite title in the scrolling header bar, the menu drops down, and the subsite I'm on is highlighted. All good. But I'm trained, after all these years on the internet (and metafilter) that when I click the header title, it should take me to the front page of that subsite.

Yeah, if I had to point to my top three list of things I'm still not sure about, this would be on that list. I am also used to clicking logos to get to front pages, but I've grown used to it being an extra click on the site name to get that behavior. My worry if we switch it to logo = homepage, then you can only get to the subsites by clicking the tiny hamburger triple bar thing, which is a pretty small click target.

(my other big thing I think we still need to work on is the IRL dark mode is kinda funky and we're still tweaking)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Dark Mode, absolutely yes. Love it.
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

pb: I'm using FireFox and the classic theme.

It looks more like the comment and the "posted by" line are in two separate boxes and the background is showing through rather then there's a line between them.

I'd check another browser, but some weird network stuff prevents me. I can check other browsers from home in a couple of hours, but you'll probably get feedback from others on that front in the meantime.

I can take a screenshot later too, if needed.
posted by ODiV at 3:00 PM on September 24, 2014

I do this kind of thing for a living and this is a gorgeous, thoughtful and evolutionary design.

That is no small feat for a site like this with such a long history and dedicated userbase. Well done. Five internet points to Metafilter.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:01 PM on September 24, 2014 [27 favorites]

OK, so making sure I understand: If I don't want titles to display, I need Stylish?

Yeah, there's a stylish thingy that does stuff to titles. I think there's a wiki page that lists many of the various tweaks available?
posted by poffin boffin at 3:01 PM on September 24, 2014

Had a chance to see this before it went live, and while I was initially, "Uh, I don't know about this..." I must say that the mods and staff of Mefi did an absolutely sterling job of refining and improving it over quite a long period of time. The overall redesign makes navigation and discovery of site features much much easier (particularly for newbies), and the Dark Mode retains the essential character of the site.
posted by adrianhon at 3:01 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Good to know the Cabal beta tested this.
posted by smackfu at 3:02 PM on September 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

I was a beta tester and missed modern mode when the beta test was over. Dark Mode solved my main problem, which was glare.

I was resistant to the idea of change, but once I got used to it, the new design made a lot of sense.

Oh, and one weirdness. I have dark mode on, using Safari on an iPad Mini iOS 8. There's about an inch and a half of white empty space to the right of the thread.
posted by Kattullus at 3:02 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The dark mode seems enough like the classic mode to make me feel at home, though warming to those green links may take a bit of time.

My "new comment key" greasemonkey script still works, so that's good.

I don't love nonmoving top bars but I'm prepared to live with it.
posted by jepler at 3:03 PM on September 24, 2014

Now all I want is for my beloved Metafilter MultiFavorited Multiwidth userscript to get updated - it still works, but the alignment is a little odd...
posted by adrianhon at 3:03 PM on September 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

Sorry that screenshot link in my comment above doesn't work. Stupid Cloud.app. OK, here's the screenshot that drops the extra nav bars for real.
posted by ignignokt at 3:04 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

the new comment box and the older/newer box are pulling my eye in weird ways - i keep thinking there are new comments when it's just the older/newer box (and then ignoring it and missing that there are new comments when that pops up) but that's probably just something that will take a couple days to get used to as i learn how to rescan the page.
posted by nadawi at 3:05 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

OK, so making sure I understand: If I don't want titles to display, I need Stylish?

I like the new design and I'm ready for something new!

But I'm not going to install a browser extension across a dozen browsers on half a dozen devices just to make the titles go away when that is already a built-in feature with the existing design. So it's the existing design for me until the title-hiding feature is accommodated out of the box.
posted by Kwine at 3:06 PM on September 24, 2014 [11 favorites]

Just to clarify, though, will there be a point in the future where this change will be default sitewide? Or will it forever remain an opt-in? (i ask only because i was BETRAYED by lj in that exact manner, sob)
posted by poffin boffin at 3:07 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I really like this (especially dark mode!). It's tricky to do a redesign to a site with an iconic (if minimalist) look, and this gets it pretty much spot on. It's new, but it still feels 100% MeFi - seriously good work from everyone involved.
posted by xchmp at 3:08 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

the COMPLETELY HYPNOTIC dark mode button

Yeah, weirdly I think that button might be my favorite thing about the new design.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:09 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Just noticed that the 'X new posts since your last visit' text that's normally at the top of the right-hand column is missing for me. Is that a) a deliberate omission or b) something I was doing with a userscript that I forgot about?
posted by Happy Dave at 3:09 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Just noticed that the 'X new posts since your last visit'...

Yes, that's a deliberate omission in the new theme. We had to make some choices about what to cut and what to keep, and while almost everything made it that welcome note didn't. Sorry about that.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:13 PM on September 24, 2014

The new design looks OK. It works just a hair slower on my laptop than the classic designs, so I'll probably go back to Professional White if I don't get a really awesome computer between now and soon.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:16 PM on September 24, 2014

I've been using this as a beta tester for about 6 weeks now. Although it didn't feel right for a good while at the beginning, at this point, I don't think I'd want to go back.

Thanks for inviting me to test, Matt, and thanks to all involved for a long-overdue freshening up.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:18 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

pb: "Just noticed that the 'X new posts since your last visit'...

Yes, that's a deliberate omission in the new theme. We had to make some choices about what to cut and what to keep, and while almost everything made it that welcome note didn't. Sorry about that."

Eh, to be honest I vacillate between hiding that line with a Stylish tweak and having it visible anyway. It sets off my 'READ ALL THE POSTS' instinct, which can be dangerous on high-traffic days. For all this tasty responsive loveliness (the sidebar swap idea on the mobile width site is clever) I can live without it.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:18 PM on September 24, 2014

I really like this redesign, but I'm having a rough time with the spacing of the body font. It looks much more compressed to me on the page than it does on the Google Fonts preview (assuming it's Source Sans Pro), like almost zero spacing between letters, and it's hard on my eyes. If it's just me I can take care of it with Stylish, but I thought I'd mention it. Chrome 37, Mac OS 10.10.
posted by dorque at 3:19 PM on September 24, 2014 [8 favorites]

Also, I'm totally stealing the Dark Mode button for MefightClub. Elegant solution that I totally didn't think of when I was doing the new layout for MFC a while back.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:19 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

I don't know which ones impresses me more, that I love the white theme right from the start, or the fact that I can easily toggle to the dark mode. Brilliant!
posted by furtive at 3:19 PM on September 24, 2014

BTW, the toggle transition is lovely.
posted by furtive at 3:21 PM on September 24, 2014

Ok so in general I absolutely love this, especially with dark mode on. It looks great

My one complaint is that the spacing between words feels abnormally tight to me, and it's causing me some strain when reading. The words blend together too much visually.
posted by insoluble uncertainty at 3:21 PM on September 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

Ooooooh. This looks great! I only have minor nitpicks:

"$USER Profile" in the static header's right-side menu looks a little... off. "$USER's Profile," or some kind of delimiter (e.g. "$USER | Profile") might help?
With everything else looking so slick and modern, the text formatting controls stick out like a relic from Windows 3.1.

> The colour for selected text in dark mode is always green on dark blue, no matter the sub-site. That seems like a bug or incomplete feature?Ditto with a white background. I agree that having the selection colours not match the subsite theme is kind of jarring.But that's pretty much all I got. Way to go, team!
posted by Zozo at 3:22 PM on September 24, 2014

"I had a really hard time getting used to the relocated Recent Activity button but I eventually made it over the hump!"

Yep. That's the worst part about the current design. Well, that and the cluttered header on the front page. I think Matt and PB went with the idea of categorical <li> elements without realizing that different people categorize them differently. A better UI approach is (generally) grouping the most common links that people use in the most prominent spot and then breaking out things into categories (hidden drop-downs would have worked well for that). As it stands, the header is full of useless stuff for the majority of users, and the groupings aren't composed well.
posted by klangklangston at 3:24 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

"The only things I don't like are:
- The heavy default font
- The Outlook/Word-style menu triple beam is still there and still overwhelming."

Yeah, and I think the new logo font makes the letters look kinda childish.
posted by klangklangston at 3:25 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Is it possible to have dark mode set for say Metafilter and not dark mode for Ask or do I have to toggle for each subsite?
posted by 724A at 3:26 PM on September 24, 2014

But oh god, swipe to favorite doesn't work? Can it be made to?
posted by rtha at 3:26 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

I hate change, but I like this. I'm really glad the right-click context menu still works from all the fancy drop downs.
posted by klarck at 3:26 PM on September 24, 2014

What!
posted by chunking express at 3:27 PM on September 24, 2014

On mobile. Switched to new layout. Cannot find dark mode. Also, profile picture won't let me look for a picture already in my gallery. Just links to the camera and documents.
posted by FunkyHelix at 3:27 PM on September 24, 2014

But oh god, swipe to favorite doesn't work? Can it be made to?

Possibly—it's not an easy switch to flip on so we'll need to discuss it.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:28 PM on September 24, 2014

Yay! More readable font sizes and narrower columns by default!

Yay! Dark theme for FanFare!

I like it, but I'm going to be disoriented for a while.
posted by mbrubeck at 3:29 PM on September 24, 2014

Also, there needs to be a quick jump to the bottom of the thread button. I would hit skip to menu on the old mobile layout when I reentered a post, so I could skip to the new comments instead of scrolling forever.
posted by FunkyHelix at 3:31 PM on September 24, 2014 [20 favorites]

Also on mobile, going from horizontal view to vertical zooms me back to the top after I post my comment making me scroll again to get back to where I was. Annoying.
posted by FunkyHelix at 3:33 PM on September 24, 2014

I like this! It's fresh and exciting and new, and when the novelty wears off it'll still be a nice and elegant design, so I'm all for it.

(You knew there was a but coming.)

But I do have some small notes that you guys are free to ignore, but maybe are concerns other people have too I don't know. The new typeface is a bit hard to read for me, for starters. I'm someone who used the (old?) "large text" preset for the classic theme, mostly because that's what I remember the site looking like way back in the day and I stuck with it. But even enlarging the text to roughly match what I'm used to, I still find it more difficult to read. Maybe it's just something I'll get used to, but the letterforms feel fuzzier (they probably look much better on high-dpi screens) and more closed (the counters, like the holes in the "a" and "e" letterforms, are smaller). I find it harder to scan the text—I have to slow down and read more carefully to keep my eyes from glossing over slightly. This may very well be a crazy-person critique, though.

Secondly, I could use more space between posts on the front page, or maybe just a more obvious visual distinction. For some reason I find it slightly harder to differentiate between posts than I used to. Other than that, everything feels pretty good. Maybe in time those concerns will fade too, so I'm happy to give the new design some time to sink in.
posted by chrominance at 3:33 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Mobile Safari, ios8 did a weird thing after I posted that last comment - this thread seemed to lose responsiveness? When I scrolled to the top, the little avatar head in the upper right was way off to the right. Screenshots here and here.
posted by rtha at 3:35 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, this is beautiful on my phone. Really, really nice work. I was prepared to not like it, as I am a big fan of the classic look. However, this new theme really looks great while retaining the spirit of the original.

My only recommendation might be to consider making the dark mode the default. It's that cool.
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:35 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, also, possible bug: the little arrow that would appear if you linked to a specific post inside a thread is waaaaaay over on the left, which is less than ideal on large desktop screens. It's also slightly misaligned on mobile screens but it's in the right ballpark so whatevs.
posted by chrominance at 3:35 PM on September 24, 2014

Is anyone running the "Mefi deleted posts" script in TamperMonkey in Chrome and seeing it no longer have any effect, whether viewing the modern theme or the classic?

(I'm pretty sure it was still working at least a few days ago. It's possible I've messed something up on my end, of course.)
posted by nobody at 3:41 PM on September 24, 2014

Love it. Kudos to all.
posted by angiep at 3:41 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Found dark mode. I really like the redesign.
posted by FunkyHelix at 3:41 PM on September 24, 2014

I've been a plain mode user for forever, but actually I think I like Dark Mode better this time round. I also think it looks more, ahem, professional.
posted by bonaldi at 3:42 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oof, Dark Mode does not play well with GraphFi at all.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:42 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Hmm, I am normally very resistant to change but I think this is OK. (I am so resistant to change that "I think this is OK" essentially translates to "I like it.") What makes it especially OK is the Dark Mode option! Metafilter would not feel like itself if I had to view the professional white background all the time.

FanFare on Dark Mode looks like a grape popsicle (this is a compliment).

However, I'll second what others have said above about the font feeling squished and the animating header bar as a distraction.

But overall, hooray. This is also better on my mobile devices, so thank you!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:43 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Switched to modern with dark mode widget on. Love it. Good work guys!
posted by supercrayon at 3:44 PM on September 24, 2014

I was getting ready to whine about all the white space and the blinding glare but omg dark mode. Thank you so much! I'm liking this redesign so far! I think it does a great job looking modern and trustworthy without losing the simplicity of the design we've always loved. Though I'm not a fan of the font. It feels cramped and like I'm not seeing as much content in one glance.
posted by yasaman at 3:44 PM on September 24, 2014

I am super super impressed, not just by the design itself, but the extensive thought that obviously went into restructuring the mobile architecture. Thanks for this! Kudos to pb and the whole team.

(Is this possibly the first major redesign in internet history that wasn't immediately met with overwhelming gnashing of teeth and rending of garments?)
posted by Phire at 3:45 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

Providing a way to keep the old version helps with that a lot. But it's baggage.
posted by smackfu at 3:49 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I really want to love this, but the floaty menu is staying embiggened and I cannot shrink it. My phone is about a hundred and eleventy in phone years, which may have something to do with it. Yeah. That one lone freak with Opera Classic on an android 2.something? That's me.

One other thing I noticed: in Dark Mode the sidebar links nearly vanish. Again, might be my browser.

Other than that, I love it. Especially Dark Mode. Metafilter must be blue, things feel wrong if it isn't.
posted by cmyk at 3:49 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

So um just curious if FanFare will be going purple in classic mode, too?

hi-yo hobbyhorse, away!
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:50 PM on September 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

Not only does the site look more modern, but it kind of matches with MeFightClub, although that's probably just serendipitous.

I use Firefox with the Fast Dial extension on all my computers as my main browser, and it throws up, as Fast Dial extensions do, an array of wee screenshots of sites you use the most (or just want quick access to) on blank new tabs. I can't tell you how many times since being invited to beta test that I've absentmindedly clicked on the Gamefilter one thinking it was new MeFi or vice versa. As someone who likes doing design stuff but is in no way a 'designer', it's a nice validation for my own particular aesthetic leanings these days and cool that even though the MFC sites are only linked by a thin thread of tradition to MeFi after all these years, there's a feeling of some degree of design consistency (much more restrained and refined on the part of the mothership, of course) there.

It's totally serendipitous, but it made me smile. Meanwhile I've been toying with another redesign of GFi already, so that may not last long.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:54 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

ThePinkSuperhero is busy so she asked me to ask here for her profile to be changed over. Thx!
posted by mullacc at 4:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Hell to the yes. Love it.
posted by Celsius1414 at 4:06 PM on September 24, 2014

Congratulations! What a lot of work, I appreciate all the care and thought you've put into the design.
posted by Nelson at 4:07 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wow! I really, really like this! I wasn't expecting to, but it looks great. Great job!

My only criticism is that the link color on the blue in dark mode hurts my eyes for some reason. I actually prefer the professional white version.
posted by brundlefly at 4:07 PM on September 24, 2014

On the other hand, MeTa looks great in dark mode.
posted by brundlefly at 4:08 PM on September 24, 2014

This is lovely. Oh, well. The hedgehog pointer will not work...alas!
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 4:10 PM on September 24, 2014

I like this so much!
posted by rabbitrabbit at 4:11 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The old mobile site had a "skip to menu" feature that zapped you to the bottom of any page. I know the menu isn't down there anymore, but could we get "skip to bottom" back? It was super useful to get to the end of a thread without scrolling all the way down.
posted by Weeping_angel at 4:12 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

but could we get "skip to bottom" back?

The sidebar link on the new design should do the same thing on mobile, no?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:15 PM on September 24, 2014

I don't want to get to the stuff that used to be on the bottom; I want to quickly get to the bottom of the thread without scroll-scroll-scrolling on my phone. I used skip to menu for this ALL THE TIME (mostly for long threads where I didn't save my place, and it's faster to scroll up from the end to find my place than it is to scroll down from the top).
posted by Weeping_angel at 4:18 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

There's a new "Sidebar" button at the top-right of every thread. Click that and you'll go directly below the new comment form. You can scroll up from there. It's essentially the same thing as Skip to Menu.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:20 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Looks good on iPhone, too!
posted by brundlefly at 4:22 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it a lot. Thanks.
posted by roolya_boolya at 4:25 PM on September 24, 2014

IMAGEN IF METAFILTER IS MODARN
posted by dhammond at 4:25 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

So it's the existing design for me until the title-hiding feature is accommodated out of the box.

Yes, although it's attractive, I won't be using this new design until you let us disappear the damn Titles. You know this issue is still contentious; kind of a douchy move to eliminate our ability to remove them as part of this upgrade.
posted by Rash at 4:25 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh! I didn't even scroll up, it looked like the "sidebar" link was a whole separate page. It's perfect. I love it. Carry on.
posted by Weeping_angel at 4:26 PM on September 24, 2014

Awesome, but shouldn't the blue be the default and the professional white background be the thing only jerks click on?
posted by Sys Rq at 4:27 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm late to the party here, but I just want to add my approval of this new layout. Switching from my beloved blue/green/grey is jarring, but this new layout is so elegant that I think I'll become used to it in very short order.
posted by The Confessor at 4:28 PM on September 24, 2014

Just this morning I switched my theme for the first time ever (to business-like white background in order to be less distracting to people around me in class) and now there's a whole other new theme to consider? This is really too much. [insert dramatic sigh here][plus a flounce to my fainting couch]
posted by jacquilynne at 4:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I like it a lot. I do wish it didn't have the max-width, though, especially since the max-width doesn't take into account when you zoom in the browser (using Ctrl-+ or whatever). I'd like to be able to choose the width of the layout by sizing the window, like always (with reasonable margins), instead of having a max arbitrarily chosen for me.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:29 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

You know this issue is still contentious; kind of a douchy move to eliminate our ability to remove them as part of this upgrade.

well, someone is being douche-y about titles, but i don't think it's matt...and i say this as someone who wished for the ability to shrink the titles without installing extra stuff (and now regret bringing up at all). you have another design to use if it's that important. that seems like a pretty big compromise that basically no other site would give you during an overhaul like this.
posted by nadawi at 4:32 PM on September 24, 2014 [22 favorites]

It's heartening to see how much the design evolved in response to user feedback. You usually see so much more Facebook-style "Everything's different, deal with it," or even Digg-style "Here's an early beta! Please send us your feedback, so we may utterly disregard it." The Dark Theme especially looks similar to a mock-up I sent in response, and is a nice compromise between old and new. I know it's expected around here, but thanks for taking community feedback so seriously.

Structurally, this is a great success -- everything's more organized, streamlined, consistent, and efficient, and the benefit to mobile view is undeniable. It really does make the old layout look old-fashioned in comparison, without making any sacrifices apart from reducing the amount of readable content on screen (an arguable benefit if it makes the remaining text more readable). A lot of thought clearly went into the navigation, and it shows.

I do have misgivings though about making the white background default, and not just in a LOL ANIL DASH way.

The MeFi colors are so iconic -- a fundamental part of its visual identity for 15 years -- and they more than make up for the site's otherwise minimalist design. You can recognize a MetaFilter page anywhere from a thumbnail image to a smartphone screen across the room, and that's got to be a big asset in terms of establishing the site brand to repeat visitors from search engines and curious passersby. I know AskMe's green was what made it stick in my mind after coming across it a few times in search.

The white design, OTOH, just looks so generic in those same contexts -- its first impression is uncomfortably similar to a default spamblog template, and I had a hard time locating it on my iPad browser's speed dial page even after using it for awhile. There's a reason it's called the Professional White Background: because it doesn't stand out in the workplace.

It's also hard on the eyes -- other black-on-white sites have images, columns, sidebars, subheadings, subtly textured backgrounds, comment hierarchies, avatars, etc. to visually break up the monotony, but get deep into a MeFi comment section on the redesign and there's literally nothing but text in a sea of blinding white. The soothing colors really helped ameliorate that problem in the old design.

The addition of Dark Mode largely fixes this issue (and the floating header is a welcome navigational aid when the subsites look alike), but that really only benefits members -- I'm concerned what effect the switch to all-white will have on lurkers and Google searchers, and on site identity more generally. (The loss of the old logo/wordmark is of a piece with this -- the visual identity built up by myriad screenshots, news articles, T-shirts, and other merch will become obsolete.)

I really hope you'll do some A/B testing on search traffic between the new white theme and the Dark Mode version, just to see how much of the high bounce rate on the old design was caused by the outdated structural layout and how much was caused by the unconventional color scheme. I have a feeling the Green and the Blue would perform surprisingly well with just an organizational facelift instead of a full recolor. I'd love for the site to get the SEO benefits of a modernized layout without sacrificing its longstanding visual uniqueness.

(I also hope you'll reconsider the link colors in Dark Mode -- that green is just too dark, and makes all the links appear visited. Speaking of which, it's a little counterintuitive to have visited links appear lighter than unvisited ones on a dark backdrop like that.)
posted by Rhaomi at 4:34 PM on September 24, 2014 [50 favorites]

First and foremost, I had just the smallest amount of trepidation before I switched over, but I find that the new theme has pretty much instantly won me over. Thank you sincerely.

I have run into a glitch. It looks like the small tag is inserting line breaks, at least on the profile page.

Date and Time: 09/24/2014 16:36:09
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS armv7l 5978.98.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/37.0.2062.120 Safari/537.36
Screen Width: 1366
Mobile View? 0
Mobile Client: None, Standard View
posted by ob1quixote at 4:37 PM on September 24, 2014

I should note that the section header for the part of my profile linked above uses the same faux small-caps technique, but is inside a center tag and works fine.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:39 PM on September 24, 2014

The addition of Dark Mode largely fixes this issue [...] but that really only benefits members

Dark mode will be on the front pages for non-members too.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:40 PM on September 24, 2014

Have only tried this on my phone so far but I love it! It is profoundly weird that Metafilter doesn't look fusty any more but I'm glad you guys finally pulled the bandaid off.
posted by selfnoise at 4:41 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Okay... now that I've used it for all of ten minutes I can say that I'm certain about two things: 1) I love it; and 2) I'd rather have gold back as the accent color as opposed to green.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:43 PM on September 24, 2014 [11 favorites]

mathowie: "Dark mode will be on the front pages for non-members too."

Right, but only on the subsite homepages, and only for those who know where to look -- even some folks here were having trouble finding the toggle. The vast majority of drive-by traffic, whether from search queries or from inbound links from other sites, will be seeing the white version.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:44 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

if we're voting (i know, we're not) i really like the green.
posted by nadawi at 4:45 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Tried it.

Dark mode on Firefox 20.0 gives me unreadable (same colour as background) text in MeTa.

Otherwise seemed to work fine.

Switched back to classic for now.
posted by motty at 4:45 PM on September 24, 2014

Thank you for not making Jobs brilliant purple. FanFare is perfect for the purple and green theme.

I just want to file all day.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 4:48 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The vast majority of drive-by traffic, whether from search queries or from inbound links from other sites, will be seeing the white version.

Yep, and if that presents a problem, we might try the A/B testing you describe, but I don't think the unknown affects on non-members of the site are going to change our site culture all that much. They weren't members before, they're likely not going to become members (there are literally thousands visitors for every member that revisits), so I don't think it's a sky-is-falling situation at all.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:49 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Dark mode on Firefox 20.0 gives me unreadable (same colour as background) text in MeTa.

Are you running any Greasemonkey scripts or browser extensions that could be changing the color of text? Things are checking out for me in the most recent Firefox.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:50 PM on September 24, 2014

Yeah, the green-instead-of-yellow thing is fucking with my head, man!

I don't know if it's just that I'm not used to it yet (I expect to see yellow, but I'm seeing green, so it feels like my eyes have gone screwy), or if it's a genuine contrast issue that makes it slightly harder to read. I think it might be a bit of both. I'm not suggesting you bump it up to full fluorescent, but a teeny-tiny bit more brightness (or maybe yellowness?) in that green might help? I dunno.

(It does look cooler, though.)
posted by Sys Rq at 4:51 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

No Greasemonkey scripts; a few browser extensions but nothing that changes the colour of text so far as I am aware, and certainly nothing that is intended to change the colour of text. Aware my Firefox is old, though, and that this is something of an outlier...
posted by motty at 4:56 PM on September 24, 2014

I've had a few months to get used to this redesign, and it continues to be fantastic.

Except for my one continuing pecadillo, which is that New Post is better suited for the subsite menu than for the User menu. It's not a muscle memory issue, like for Recent Activity (which I did eventually get used to).
posted by carsonb at 4:58 PM on September 24, 2014

Cool. But seriously, fuck Google over all of this from the beginning. You are Google. I know your amazing AI algorithms and shit are precious and emergent whiz-bang behavior, but if you don't know what MetaFilter is, spend 5 minutes surfing it, and check the "stop fucking up this site's rankings box" in your system. If you don't have a box or your system is so precarious that creating these sort of exceptions when your down-ranking is egregiously wrong breaks the internet, fix that shit. Make an exception rather than trying to brow-beat the entire internet into fitting within your cookie-cutter saran wrap shittery.
posted by aydeejones at 5:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

Also, yes like Eyebrows Magee I am SO STOKED to have somewhere to talk about this! None of us even knew who the other beta testers were...
posted by carsonb at 5:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm having an issue with Internet Explorer 11 and scrolling with the mouse wheel on a page. It seems to scroll in big, delayed chunks now. Works fine in Chrome.
posted by selfnoise at 5:01 PM on September 24, 2014

It's impressive that the comment place holder userscript still works in the new design.

In the latest FF it looks like the comment input box has background style which includes the color #065A8F, causing a weird greenish glow effect which doesn't seem intentional. I may not be the first to point this out or maybe it is intentional.

Overall, I like it a lot so far, but the logo looks like a placeholder to me.
posted by feloniousmonk at 5:05 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love the redesign so much on my phone on my train ride home, I feel like I'm getting the hug metatalk has been promising for a while.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 5:05 PM on September 24, 2014

I'm likely in a very small minority but those fonts hurt. I'll give it a try for a bit, but ouch.
posted by tilde at 5:07 PM on September 24, 2014 [10 favorites]

It might grow on me, but for now I think it's too cute. Not in a good way.
posted by ktkt at 5:08 PM on September 24, 2014

It looks nice, especially with dark mode, but there's seriously approximately half as many comments/half as much text per screen as there used to be. Was that a conscious decision? No offense, but for a text-centric site, that seems to me like the wrong direction to go in. Surely things can be nice looking and web 2.0-ish (or whatever version we're up to now) without making it more difficult to actually read the content.
posted by Flunkie at 5:08 PM on September 24, 2014 [22 favorites]

Is the new theme somehow disallowing pinch-to-zoom in iOS Safari, or is that some sort of bug? (I'm on an iPad 3, iOS 8.0, if that matters). Between that and no swipe-to-favorite, I'm having issues hitting that little plus sign with my hamfingers.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:10 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Example:

screenshot in classic mode, starting with the first comment in this thread

screenshot in modern mode, starting with the same content

To be clear, the screenshots are not the same size as each other, but the windows that they were in were the same size as each other, and the content shown in each screenshot was the entire content in each window. I just snipped to capture all the content without bothering to also get all the empty space into the screenshots.
posted by Flunkie at 5:11 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

/me waves goodbye to the "you're on the new server" snowman next to the contact link in the page footer.

*sniff*

I'm gonna miss that little guy...
posted by russm at 5:13 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

I didn't realize I wanted this until I had it. It still feels like a completely different site, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I like the green accent color. Thanks for all the work that must have gone into this.
posted by misozaki at 5:15 PM on September 24, 2014

Flunkie, the fonts are slightly bigger than your Classic theme custom settings, and if you size the images the same height, you miss one comment in the new view, so it's not a huge change in my mind.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:17 PM on September 24, 2014

if the font looks really bad you might want to check your browser preferences. one of mine was set to arial of all things - once i changed that it got a lot better.
posted by nadawi at 5:17 PM on September 24, 2014

mathowie, I'm not sure what you mean by "if you size the images the same height" - like I said, the windows were the same height as each other, and I captured all of the displayed content in each. The only reason the images are not the same height is because there's a lot more empty space that I didn't bother capturing in the new mode.
posted by Flunkie at 5:19 PM on September 24, 2014

I really like it! Though honestly, I came in to say comment place holder userscript!?! How to get this, feloniousmonk?
posted by to recite so charmingly at 5:20 PM on September 24, 2014

I'm not sure what you mean by "if you size the images the same height"

The larger screenshot showing more content is 600px tall. The second one is 532px tall. So you're saying the second one doesn't show as much content but it's also 68px shorter.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:21 PM on September 24, 2014

ohhhh i love the arrow when you skip to a specific comment!
posted by nadawi at 5:21 PM on September 24, 2014

The fact that everything highlights blue and green is really jarring on the non-blue subsites. The font is mostly too large, which makes it feel childish to me. Shrinking to 90% zoom in Chrome looks much better.
posted by ktkt at 5:22 PM on September 24, 2014

It looks very nice, but personally I would've done the following:

Just use the scrolled-past-the-top header/mobile header at all times. Move all the secondary Home/FAQ stuff into the hamburger, move all the hamburger sites into a dropdown you get to from clicking the site's name (with an arrow next to it). Maybe change the hamburger to 'Menu'. The way the nav is right now feels really disjointed and crazy and there generally needs to be fewer things to click on to get places.
posted by cellphone at 5:22 PM on September 24, 2014

Again, the windows they were in were the same height, and I captured all content from them.
posted by Flunkie at 5:22 PM on September 24, 2014

Is the new theme somehow disallowing pinch-to-zoom in iOS Safari, or is that some sort of bug? (I'm on an iPad 3, iOS 8.0, if that matters). Between that and no swipe-to-favorite, I'm having issues hitting that little plus sign with my hamfingers.

Same here on my phone, iOS 8
posted by rtha at 5:24 PM on September 24, 2014

Oh my! This is really nice. Still Metafilter, only fresher looking. Kudos to everyone! And dark mode ftw!
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 5:25 PM on September 24, 2014

My immediate not-waiting-two-weeks-as-instructed-feedback is:
This is awesome and I support it 100%.

I totally agree that the site looked dated and thus subtly influenced people (especially newcomers) into thinking that it wasn't a good source for current information. I personally knew it to be a great source of info, but it needed to *feel* like one too.

Great job guys. Let's make this the default ASAP.
posted by Vorteks at 5:29 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

if the font looks really bad you might want to check your browser preferences. one of mine was set to arial of all things - once i changed that it got a lot better.

I'm pretty sure I'm seeing the embedded font and not anything set by local preferences. The letterforms look fine, it's just that they're very scrunched together. Incidentally, changing the browser zoom doesn't fix it.
posted by dorque at 5:31 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it. Never change it.
posted by bondcliff at 5:33 PM on September 24, 2014

yeah, i'm sure some people aren't liking the font for other reasons. i'm honestly really uneducated about this particular topic. i just know that i couldn't figure out why everything was so bubbly (especially when people were complaining about scrunching) so i looked at my local preferences and was all, "why does that say arial? what if i changed that?" and boom, better looking immediately.
posted by nadawi at 5:34 PM on September 24, 2014

It's beautiful!
posted by kepano at 5:38 PM on September 24, 2014

I love it. Scrolling feels like it has a slight lagginess on my iphone 4S, but I think I can deal.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 5:40 PM on September 24, 2014

That <small> issue should be fixed up, ob1quixote.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:40 PM on September 24, 2014

I like both the new option, and the thoughtful way you went about putting it together. I am looking forward to seeing if my initial desire to tweak font sizes is still there after a few weeks.

You will, of course, need to update the FAQ with the fact that this is an option, and an option with less customability.
posted by julen at 5:41 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The difference between the two is like having Cleartype properly calibrated or not.
posted by feloniousmonk at 5:41 PM on September 24, 2014

OK, I've done it more carefully, showing the entire browser display area rather than just the content:

New style, starting with first comment

Old style, starting at the same place

And the problem gets a lot worse when dealing with comments of significant length. For example, consider this recently-sidebarred comment from mister-o:

New style

Old style

The new style doesn't even get through the whole comment. The old style gets through the comment and two more, and the majority of a fourth.
posted by Flunkie at 5:42 PM on September 24, 2014 [11 favorites]

Wow, cool!
posted by latkes at 5:42 PM on September 24, 2014

I really really really do not like the username shortening.
posted by azarbayejani at 5:43 PM on September 24, 2014 [8 favorites]

This mostly looks great to me! Except...

I don't like how each subsite's name has differently sized letters. I understand why that is happening (Ask MetaFilter is longer than MetaFilter), but it feels kind of weird clicking between them.

I don't like the [staff] badges in MeTa being green. Blue made way more sense to me.

I agree that the formatting controls look old and ugly, BUT I don't care at all.

My brain is interpreting the user settings icon as a "no profile picture available" placeholder. I know it's not meant as that but that's how it looks to me. But actually it might be cool to have our own user pictures there so people who share devices can easily see who's logged in by glancing at the page.
posted by aubilenon at 5:44 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think the new font looks significantly better in Chrome with proper aliasing.

Ironically, Chrome only just finally fixed a 5 year old bug on Windows that caused horrifyingly janky font rendering (one of the things that kept me from ever seriously considering it as my every day browser) a few weeks back.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:45 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is a suuuuuper selfish request, but it looks like the User Tools menu shows up to 10 characters of your username, with ellipses if the username is longer than 10 characters. My username is 11 characters, and would take less space to display than 10+ellipses. Can you make it so it shows up to 11, including ellipses if necessary?

On preview -- jinx, azarbayejani!
posted by zeptoweasel at 5:46 PM on September 24, 2014

I'm going to keep using modern to see if I get used to it, but right now the page headers do not read as "modern" to me - they remind me more of a content farm like ehow or wikihow than a modern interpretation of a "community weblog."

I noticed the extra whitespace (ie, less text per screen) that Flunkie is talking about right off the bat. Assumed it was intentional?
posted by muddgirl at 5:46 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

It'll take a minute to get totally used to it, but this looks really good. I love it. Also into the "more" tab and MefiLabs!
posted by latkes at 5:46 PM on September 24, 2014

I think the kerning issue, which I also see, is Firefox-specific and related to aliasing, although I didn't see anything obviously to blame in a quick perusal of the CSS. I think the new font looks significantly better in Chrome with proper aliasing.

Huh, really? I'm finding it much easier to read in FF right now than in Chrome (which is my default browser). Looking at the two side-by-side, I have the vague sense that the font weight is a little heavier in Chrome for some reason. Actually, even the comment box seems to have slightly more relaxed spacing (or lighter weight) than the rendered text.

Possibly I'm losing my mind and need to get out more.
posted by dorque at 5:48 PM on September 24, 2014

OK my last comment reads a bit harsh. Overall I really like the design and the changes to menu content - organizationally and navigationally everything seems much easier to find.
posted by muddgirl at 5:48 PM on September 24, 2014

Liking it a lot except that I find the green too dark (i.e. not enough contrast), which I only mention in case enough other people mention it too. Otherwise, outstanding work...kudos!
posted by uosuaq at 5:49 PM on September 24, 2014

the more i use it the more i love that floating menu.
posted by nadawi at 5:50 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it, quite a bit, except that in Dark Mode, the boxes and sidelines in Recent Activity (indicating one's own comment and an Asker's comment, respectively) are much harder to see now.
posted by Etrigan at 5:50 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

MetaTalk: hamburger on the top left for all subsites.

I really like the new look BTW, but I was always using the plain theme so it's not perhaps as much of a change for me. The new green colour of the top right menu bar and elsewhere is more lime green than I'm used to and I wouldn't object if it were toned down a bit.
posted by Rumple at 5:51 PM on September 24, 2014

Yeah Flunkie, there is more whitespace with this design, more room for the text to breathe and in my opinion makes it easier to read and easier on the eyes. You can tweak your browser's zoom settings if you want smaller fonts that fit more text in a given window size.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:51 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well I thought I just found a minor cosmetic bug in the new design, but it turns out it happens on the old design too. If I look at my profile with certain browser window sizes, the boxes for my multiple twitter accounts can overlap.

(You still get a trillion bonus points for supporting users with multiple accounts on other sites though.)
posted by aubilenon at 5:52 PM on September 24, 2014

My username is 11 characters, and would take less space to display than 10+ellipses. Can you make it so it shows up to 11, including ellipses if necessary?

11ers Unite!

It also seems like it's not possible to select text within a comment in iOS, just the whole comment as a block.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:52 PM on September 24, 2014

But actually it might be cool to have our own user pictures there so people who share devices can easily see who's logged in by glancing at the page.

That's not a bad idea, though we'd have to scrunch down your user profile pic into a very tiny icon to fit it up there, so it might be an unrecognizable smear at the small size.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:53 PM on September 24, 2014

i'm probably in the super minority with this browsing situation, but the more white (lol nah dark mode 4eva) space makes reading this on my tv a lot easier!
posted by nadawi at 5:54 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yep, you cookie your design choices by device.

I like it. I really do. I never would have thought a change would be good, but I really like this. Well done.

Can we make the Dark Side a user preference ? ArsTechnica also has a Dark Mode as a cookie and it's annoying as hell to have to set that on every machine I browse it on.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:54 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hate change!

But I really like this one!

Damn you mathowie! :)
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:56 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

On my phone (Android 4.4, using Firefox), the new theme causes links to open in the current tab when long-pressing on a link to bring up "open in new tab."

Also, the screenshots in the post don't seem to be showing up for me at all.
posted by flod logic at 5:57 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Dark mode makes me happy.

That is all.
posted by Aranquis at 5:58 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's great. I love it. I'm astonished to discover that other people do too and this thread hasn't devolved into an angry poopfest.
posted by Jofus at 5:58 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

I love it! This must have been a huge project, and the design is immensely thoughtful. I want to eat the purple of FanFare it's so delicious. Love the floating menu, too.
I'm not in love with how much space there is in between text, but I can see why the decision was made. Right now I have my browser zoomed out a bit, and I think in time I'll get used to it.
Thanks for the redesign.
posted by missmary6 at 6:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Really love this! It's a very thoughtful and skillful redesign overall.

One issue: I know we live in a new world of touchscreens, but can we still have links that change color on hover? Sometimes people post multiple links like so and without hover effects it's hard to tell if it's all the same link or not.

I think some of the colors maybe need fine-tuning. The white-text-on-blue Dark Mode is higher contrast than before, and harder on the eyes. The brown-on-brown links on Dark IRL are particularly difficult to read.

You'll need to update the favicons!
posted by oulipian at 6:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [12 favorites]

we'd have to scrunch down your user profile pic into a very tiny icon to fit it up there, so it might be an unrecognizable smear at the small size.

I bet people can recognize their own profile pic at sizes much smaller than would be reasonable to display the profile pics of others.
posted by aubilenon at 6:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

I like it a lot too. I think I like Dark Mode better simply because it's easier on the eyes and also more familiar. But the text and spacing is much clearer, and I like the colour accents. Well done!
posted by Athanassiel at 6:06 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

For everyone who is feeling discomfited by stuff that is more sort of subjective taste than actual bugs, I strongly recommend you follow Matt's advice and just let it sink in for a while.

I'll be honest, I liked the idea but really did not feel comfortable with the reality when I started beta testing it a couple months back or whenever it was. It felt wrong, it didn't feel like Metafilter to me (that got much better once the Dark Mode toggle appeared), and I tried to offer helpful feedback, but I was a little change-averse aghast even though I liked it in terms of the thinking behind it, and certain once Matt told me that it would be possible that I'd be using the Legacy theme forever.

Other than post titles on the blue, which I still can't get used to, though, I found as time went on that it all really started to feel Good and Right. Sure some minor stuff (I would prefer the background of the search bar be not quite so white, or the link colors be a bit different, and I'm not super in love with the font choice, but shrug, for now at least) still needs tweaking (or won't get tweaked and I'll live with), but: it took time for the shock of change -- particularly change after SO MANY YEARS of sameness -- to wear off. A week or two, even.

So like Matt said in the OP, let it sink in for a while if it's an aesthetic niggle rather than a bug, maybe, I'd suggest. It might just start to feel natural, and fairly quickly.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:08 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

I like it a lot and clicking on dark mode was yayyy.

(I was trying to decide if I like the darker background on the "posted by" byline, and then it started looking kind of distractingly off-center to me, vertically.. Kinda think it needs one more pixel of bottom padding.)
posted by fleacircus at 6:09 PM on September 24, 2014

So far I think I like it (though I'm not loving the font in this text box) and will give it a try for a week or so before deciding.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:10 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it. Thanks!
posted by Renoroc at 6:16 PM on September 24, 2014

Ok, I was just going to put together some screenshots of the aliasing issue and noticed that it appears in dark mode only. Here is an example of bad kerning (specifically, the "tr" combination in the word "try") from this post. This is visible in both Firefox and Chrome in dark mode. The second image in that gallery is the same general text block in light mode.
posted by feloniousmonk at 6:16 PM on September 24, 2014

I should note that I am only guessing that the kerning is due to aliasing. I assign these kinds of bugs to someone else!
posted by feloniousmonk at 6:18 PM on September 24, 2014

One issue: I know we live in a new world of touchscreens, but can we still have links that change color on hover? Sometimes people post multiple links like so and without hover effects it's hard to tell if it's all the same link or not.

Ditto this please.
posted by juv3nal at 6:21 PM on September 24, 2014

Yeah, this whole no color change on hover thing has got to go.
posted by azarbayejani at 6:22 PM on September 24, 2014

It's really really pretty, but it's behaving really really janky for me in iOS, both on iPhone and iPad.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:22 PM on September 24, 2014

Also am just trying it on the mobile and even more love. For every person who complains the new font/text is too big, there will be someone like me who's rapt not to have to get the glasses out!
posted by Athanassiel at 6:23 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The "font too big/too much vertical space" issue is something I was feeling too, and it is definitely helped by zooming my browser out one click. For me on a laptop anyway, that brings the font size closer to what I use in Classic theme, and puts about as much content on each page as my brain is expecting.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:25 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

In case this got missed: is pinch-to-zoom disabled on purpose? Can we have it back?
posted by rtha at 6:26 PM on September 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

Not happy about the titles but overall I love it. Love the Dark Mode and I actually really like the increase in white space. For me, the lack of white space in the previous design (Classic Coke?) was problematic. I would end up ensmallening my windows in an effort to squish the text a bit. I like that the ensmallening is done for me already.
posted by cooker girl at 6:26 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

pinch-to-zoom is disabled, and pb is going to see whether he can get it working without breaking other stuff... but he's busy right now so it won't happen til later.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:27 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

can we still have links that change color on hover?

We do have a hover state, but it's super subtle, going from dark blue to nearly black. I was considering doing a link underline on hover only a couple weeks ago, but never banged out a test for it. We still need to tweak the hover states to make them more obvious.

is pinch-to-zoom disabled on purpose?

It's disabled by default in bootstrap, the CSS framework we're using. pb is going to try turning it off in the next day or so to see if it introduces any bugs and if not, I'm sure it'll come back.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

I like it, though more on a big external screen than on my 11 inch macbook air where there's too much white space between posts/comments. For instance, on the Mefi main page I can now see perhaps only 3 or 4 FPPs without scrolling, whereas I used to be able to see about 8.

It will take some muscle memory retraining in terms of where to click to get to the various subsites, but that will dissipate fairly quickly I would imagine.

Good stuff!
posted by modernnomad at 6:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Love it!

So far I've only viewed it on iOS devices, but it works and looks great. That said, I have a bug report and a question/pony.

Bug: the links on the bottom (faq, etc) of the Fund page, which seems to live on the login.metafilter.com subsite, 404.

Question/pony: I am hugely reliant on the "skip to bottom" link on the old site. It could be that with the new site I won't need it as much, but right now I sure miss it.

For real though: I'm really impressed. Great work!
posted by dirtdirt at 6:31 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Re pinch-to-zoom: thanks! I tried to favorite both LoMitt and Matt's comments from recent activity but fat-fingered my way back into the thread!
posted by rtha at 6:34 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thank you. It's gorgeous.
posted by ltracey at 6:36 PM on September 24, 2014

I've tried it on my phone now and basically it is great. However, I usually read in landscape orientation, and the persistent banner along the top robs me of about 15% of the screen space (iPhone 4, yes, I'm a technopeasant). All the same, I don't see the advantage in having that there all the time, versus the normal browser behaviour of touch the top bar and it takes you to the top of the page where you can use the normal menu tools. So I'd love to lose that persistent banner.
posted by Rumple at 6:41 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Dark mode on my iPhone is gorgeous. Not sure I can deal with the change on my desktop yet.
posted by usonian at 6:48 PM on September 24, 2014

Thank you! It looks very fresh and new. I like the purple for Fanfare. That white was hurtin me something serious. Plus somehow the purple in dark mode makes you feel like you're in a movie theater.

So now we're eagerly awaiting 2024 for the analog theme.
posted by cashman at 6:49 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Also am just trying it on the mobile and even more love. For every person who complains the new font/text is too big, there will be someone like me who's rapt not to have to get the glasses out!

I think font size is a bit of a red herring with respect to this. The font size is only part of the issue that leads to less text per screen, and I suspect it's not the main part. The new layout seems to enforce a maximum width that it will allow comment text in, allowing the whitespace on either side of the comments to grow without bound. There's no reason why larger fonts means all that space has to be wasted.
posted by Flunkie at 6:50 PM on September 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

It's disabled by default in bootstrap, the CSS framework we're using. pb is going to try turning it off in the next day or so to see if it introduces any bugs and if not, I'm sure it'll come back.

FYI, the lack of pinch and zoom is a complete dealbeaker on my iDevices. Please bring back soon!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:50 PM on September 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

I love it! But please, can we keep the iconic MeFi blue?
posted by subbes at 6:50 PM on September 24, 2014

Oh my god. It really IS a Firefox issue. Chrome on the left, Firefox on the right, Windows 7. It's as if Firefox is screwing up both the subpixel rendering AND the font size.
posted by chrominance at 6:52 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm astonished to discover that other people do too and this thread hasn't devolved into an angry poopfest.

I mean, I hate it a lot and will never use it unless forced to, but I am hugely enormously tremendously glad that everyone else seems to really like it because I feel like we've been just one more contentious MeTa away from actual declarations of war lately.
posted by poffin boffin at 6:53 PM on September 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

This is not for me. I like Metafilter *because* it doesn't look like Web 2.0 SEO barf. Not despite of it.
posted by bleep at 6:53 PM on September 24, 2014 [17 favorites]

Wow, this is basically everything that makes me viscerally angry about the last several years of UX design applied to one of my favorite sites, right down the pointlessly large space between the edge of the text box and the actual text. Yet another design that uses as much space as possible to display as little information as possible. I guess I'm the only one, but I really, really hate this.

I do greatly, immensely appreciate that this is a preference, since it means that after thirty seconds from now, I never have to see it again.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:53 PM on September 24, 2014 [19 favorites]

[sound of door opening, engine revving, tires squealing around the block]

Until there is a way to turn off titles, I won't be using this on a regular basis.

Also, as one with a 10-plus character username, I am not super keen on having my name truncated.

Finally, in a request unrelated to design, could Ello be added to the social media list?

Thanks, guys!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:55 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm definitely interested in letting this change sink in--because I think it's going to take a few weeks.

In the meantime, I did want to note that it'd be lovely if y'all consider putting the Older Post/Newer Post navigation underneath the comment box/preview box.

In other words, it seems logical to move the "Older Post/Newer Post" nav to the very bottom of the white space right before 'About Subsite' starts the footer.
posted by librarylis at 6:57 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh my god. It really IS a Firefox issue. Chrome on the left, Firefox on the right, Windows 7. It's as if Firefox is screwing up both the subpixel rendering AND the font size.

That's odd and interesting. On Win 7, latest Firefox, on both machines I've looked at it using that browser/OS, the font looks perfectly fine to me. Equivalent to latest Chrome. Certainly not as messed up as yours appears to be.

Huh. I'm curious to find out what's causing that. Such a headache tracking down stuff like that. (For what it's worth, if the majority of people don't see something like that happening on the same OS/browser combo, it's almost always down to something specific to your setup that's causing it. What that might be, though, I couldn't say offhand.)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:57 PM on September 24, 2014

I really love the way it looks. I'm on an ipad using chrome right now. Haven't tried it on other devices. I'm noticing a huge lag when typing in this comment field, though, and it guess it's related, like, I can type a whole word before it shows up. I just tried typing in the URL bar to see if it's happening elsewhere and it isn't, so I don't think my ipad has suddenly gone weird.

Also, I think I will miss pinch to zoom.

I love the design in general though, and especially all the extra white space and larger text. The old design had slightly too small text by default on my ipad, and it always had to zoom in.
posted by lollusc at 6:58 PM on September 24, 2014

I’m a text-centric designer and editor of complex publications (not one of those “I make pretty posters” graphic designers) who has been working in publishing since the 1980s.

The box around the “posted by” lines on front-page posts really sucks. It’s fingernails-on-chalkboard bad for me. Totally visually distracting and there is already ample space between those lines and the beginning of the next post to differentiate the posts. Clutter, clutter, clutter.
posted by D.C. at 7:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [20 favorites]

I think font size is a bit of a red herring with respect to this.
Sorry, not a web designer. Whatever the reason, there will be people whose eyes cope with more/smaller/denser text and prefer that. There will be people whose eyes cope better with less/bigger/more spaced text and, as someone who used to be the former and has become the latter due to age and increased staring at small screens of text, I appreciate the new look!

But also as someone with fat fingers I look forward to the pinch-zoom thing being restored so I can favourite things on my phone.
posted by Athanassiel at 7:00 PM on September 24, 2014

For what it's worth, I've used Bootstrap on a couple of recent projects, and not had any problem with making pinch-to-zoom work OK (can't remember how, exactly, offhand, though). Best practices for that sort of thing seems to be constantly and annoyingly in flux, which makes Doing It Right a bit of a crapshoot, but it hopefully shouldn't be too onerous getting it working.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:02 PM on September 24, 2014

Huh. I'm curious to find out what's causing that. Such a headache tracking down stuff like that.

My guess is this. I am running an AMD card, so an issue with Catalyst and Firefox would make sense. I'm downloading Catalyst 14.7 RC3 now, and will report back once I get it installed.
posted by chrominance at 7:02 PM on September 24, 2014

On the Contacts page, mutual contacts whose profiles you've visited appear as an illegible very pale green inside a white box.
posted by drlith at 7:03 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

My guess is this.

Good catch -- that would explain why I've never seen or heard of it, given that FF32 only dropped a week or two back.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:04 PM on September 24, 2014

So, everyone else loves this shade of green? Just asking.
posted by uosuaq at 7:06 PM on September 24, 2014

Okay a couple more comments now ive turned dark mode on and browsed all the subsides. I can't easily see the orange titles on the he IrL site against the brown background (as mentioned before, I'm on chrome on an ipad in case that's relevant), and I think the whole site is just a bit slowerthan it is with the other themes. I am in Australia with stupid-slow internet speeds, though, which might mean it doesn't affect most people as much. And I can live with the extra loading time for most of the site, but the lag when typing and clicking in the comment box is going to be completely unusuable, so sadly I'll have to switch back to traditional themes for now.
posted by lollusc at 7:06 PM on September 24, 2014

Whatever the reason, there will be people whose eyes cope with more/smaller/denser text and prefer that.

But I'm saying that the issue is not merely smaller or denser text, it's also less area that that text is allowed to go in.

Imagine we each have a big bucket that we can put balls in. I for some reason like baseballs. You for some reason like basketballs. I can choose baseballs, you can choose basketballs, and everybody's happy.

Also, I can choose a bigger bucket and get more baseballs in it. Or a smaller basket and get less baseballs in it. You can choose a bigger or smaller basket for your basketballs, too. Again, everybody's happy.

But now all of a sudden there's a law regulating maximum bucket size.

I can still have baseballs, and you can still have basketballs, and that's great as far as it goes, but it's not the whole issue.
posted by Flunkie at 7:06 PM on September 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

(As evidence for the lag problem: see all the typos in my previous comment. They are because I don't see the word appear until I've already moved on to typing the next one. It's kind of like typing blind.)
posted by lollusc at 7:08 PM on September 24, 2014

Zozo: "$USER Profile" in the static header's right-side menu looks a little... off. "$USER's Profile," or some kind of delimiter (e.g. "$USER | Profile") might help?

I think just taking out the word profile probably.
posted by capricorn at 7:09 PM on September 24, 2014

Okay, I promise this is my last comment. The typing lag is only happening on long threads like this one. I just tested typing in comment boxes of short threads and it's fine.
posted by lollusc at 7:11 PM on September 24, 2014

I LOVE IT.

You guys I mean
posted by sweetkid at 7:12 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

So, everyone else loves this shade of green? Just asking.

I like the green a lot in MetaTalk Dark, but far less so in Mefi Dark, where it doesn't contrast enough with the dark blue background. In AskMe Dark it looks more like an accent colour than anything, which is weird to me. One quick option might be to swap the dark and light greens so that light green is the default link colour, and dark green is the visited link colour.
posted by chrominance at 7:14 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

mathowie: “That's not a bad idea, though we'd have to scrunch down your user profile pic into a very tiny icon to fit it up there, so it might be an unrecognizable smear at the small size.”

I think you'd be surprised. I note that the Gravatar icon used on, e.g., the 34 px top bar for Stack Overflow, is 24 px square and is perfectly recognizable.

Although I must admit that in one of my own interfaces I use a 45 px top bar and a 32 px square profile photo. Then again I haven't even addressed mobile yet so…
posted by ob1quixote at 7:17 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I notice that the descenders on type in the search box are getting cut off (y j q p etc). Using Firefox 32.2.02 on Mac.

I hate change with a passion but the new design is something I would switch to… someday.
posted by jabo at 7:22 PM on September 24, 2014

Having played around with it more on my external display as well, I now have serious reservations.

While it definitely looks clean and modern, there are acres of white space that seriously detract from the usability of a text-only site. At least under Chrome on a Mac running a 22 inch external display, I can still only see four FPPs at a time on the main page, and the same problem exists with comments.

"Zooming out" using Chrome's settings does shrink the text, but also simply increases the already gigantic white spaces around everything.

I will continue using for two weeks as requested, but I probably will return to the old 'professional white' design at the end of that trial period unless a more efficient use of space can be made. I understand the motivation behind 'mobile first', and I suspect this looks pretty great on a tablet, but I don't think that needs to be at the expense of usability on the desktop.
posted by modernnomad at 7:22 PM on September 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

iOS 7.x, Chrome latest build. No adjustments made on browser to fiddle with fonts. No adjustments on iOS settings to fiddle with fonts.

Windows 7, latest Chrome build, no adjustment made to os or browser to fiddle with fonts. Same font ouch.

No idea what the font is called.

On pro white I used a custom Arial on one Win7 machine & std font on other.

Maybe give baxk the font choice option?

This font feels like a softened mono space like Lucinda but converted to look less like it. My brsin is still recovering from a bad cold so I can't think of the word & I know it's related to but not kerning.

And an old pony but blockquote button on mobile?

Thanks! It's a great option to have this new look for a lot of folks.

:)
posted by tilde at 7:23 PM on September 24, 2014

I like the theme, and I'll go check out the dark mode in a second, but thanks for having the option to stick with the classic mode (and the white professional, too). As nice as the new layout is, like flunkie, the font size and white space doesn't really work for me. For whatever reason, one of the things I've always liked on MeFi is how small the text is. For me, it's the perfect size (or I've just grown into it). Even on my phone, I feel like there's enough text that I get to read rather than just constantly scroll. I've always been a fast reader, and the new layout doesn't really give me enough text to sink my teeth into.

Still, it is a nice layout, and I imagine it will definitely work better on fresh eyes that are more used to modern website layouts.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:25 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

But now all of a sudden there's a law regulating maximum bucket size.
Ok, the whole fixed-width thing. Also doesn't bother me, at least partly because I am used to it on many sites and also because I prefer not to have to read a 45cm-long string of text before hitting "return" on my eyes. YMMV. (This is on the desktop, obviously my phone isn't 45cm wide.)
posted by Athanassiel at 7:27 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't get all this fuss about dork mode. Hasn't Mefi always been that way?

Oh, dark mode.

Never mind.
posted by pjern at 7:29 PM on September 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

But you never had to read a 45cm-long string of text. You had the choice whether to do so or not. Now you don't. I understand that the choice that is now being forced upon you is the one you would want anyway, but that fact doesn't mean life has improved for you, nor does it mean that life would get worse for you if you had the choice again.
posted by Flunkie at 7:30 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, what happened to the link(s) to the Wiki?
posted by pjern at 7:31 PM on September 24, 2014

It looks nice, but I gave it a try, I did, and I just cannot handle how big that font is and I need to switch back to standard white. If you do end up tweaking the design at all, please please please prioritize custom font control size, particularly on title font but really the whole site.

(Scrolling out on the browser makes the font smaller, but then text only occupies like 1/3 of the screen -- it doesn't actually increase the amount of text visible on the page.)
posted by likeatoaster at 7:32 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

what happened to the link(s) to the Wiki?

It's in the footer, on every page instead of just in MetaTalk.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:33 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I already registered my discontent but I read more of the thread and I still feel the need to state that this looks like the opposite of a modern site with reliable information. It looks like a content farm from 2009.
posted by bleep at 7:36 PM on September 24, 2014 [8 favorites]

Loving this redesign so hard.
posted by arielmeadow at 7:37 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh my goodness look at this.
Wow.
Over all probably good, but its going to take some getting used to. I can't stay on the page with out darkmode being turned on.

Agree with D.C. about The box around the “posted by” lines on front-page posts . Well, I probably don't feel quite that strongly about it, but it really leapt out at me that the flow of the page was broken up at an odd place. The box looks like a line at the beginning of something, but it doesn't really mark the place between posts, and I don't need the "posted by" line highlighted, so what good is it? (That's a rhetorical question, FWIW)

Why is my highlighting color blue in this box? That doesn't seem to fit. I would like light gray, please, since this is a gray page. Oh, wait, it is the same on all the pages. It works better for me with those colors.

Going off to explore now.
posted by SLC Mom at 7:37 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Definitely going to take some getting used to but I like it on my phone, a lot. Dark mode is a necessity, though. Thank you so much for including it.
posted by immlass at 7:38 PM on September 24, 2014

The typing lag is only happening on long threads like this one

Yeah, I've noticed it myself on mobile devices. I think the browser lag is due to the live preview trying to render on an already huge page with tons of existing javascript. I bet if you turn off live preview on your mobile device, typing will be instant.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:39 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Catalyst 14.7 fixes the font rendering in Firefox, sort of. Left is Chrome, right is Firefox. Compare to Catalyst 14.4 Firefox, on the right side of this image.

So if your screen looks like the right side of the second image, and you have an AMD video card/are running an older version of Catalyst, try upgrading the video card drivers to Catalyst 14.7 RC3. Here's a link to the latest Windows beta of Catalyst. Anything 14.6 and above seems to be okay, though.
posted by chrominance at 7:40 PM on September 24, 2014

I just switched back to the old view just to confirm that I did have to read 45cm-long strings of text and yes, I did. Perhaps that was fixable by me but I didn't know how to fix it. So taking away a choice I didn't know I had, let alone know how to choose any differently, is not going to bother me. And yes, life would get worse for me if I had the choice again, since I don't know how to fix it to be the way I prefer. (No, you don't need to explain it to me.)

You would prefer to have the choice. I don't care. We don't agree. Good stuff, we don't have to.

On a totally different note, I think someone commented that if you are in Dark Mode, looking at your contacts, "mutual users" (both the explanatory text and the users themselves) appear in pale green highlighted white. Agree that this is almost impossible to read. Also, when you highlight text on any page with a blue background, the highlight only shows as making the text pale green. Elsewhere on the site, where the background colour is different, the highlight shows as pale green on blue which works fine. Maybe a different contrast colour for blue-background pages? Or a different highlight scheme for Dark Mode? The green/blue thing works fine in non-dark mode, and mutual users show blue on pale grey which is also fine.
posted by Athanassiel at 7:41 PM on September 24, 2014

Alright, I'm back. Thanks for waiting.
I really like the little hamburger dropdown thingy that sits on the header when I am scrolling down a page. Can we have it at the top of all the pages? It is so nifty and easy to use. If it were on all the pages a person could just always use it all the time to switch between sites and wouldn't have to readjust when at the top of a page.
Going again...
posted by SLC Mom at 7:41 PM on September 24, 2014

I just switched back to the old view just to confirm that I did have to read 45cm-long strings of text and yes, I did. Perhaps that was fixable by me but I didn't know how to fix it.

Make your browser window the size that is best for your use.
posted by Flunkie at 7:43 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can we have it at the top of all the pages?

It should already be at the top of every page throughout the site on mobile and desktop, in the new theme.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:45 PM on September 24, 2014

Wow, this is very zippy on my iPad. I like it!
posted by IndigoRain at 7:46 PM on September 24, 2014

In iOS 8, any subsite like music or IRL that has elements like a play bar or attendees count breaks when viewed in portrait. The window slides from side to side and there's blank space visible. screenshot
posted by rtha at 7:47 PM on September 24, 2014

Trying it out on my iPad, and the large chunk of blank space to the right feels kind of wasteful. I liked how the text used to pop out to fill that space after the tags and sidebar. Is the fixed width something that is going to stay? Having that arbitrary line stop leaving what looks like a fifth of the page (right and left margins combined) feels like I'm reading comments on a Wordpress blog, not MeFi.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:50 PM on September 24, 2014

rtha, did you turn your iPad from landscape to portrait to get that to happen or was it like that on load in portrait? A refresh of the page after changing orientation usually fixes the layout for me.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:51 PM on September 24, 2014

This is beautiful! I like it very much. My only little gripe is that I wish the lime green accent color leaned a bit more toward the gold-yellow like the old scheme. But overall I really like it!
posted by SpecialSpaghettiBowl at 7:51 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

liked how the text used to pop out to fill that space after the tags and sidebar. Is the fixed width something that is going to stay?

About a year or two ago, we changed that on the Classic theme so that text didn't fill the window width and kept the area below the tags box empty. Unless you mean the Plain text theme?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:52 PM on September 24, 2014

This looks like the new NetSuite UI.
posted by slogger at 7:52 PM on September 24, 2014

This is very nice. I've always kept the professional white background on because the old look was so sad looking but even the dark mode looks good now.
posted by octothorpe at 7:52 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Overall, it's disconcerting, but looks pretty good. (In Dark Mode only--the white is too white and there's too much white space in the other version.)

I miss the ability to set the font size. I can't read this font easily at the default size (not only is it too small, but it's all crushed together) [OS X 10.9, Safari 7.0.6]. It's not bad if I crank it up using the browser buttons, but then if I open a page in another tab, there it is too small again.

It's not too bad on the iPhone (although it seems like there's *lots* of extra space between comments), but agreed, lack of pinch-to-zoom is frustrating.

Also, if you resize your browser because you can't read the text, then it loses your place in the thread. The comment box went far, far away.
posted by leahwrenn at 7:53 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Flunkie, about the line length limits - that is something that always caused a (small) problem for me, in that I like to have a wide window so I can see all my tabs, but I don't want to read lines of text that run that full distance. So there's at least one use case where it's nice to have a limit built in.

likeatoaster: Scrolling out on the browser makes the font smaller, but then text only occupies like 1/3 of the screen -- it doesn't actually increase the amount of text visible on the page.

Which browser? For me in Chrome it does increase (hugely) the amount of text visible.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:53 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

The title color of unread threads on IRL dark mode does need to be tweaked. The contrast isn't high enough against the background.
posted by IndigoRain at 7:54 PM on September 24, 2014

I'm using chrome, and all zooming out does (on a laptop, anyway) is increase the margins on both sides (in the modern theme -- the classic white theme zooms in and out like it should).
posted by likeatoaster at 7:58 PM on September 24, 2014

The title color of unread threads on IRL dark mode does need to be tweaked

Yeah, we're going to tweak those to be more readable, soonish.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:59 PM on September 24, 2014

I've been using plain text, so I guess I hadn't noticed the change on the classic theme. I do think the new layouts look very nice, and the dark themes really work, but I'm glad you're leaving the plain style available, it just fits my reading style so well. If there were anyway to replicate that on the new layout, I'd be all over it, but if realize that's quite unlikely.

Seriously, though, I think it's pretty amazing that you've managed to come up with a site redesign that doesn't aggressively change they way it's used, or make it impossible to keep the old style. I can't see any issues that might pop up from users using different themes, and I think it's pretty impressive that you've managed to do that. Thanks again.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:00 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Came in to say this:

"On the Contacts page, mutual contacts whose profiles you've visited appear as an illegible very pale green inside a white box.
posted by drlith at 7:03 PM on September 24 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]"

Figured someone else would point it out, so thank you drlith! I can only read the mutual contacts by highlighting all the contacts with my mouse.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:03 PM on September 24, 2014

I was going to second librarylis' suggestion to move the older/newer line to below the comment box for logged-in users (do many people navigate via those links anyway?), but D.C. pointed out how much s/he dislikes the box around the "posted by" lines on the front pages and I realized the box around the older/newer line is probably defined by the same parameters.

So I think the bigger issue is that while on the bright theme these boxes are just a subtle color offset -- not even noticeable from some angles on an LCD screen -- in dark mode they're so much less subtle.

Any chance these boxes in dark mode could be made as subtle as they are in light mode?

(Also seconding someone above who pointed out that the color for visited links is much more pleasant than the unvisited link color. Also mathowie mentioned the hover-over color for links being too subtle a shift, but at least in dark mode I'm not seeing any shift at all when hovering over a link. Maybe a bug?)
posted by nobody at 8:04 PM on September 24, 2014

BUG REPORT: Bottom left corner of NewMeFi says "MetaFilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to." Dangling preposition, fellas.

SUGGESTED FIX: "MetaFilter is a weblog where anyone can contribute a link or a comment."
posted by Asparagirl at 8:05 PM on September 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

Matt - no, iPhone not iPad and also it stayed in portrait.
posted by rtha at 8:06 PM on September 24, 2014

I'm using chrome, and all zooming out does... is increase the margins on both sides

Weird! For me, going from 100% to 75% means I get twice as many lines of text showing on the page. (Though once it gets down to 50% and lower, it's mainly just making the margins bigger.)
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:07 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it. Well done.
posted by dumbland at 8:08 PM on September 24, 2014

BUG REPORT: Bottom left corner of NewMeFi says "MetaFilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to." Dangling preposition, fellas.

How does Google feel about ending sentences with prepositions?
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:09 PM on September 24, 2014 [6 favorites]

[overwhelming gnashing of teeth and rending of garments about changing the gold text to green]

Everything else looks awesome. The green on blue is kind of hard for me to read. The other subsites, eh, it's just kind of shocking because the old color scheme was iconic mefi.
posted by ctmf at 8:12 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

[overwhelming gnashing of teeth and rending of garments about changing the gold text to green]

I'd love it if we could have our gold text back in dark mode, at least...
posted by SpecialSpaghettiBowl at 8:15 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh fuck this is weird looking.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:16 PM on September 24, 2014

Yeah, I've noticed it myself on mobile devices. I think the browser lag is due to the live preview trying to render on an already huge page with tons of existing javascript. I bet if you turn off live preview on your mobile device, typing will be instant.

Ooh yes, you are right. Thanks!

On the other hand, there's now a weird bug with the menu bar sitting in the middle of the screen sometimes, covering up part of the comment box. I can't reproduce it on demand yet, but I've seen it twice so far.

Oh and and on preview, and again on typing this, here it is. Screenshot 1, screenshot 2. (Ipad with ios 7, chrome).
posted by lollusc at 8:17 PM on September 24, 2014

The new theme isn't showing up in the Modern version of IE on my Dell Venue 8 or Surface Pro. Works fine in Chrome or desktop IE.
posted by charred husk at 8:17 PM on September 24, 2014

Can we have it at the top of all the pages?

It should already be at the top of every page throughout the site on mobile and desktop, in the new theme.

Nope. No hamburger at the top of the pages. Browsing in Chrome on a desktop Dell something or other.

And I borked it in Explorer8 on my work computer. I think that has to do with a security thing. I clicked on something like "show only information delivered securely" and can't seem to go back. I definitely think that that problem belongs to me.
posted by SLC Mom at 8:26 PM on September 24, 2014

WWIC?
... 2 seconds pass...
Oh, shiny! This is wonderful.

I've been a Professional White user for years, but I love both the redesign and the Dark mode. I think I'm going to use dark mode on my tablet and phone and keep the default white (I love saying that) on my work machine.

Well done, guys!
posted by arcticseal at 8:29 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

OMG! Tags in mobile! I love this!
posted by arcticseal at 8:30 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have not used it and only looked at the screen shots. The positive feedback is heartening. I can't help but think, however, though i'm pretty much just showing my age, that it looks very much like the WordPress 2.3 back-end interface.

I'm not sure that this raises any concerns in particular, but if i were to raise a few, it'd be around that design being from September 2007, and also familiar to some internet users.

I'm totally not a 'change is bad ugh ugh' person on this necessarily (not like i was on the 'titles-on-askme' thing, anyway), and i'm more than sure that a lot of thought and a ton of hard work went into this...just wanted to bring it up.
posted by softlord at 8:30 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh hey. This fixes the Android comment box bug that's been around forever. I can finally see the whole text box while I'm typing.
posted by octothorpe at 8:31 PM on September 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

i'm about as modern as i need to be, and as i'm ever going to get. when will we have posts and comments in comic sans?
posted by bruce at 8:31 PM on September 24, 2014

The "watch Matt give a talk" inline video on the "about" page is way outsized on iphone, Safari iOS 8.

Also, no pinch-to-zoom on mobile? Sorry if it's been mentioned in the thread already- I've only read 1/3 of the way down so far.

Also missing the button that would send you to the bottom of the page on mobile. Had to scroll down manually. Am I just not seeing it?
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:34 PM on September 24, 2014

Love this, love all the options. Works so much better for my phone. Thanks to all for the hard work.

I don't see the "donate here" thingie tho. I think that is important in a prominent place.
posted by madamjujujive at 8:36 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah Flunkie, there is more whitespace with this design, more room for the text to breathe and in my opinion makes it easier to read and easier on the eyes.

Confirmed on this user's end! I love the redesign. I think it is a way more comfortable reading experience (I usually read MeFi with a couple of Ctrl-+s anyway) and especially with Dark Mode enabled I think it's quite beautiful.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:38 PM on September 24, 2014

Devils Rancher, thanks on the video. We're looking into pinch-to-zoom and hope to have it back soon. To scroll most of the way to the bottom click the "Sidebar" button at the top-right of the page.

madamjujujive, the donate message is in the footer of every page.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:42 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ah. Okay. Dark mode is slick. I was finding all the white kind of blinding and was wondering if I needed to drop the brightness or contrast on my monitor.

I like it. Particularly if it ends up being easier on the back end for the servers and more appealing to the big G.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:44 PM on September 24, 2014

Nope. No hamburger at the top of the pages.

On desktop, I think it only appears once you scroll down a little ways - it appears with the floating header bar thing.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:46 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Never mind. IE11 was being weird. Had to switch to the old theme and then back to the new one in order for it to take. Didn't have to do that with any other browser.
posted by charred husk at 8:50 PM on September 24, 2014

Exactly, LM! I would love to have it at the top, too.
I LIKE it!

This whole thing is so cool.
posted by SLC Mom at 8:50 PM on September 24, 2014

Ah, gotcha, sorry for missing that piece.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:52 PM on September 24, 2014

Possible bug: I figured now that you can get to it without messing with the hosts file I'd give it a go on my phone (iphone 3GS) -- not seeing the hamburger/user icons in the nav bar (Safari, iOS6). Couldn't figure out until I looked at the screenshot at the top of the thread how to get to subsites etc!

I just checked on my desktop and they're svg rather than font-awesome or similar icon font stuff, as I'd assumed, and apparently svg is supported on that browser/os, so not sure what's up there. Edit: Wait, nope, it's not supported after all, looks like!

Maybe a caching issue or something and I'm going to assume it'll fix itself, but a data point, just in case.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:58 PM on September 24, 2014

Also, I'm kinda bummed that the slidey-in slidey-out sidebar thingo didn't make the golive cut, I just noticed. I loved that!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:01 PM on September 24, 2014

Edit: Wait, nope, it's not supported after all, looks like!

Or crap, may it is, after hitting 'show all'. I dunno.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:04 PM on September 24, 2014

the slidey-in slidey-out sidebar thingo

Not sure what you're talking about specifically, but almost every line of code from the staging server went live today, so things should be the same as they were in the test environment.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:08 PM on September 24, 2014

To scroll most of the way to the bottom click the "Sidebar" button at the top-right of the page.

Thanks! It's mystery meat-ish that it needs an explanation, though I don't know where I'd stick a "bottom of page" or "skip" button. Maybe under the hamburger?

I'm also getting a weird cursor thing when entering text here, (still Safari iOS 8) where the first character or two of a new line the blinking blue cursor drops below the text entry window, then pops back up on the 3rd character. This could be an Apple bug though as moving the cursor around in the text entry window causes general weirdness.

Also, the text entry window just disappeared when I hit "preview" & I had to page-back to edit a typo. I guess apple releasing a new OS right in the middle of your rollout has made the mobile development "interesting."
Overall, I'm loving the look!
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:09 PM on September 24, 2014

Not sure what you're talking about specifically, but almost every line of code from the staging server went live today, so things should be the same as they were in the test environment.

That's weird -- I only looked at the mobile version in the Firefox Responsive Design Tool, and I recall (and even remember mentioning in an email) how cool the sidebar slide-in-slide-out transition was, but it no longer seems to do that.

Did I dream it? That's entirely possible. I have a fairly stupid number of dreams about web design stuff.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:16 PM on September 24, 2014

The top bar menu items slid downwards on mobile in a really nice way, if you mean that. Otherwise, you were dreaming.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:18 PM on September 24, 2014

And I wonder why my wife looks at me weird when I reference a conversation we had and tells me we definitely never had that conversation. Stupid brain.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:22 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm really not trying to be an asshole, but when I saw mathowie tweet about this I thought it was a joke.

+1 on the feeling that it looks like a 2009 content farm. I left one of my devices running the new version just to see if I'd get used to it. Also considering just forcing myself to use it on mobile
posted by azarbayejani at 9:24 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think I'm somewhat fine with the font *size,* but something about the proportions and kerning of this font make it very difficult to read as body text.

That being said, zooming out in my browser does seem to help things. However, you can put me down as not being a huge fan of the typeface here.
posted by schmod at 9:25 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

looks great on my asus/windows tablet.
posted by nadawi at 9:28 PM on September 24, 2014

None of us even knew who the other beta testers were...

It's more of a Karass than a Cabal.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:28 PM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

mathowie: "if that presents a problem, we might try the A/B testing you describe"

I hope you will consider doing A/B testing on Dark and White before any official launch, if only to maximize the positive impact of the redesign. Perhaps Dark Mode can outperform the all-white version in terms of bounce rate, engagement, pages viewed, etc.

Even if it does about the same, tradition makes a strong argument for making it the default instead. The page colors have been so important to site identity, it feels weird to just toss them without making sure whether they're actually responsible for the site's SEO weaknesses, as opposed to the outdated layout. If traffic stats show the colored backgrounds turn out to be a major turn-off versus the white, then fine, begone. But we really should find out for certain first.

(Of course, I don't know about the technical side of A/B testing or how difficult it is to set up, so apologies if it's more of a pain-in-the-ass in practice than in theory.)

mathowie: "but I don't think the unknown affects on non-members of the site are going to change our site culture all that much. They weren't members before, they're likely not going to become members (there are literally thousands visitors for every member that revisits), so I don't think it's a sky-is-falling situation at all."

It's not so much a worry about site culture -- the plentiful choices means no member's experience has to change -- but rather a degrading of the site's visibility and conspicuousness in the wider web. Aside from the text-heavy presentation, the blues and greens and greys are the site's most distinctive aspect, the part that's immediately evident on Wikipedia pages, Google image search thumbnails, news article screenshots, T-shirts, comics, immortalized elizardbits insults, subreddits (cough)... all fruit of a decade and a half of consistently strong visual identity, and all avenues of exposure and reinforcement for the site. The colors don't just make you notice MetaFilter out of dozens of other sites, they make you remember it. Like I said, I first started reading the site because I kept noticing this friendly green community advice column popping up in Digg and Lifehacker.

With a white default, MeFi goes from "that blue weblog" or "that green Q&A site" to "that weblog" and "that Q&A site." The content is just as compelling, but that striking first-glance hook that says "we're different" is gone, causing the site to blend in with innumerable other blogs, aggregators, and news networks. That's an important change that shouldn't be underestimated.

I think people are generally content with the redesign because things won't change for them if they don't want it, but it needs to be emphasized that currently the all-white design is going to be what the vast majority of drive-by readers (not members) will be seeing, and they're the ones whose engagement with the site pays most of the bills. The effects of an incremental design change like Dark Mode versus the more drastic Professional White on such a large, fickle population is worth evaluating before one or the other becomes permanent.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:29 PM on September 24, 2014 [42 favorites]

Where exactly is the dark mode button? As a reader who mainly uses mobile I like some aspects of the new design, but instant cognition of which subsite I'm on is grand, and sadly lacking in this new future. I've looked everywhere and can't seem to find it.
posted by goo at 9:33 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I hear what you're saying Rhaomi but it's not all-white, there's a big giant colored top bar and it sticks around and has the name of the site so it might not be as distinctive as the quirky old dark colored site, but it still has identifying info and some color and personality in a more accessible package that should bring more people in, not less.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:34 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Where exactly is the dark mode button?

On the sidebar.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:34 PM on September 24, 2014

Where exactly is the dark mode button?

It's on the sidebars of the front pages of the subsites. On mobile, you'll have to click the sidebar jump link to get to the option.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:35 PM on September 24, 2014

Also, I just noticed the subsite taglines! Waaay too low-profile, IMO.
Need to up the contrast a bit there.

Also, re: the whitespace issues: maybe tighten up the line leading (interline spacing) a bit?
posted by pjern at 9:39 PM on September 24, 2014

The "Messages" option in the top menu still appears if you are opted-out of MeMail. In the classic design, the envelope icon disappeared.
posted by cribcage at 9:44 PM on September 24, 2014

Ok, I switched back to classic mode, typed a comment, hit preview, & the text entry window with my comment was back where it should be. Is anybody else missing the text entry field in iOS 8 after hitting preview in the new mobile theme or is it just me?

(The cursor weirdness is definitely ucoming from Cupertino, though)
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:45 PM on September 24, 2014

Bug confirmation: I'm also getting the menu bar dropping into the comment box in Chrome on my iPad every time.

Missing feature? Did the "skip" button at the top of the page move?

Otherwise so far I'm liking it!
posted by Room 641-A at 9:46 PM on September 24, 2014

Thank you very much, mods! This looks great!
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:50 PM on September 24, 2014

It happens when I resize my browser window too narrow.

Nope, that's just good old media query css kicking in for smaller viewports.

It's not worth spending time on, but what I remember (spuriously, it seems) seeing was, below small-device breakpoints once the sidebar gets bumped below #posts, when you touched or clicked on the Sidebar button, #sidebar sliding in from off-canvas leftwards and displacing #posts, and sliding back off-canvas rightwards and bringing back #posts when you touched/clicked the Posts button. It's a fairly common and not super-difficult (but snazzy) way of doing things these days when you're dealing with limited screen real estate on handheld devices (although even that limitation is fading with the high-res phone screens of the last year or two), and for some reason, I thought that's what I remembered seeing.

All good.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:56 PM on September 24, 2014

I tried it for a bit and I wasn't too sure. Then I tried switching back and immediately missed the new mobile menu features. I'm sold!
posted by isthmus at 9:57 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

mathowie: "there's a big giant colored top bar and it sticks around and has the name of the site so it might not be as distinctive as the quirky old dark colored site, but it still has identifying info and some color and personality in a more accessible package that should bring more people in, not less."

That's true, I was still thinking about the beta design. It does help versus the all-white.

I guess I'm just a bit sentimental about the quirky colors and would love a best-of-both-worlds where we see the benefits of a streamlined UI while still showcasing the essential feel, all without driving people away.

As far as the A/B testing goes, I've always wondered how much of that color attachment was justified and how much was force-of-habit, and this redesign would be an ideal case study since it removes the layout as a factor. Just, "Do you like my lovely colors, Internet? Better 1 or 2?" I fear the answer would be a big white 2, but I'd rather know for sure than wonder forever.

FWIW, Google Analytics has a free A/B comparison tester built in, so it's not quite as arduous a process as I'd first thought. It's mainly for e-commerce stuff like sales conversions, but can also track more general stats we'd value like social recommendations, pages per session, and duration of stay. I hope you'll give it a try before the final roll-out and share some of the findings, even if it settles squarely on "wtf is with all this blue."
posted by Rhaomi at 10:03 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Being able to view Fanfare by recent comments is essential, and now I can do that on mobile devices. Yay!
posted by isthmus at 10:05 PM on September 24, 2014

There's a weirdness in the mobile version of front music page where the body text of a post is a tiny bit truncated on the right & if you push the window to the left, you can see the "posted by" section & the player sticking out past the boundary of the main body. (Dark mode, iPhone safari iOS 8 still.)
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:09 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Missing feature? Did the "skip" button at the top of the page move?

Nope. But it's called "sidebar" now - when you're at the top of a page, you should see box on the upper right (next to the recent posts dropdown) that says sidebar. Click that and it drops you to the bottom of the page.
posted by rtha at 10:14 PM on September 24, 2014

Nicely done, though my teeth hurt when I read, "Metafilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to."
posted by ambient2 at 10:20 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

editor hat on/

The thing about never ending a sentence with a preposition is archaic and was always stupid, and has been abandoned by most usage manuals. It's fine to do so unless your style manual explicitly forbids it. No one will call the grammar police, who would just roll their eyes anyway.

/editor hat off
posted by rtha at 10:27 PM on September 24, 2014 [20 favorites]

Nope. But it's called "sidebar" now -

Thanks, I found it on my phone but I'm still stumped on the iPad.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:31 PM on September 24, 2014

Shitty sentences are shitty sentences, fellow editor.
posted by ambient2 at 10:32 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is really well executed, guys. Good work.

(I do think Ambient2 has a point about that sentence. I could give a shit about the preposition at the end as a general rule, but the phrasing here is just a little awkward.)
posted by Mothlight at 10:32 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

The text has literally been on the about page since June of 1999, before the site launched, but yeah, I should remove that ending prep or rewrite it completely.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:33 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm honestly surprised how much I like the new theme. Good work.
posted by flatluigi at 10:34 PM on September 24, 2014

I like it overall. I've been calling for something "more professional" since May (met with reflexive resistance, of course).

The one thing that still strikes me as a little weird (though it pales in comparison to Metafilter's intractable fetish for white text against odd colors) is that the whole thing seems a little vertical. I don't know if this has to do with a narrow font, or the large amount of white space on the sides. Then again, maybe that's just standing out to me now in contrast with the old design, and I'll get used to it in a week.

That aside, the redesign is obviously a huge improvement which will be disconcerting to change-o-phobics.
posted by John Cohen at 10:35 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've had some time to mess about on my phone and I've got to learn some new habits if I stick with the modern theme for that device, but that's fine.

One thing I'd agree with is the idea that the top menu on mobile takes up an awful lot of real estate on my tiny 3GS screen, especially in landscape. It's probably less of an issue with more modern, more-pixelly devices.

It's probably not worth it to do, but if it were me, I'd maybe do a little more scripting attached to onscroll and maybe once you get past the first few hundred pixels on mobile only, hide it entirely with some @media css, but slide it back out when scrolling upwards to give access to the menus.

I also noticed that scrolling was pretty janky on this thread (as an example of a long thread) on the phone, which is new. I'm wondering if it's connected (I haven't dug into the code at all, so just a guess) to the js you've got attached to onscroll already. (If so, there been a lot of work done (for example) in the last while by various people to get at more performant code that you might want to look at (assuming you haven't already, which is probably not a good thing to assume)).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:37 PM on September 24, 2014

I like the new theme and will try it for a few weeks. One tiny things the Bold/italics/link buttons below the comment box look kind of off now. Maybe the should be re-done? I realise finding something that fits with all the themes would be hard and it's of little import but thought I'd mention it.
posted by elephantday at 10:38 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The thing about never ending a sentence with a preposition is archaic and was always stupid, and has been abandoned by most usage manuals. It's fine to do so unless your style manual explicitly forbids it.

I agree that there shouldn't be any such strict prohibition. Still, it's usually a bad idea, because it tends to give your sentence a weak ending. For instance, if you look at my last two sentences, I chose to end them with emphatic words that were essential to my point: "prohibition" and "ending." In contrast, look at that sentence: "Metafilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to." Even if you don't think it's grammatically incorrect, if you say it out loud, don't you find it a little disappointing to end on a word as weak as "to"? A preposition doesn't have much substance on its own, so it's better as a connector than a finale. (For instance, you could instead say, "Metafilter is a blog that allows anyone to post links," so the sentence ends on an essential word.)

You can say all you want about how you can include sentences ending with prepositions and still be grammatically correct. But if you study writing or speeches you consider excellent, I'll be you'll find that most of the sentences end strongly.
posted by John Cohen at 10:46 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

stavrosthewonderchicken: "For everyone who is feeling discomfited by stuff that is more sort of subjective taste than actual bugs, I strongly recommend you follow Matt's advice and just let it sink in for a while."

I'd be willing to give it a try for a couple weeks but years of dealing with a floaty menu bar wasting screen real estate on another site means I don't need to give it a try here and I'm really glad the Classic theme is going to continue to be supported. So thank you kindly for that Matt.
posted by Mitheral at 10:48 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ugh, on the iPad I can't find the sidebar or dark mode toggle, either. Maybe those could be called out on screenshots or something.

And no pinch/zoom is a big drawback.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:49 PM on September 24, 2014

PS: I'm really glad the edit feature worked out; I use that sucker all the time.
posted by Mitheral at 10:49 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I almost made a comment about The Preposition, but I knew what would happen. Can we please please NOT derail this thread with yet another divagation about the minutiae of grammar and sentence composition (even if I love arguing about them as much as the next guy).

I'd be willing to give it a try for a couple weeks but years of dealing with a floaty menu bar wasting screen real estate on another site means I don't need to give it a try here

All good. I was just generally trying to be helpful, because I know that it can hurt when you roll out a design you're proud of and have worked hard on and it kinda turns into a death-by-a-thousand-cuts thing, even if the criticism of your work is well intentioned. If there's something you can't stand that you don't think is going to be something that might be changed, so it goes -- there're the classic themes to retreat to. But as I said just a couple of comments up from yours, I think the mobile menu bar is an issue too, at least on the smallest screens, so: we'll see, I guess.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:56 PM on September 24, 2014

I love the new design. It is a lot less "new" on my cell phone - probably because the theme is so spare. I find it more of a shocking change on my computer, but I can see how it is sort of MeFi "dressed up" without going all out of control. I really like the new colors - I think you picked well there. I imagine in five weeks I won't remember what the old site looks like.

I'm a darker, though; MeFi in white just seems WRONG.
posted by Deoridhe at 10:58 PM on September 24, 2014

Can we please please NOT derail this thread with yet another divagation about the minutiae of grammar and sentence composition (even if I love arguing about them as much as the next guy).

There's no need to — I already said all that needs to be said.
posted by John Cohen at 11:06 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, no one likes change, but I guess I can adjust to being on the dark side of MeFi. The white is just too much glare. Thanks for retaining the option.
posted by Cranberry at 11:15 PM on September 24, 2014

Calling the triple bar thing a hamburger is amusing as hell. I never knew what to call those thing, except I want to press my finger against them to open up battery compartments.

I'm really torn on this so far. I do love all the functionality parts of the design and I do like the cleanliness and dark mode. Post comment/Preview buttons tend to blend in too much in dark mode imho.

Not really loving the green. The current colors on the front page make me feel like I was messing around with Windows 95 theme settings and left it on "undersea" or some such. I fucked around with Chrome inspector and I dunno #069/#ec0 just looks a lot better to me :-/ (vs)

Commencing trying to live with it for two weeks.
posted by fleacircus at 11:40 PM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

My t-shirts are all retro now. :-/
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 11:56 PM on September 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

Ok, I switched back to classic mode, typed a comment, hit preview, & the text entry window with my comment was back where it should be. Is anybody else missing the text entry field in iOS 8 after hitting preview in the new mobile theme or is it just me?

Not just you, happened to me in Ask just now. I haven't upgraded yet, using 7.1.2.

Edited to add: also happened just now with this comment.
posted by charmedimsure at 12:08 AM on September 25, 2014

Anybody else finding the green line at the top of the floating nav bar really distracting?
posted by Rhaomi at 12:11 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Lots to love about this. Great work!

I definitely think the Blue should keep the yellow link colors. It's been central to the graphic identity and this feels like a major shift in that department.

Also agree w/ above re: the grey block behind post meta info being not great. I threw together a quick edit that replaces it with a thin rule instead. I fink it's betta. Here.

Is there a reason y'all kept the 40px left indent on all comments? I think the page looks more handsome without it and you get a lil more width for comments, to boot.

Oh and a BIG vote for bringing back hover states on links! Mefi gets so link heavy sometimes and just that little bit of feedback can help immensely when parsing a post.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:18 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yes to yellow color on the blue like fleacircus's image.

Visited link color change is wonky right now, it doesn't change immediately and seems to switch the colors around randomly.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:27 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Using Opera (v12.10) on Android, the new design has some issues. The top menu is broken: The hamburger menu is always open, taking up half of the screen on my phone, and the user icon doesn't do anything. I can't read the FPP text on the post page at all. (Frustratingly, this means I can't get back to preferences to switch to the old theme.)

Also I just discovered I can't see the edit box on the preview page, but can scroll off to the right to a lot of white space.

A fan of the new design otherwise, particularly since Dark mode came on, even though I liked the blue/yellow combo better: this place being what it is, the new colors will be just as iconic five or ten years from now.
posted by Dr Dracator at 12:47 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The new theme is very well done. I really like it. Best of all , it's easier on aging eyes.
posted by cwest at 12:58 AM on September 25, 2014

I like this a lot in dark mode, I feel like the light version is eminently forgettable, which is not something that MF should be. It's really funny, I looked at the screenshots, went "meh", switched the theme, read a bit further and found the reference to dark mode and...I'm not going back. Dark mode for the win.

Looks like mefi navigator is dead in this theme, though. I don't think that script is maintained any longer, but it should be fixable.

Mobile is much better!
posted by maxwelton at 1:13 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love it! I think it looks great.
posted by toerinishuman at 1:46 AM on September 25, 2014

This is really good. I don't think I'm going to use it, but now when one of my friends talks about 'that old fashioned website you're on all the time', instead of just sighing and rolling my eyes I can show it to them, and prove that I like the U.I.
posted by Ned G at 2:02 AM on September 25, 2014

Why on earth would you take one of the most iconic text based websites on the internet and change it into something generic with a white background?! As maxwelton says above - "eminently forgettable". What a shame.

For what it's worth, I have been using the "Metafilter at work" greasemonkey script for part of my time browsing (at work, through necessity) which strips everything out and is just text on a white background, and I can honestly say that my enjoyment of reading like that is that little bit less than it is with the blue / green / grey experience, even when the content is identical. Yes, you can turn on dark mode, but why diminish that initial impact of colour and text? Then again, I also ranted against titles (I have them turned off and don't miss them, occasional mystery meat ask questions aside) so despite the fact that I'm a user experience professional you can write me off as the trailing edge I guess.
posted by iivix at 2:02 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Think I saw somebody up-thread commenting about the comment indenting. I'd agree, it looks weird to me, like the whole site is sort of sliding off the page to the right. Do we need a 40px indent? Is it something to do with the mobile optimisation?
posted by Happy Dave at 2:03 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I like it, I think I'll give the white a try for a bit but probably end up preferring dark mode.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:08 AM on September 25, 2014

Oh drat, I'm in the stick with classic until titles can be removed camp too I guess. Otherwise I like it.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:17 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm staying with the old style, but thanks for the new option, I guess. Life is all about options.
posted by travelwithcats at 2:45 AM on September 25, 2014

Also, now that I'm back on the desktop - three minor points:

* The comment indicator triangle is too far away from the text on the left margin, maybe move it to the right?

* Selected text on the blue looks _exactly_ like a link - can you possibly use a different background?

* I would really really like to be able to set the font size per device - I use a bunch of screens, I do not end up with something I like on all of them.
posted by Dr Dracator at 2:49 AM on September 25, 2014

Bug: I can't select text in comments (iPad Mini, iOS 8.0, Safari).

I can select text just like normal in posts, but whenever I try to select a single word or sentence in a comment, I can only select the whole comment. This makes it harder and more annoying to quote people when replying .
posted by Kattullus at 2:49 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I like it a lot! But the text is so obnoxiously huge and bold that I had to zoom out to 75% to make it work, which made everything else tiny. This is probably because I'm using Chrome under Windows but I'm also using MacType, which may well be throwing off whatever cleverness selects the appropriate settings for OS/screen size/etc (I have the same problem with AV Club's website).

So for now I'm using Stylish to change the body font. A quick (and very rough) comparison: before, after.

I still need to go through and add stuff for blockquotes (although I quite like having them be way bigger so I might not) and the posted by text and various other bits (which I will do when I have the time to view source and find the right bits to squeeze).
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:51 AM on September 25, 2014

Not sure if this is related to these changes, but I'm still using the standard mobile display and I'm no longer able to favourite comments in MetaTalk? When I click the plus symbol under a comment, I'm bounced up to the top of the page, and the favourite isn't recorded. I'm using the out-of-the box Browser on a Galaxy Nexus, with Android 4.3.
posted by brushtailedphascogale at 2:52 AM on September 25, 2014

If we're not going to get a way to change the fonts in preferences, is it possible to get a list of divs the site uses so people who use Stylish don't have to hunt through view source?
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:57 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The sidebar link to get to the bottom of a page would be useful for iPads as well. This thread isn't up to monster size yet and already it's taking fairly long to scroll down to the bottom.

Also, turning off Live Preview makes the Post Comment button vanish, forcing me to hit Preview first before getting the Post Comment button. Has it always been like that or is that a bug?
posted by Kattullus at 3:02 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is great.
posted by dmh at 3:10 AM on September 25, 2014

Oh, and I forgot to make the original comment that I was going to do, in response to D.C.'s comment about the dark boxes around poster information on the front page. For me they're absolutely necessary to help me intuitively distinguish when one post begins and another ends. When reading the front page I scroll down to the first post that was added since I last looked at the front page. Then I scroll up, checking each post in turn. If I do it quickly on the modern theme, my brain sometimes parses two posts as one post, but that dark box at the end of the post helps my brain orient itself. I have no such problem with the classic theme (nor on any other website) but something about the modern theme trips me up.
posted by Kattullus at 3:13 AM on September 25, 2014

If we're not going to get a way to change the fonts in preferences, is it possible to get a list of divs the site uses so people who use Stylish don't have to hunt through view source?

Firebug. There has never been a tool for making web stuff that I have loved more.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:22 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Or, you know, just hit F12 in IE or Chrome or CTRL-SHIFT-C in FF: boom!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:25 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Holy shit. *sunglasses emoji*
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 3:28 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Looks great on iPhone 4 Safari. Thanks for putting the sidebar content at the bottom of the page, so that the sidebar link takes you to the end of the thread! I would have hated to lose that functionality when the menu moved to the header.
posted by daisyk at 3:33 AM on September 25, 2014

Text entry field Also vanishes after hitting preview in Chrome for iOS (latest version37.something) and the music bug noted before is there in Chrome as well.

Am really liking both the hamburger menu and the user menu after getting used to them a bit. Way better than the long list of links at the bottom of the "classic" mobile version.
posted by Devils Rancher at 3:53 AM on September 25, 2014

I like the appearance. The details of the UI I'm not happy with, though I also feel like this is a "who moved my cheese?" response on my own part, so I want to adapt before I form any strong opinions about it.

Problem is that the new design is crazy slow. When I look at the network logs in Chrome, the big problem seems to be libscript.mod.js, which takes about 15 seconds to load and execute. The fonts won't load and render until it's complete, the net result being 25-30 seconds of dead, white screen every time I load the page. (This is not inclusive of the ads and tracking bugs, btw.)

By comparison, mefi classic takes about 2 sec. from request to load, not inclusive of ads and tracking bugs. The entire classic page can be reloaded and rendered twice in the time it takes libscript.mod.js to grind away. (I have screengrabs of Chrome's graphs, memail if you want to see them). So I'll have to stick with classic for the time being. Otherwise I'll spend more time waiting for pages to load than reading them.
posted by ardgedee at 3:55 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Although there is some performance degradation I'm seeing, too, it's on the order of fractions of a second slower than classic. Something's definitely weird there -- I wonder if it's the cloudfront CDN. But then, once you've got it, it should be in local cache after the first time. Huh.

I'm getting a consistent 2.3/2.4/2.41/2.43/2.33 etc seconds for pageload at the moment according to Firebug, primed cache.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:20 AM on September 25, 2014

Yeah I'll test again tonight, but iirc classic was also faster than modern when cached files were accounted for.

libscript.mod.js was slow to load, but blocking render and being slow to execute was also a problem.
posted by ardgedee at 4:27 AM on September 25, 2014

It's a great example of the flat, rectangle-dominated widgetry, awful fonts and garish, clashing colors that's prevalent in modern UI design. It looks childish and unsophisticated, but I blame the trend, and not you.

Google delenda est.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:48 AM on September 25, 2014 [11 favorites]

I really like the new version in dark mode. I am sure the little quirks will get fixed as people report them over the next weeks or months.

I have this page open right now in both classic and modern, and I'd give the thumbs up to the new version in almost every way except that on my 13" macbook screen the text sizing, margins, and spacing aren't quite right. The smaller text option on NYTimes articles, for example, shows up almost exactly in-between that of the modern and classic defaults here, and with better line spacing and a more readable typeface. (I'm not saying we should be imitating the Times, it's just my reference point for a readable text-heavy website.) In contrast, the letters in the new typeface here seem overly squished together, and the linespacing is too tight, and yet I'd estimate that I am seeing about 25 percent less text than in the classic view.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:54 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I like the new version in dark mode as well. Big hug from Boston.
posted by kinetic at 5:04 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm running OrangeBird OS on a Raspberry Pi with a beta of the NavelGayze browser and the secondary container is 1.1 pixels smaller than Jakob Nielsen would advise. Just kidding! I just wanted to fit in a bit.

I really like the new design, but I am a fan of site redesigns on a whole. It's like when your favorite new TV show comes back for season two and is still so good you stop noticing that all of the actors now have better haircuts and stylists.

The one bug I found: The permalinks are weird. So this link: http://www.metafilter.com/143028/MacWHAAAAAAT#5746981

... takes me to the top of that post, and not to the comment I wanted to read. But if I go down to that comment and click the (same) permalink, it works.

Thanks, MeFi Team!
posted by kimberussell at 5:09 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

hmm, IE8 cannot handle the new design... that shouldn't really surprise me.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 5:10 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Personally, I don't like the typefaces, especially the really wide one used for the logos and titles. If you're just going for a simple text-based logo, it's a bit sad to render it in a boring old free webfont. In my opinion, it strips MetaFilter of the unique personality it has, being a 15 year old community that has been here, steady as a rock, as the web has evolved and the world has changed. ):
posted by Quilford at 5:13 AM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Thanks, Stav. Found the bit I was looking for easily, and then glared at it for a while until I remembered that slapping !important on some stuff would probably help. This will do for now.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 5:22 AM on September 25, 2014

I mentioned the IE11 slow/janky page scrolling before but I'm now trying on IE9 and the entire page is just unusably slow. I guess I will stay with the old white style since I don't want to have to switch back and forth constantly based on what machine I'm using.
posted by selfnoise at 5:28 AM on September 25, 2014

Also I think it'd be nice to incorporate some minor facet of Classic's design, like the diagonal scanlines, just as a nod to the maturity that the design signifies. At the moment I don't think there's much visually to set the site apart from any other blog with a nice colour scheme.

/opinionssss
posted by Quilford at 5:28 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

This is beautiful! Thank you.
posted by Pardon Our Dust at 5:44 AM on September 25, 2014

So mods, is there no "skip" or sidebar option on the iPad to get to th see bottom? As someone else mentiond, even yesterday this thread was a PITA to scroll through. And what about dark mode?

I can select text just like normal in posts, but whenever I try to select a single word or sentence in a comment, I can only select the whole comment. This makes it harder and more annoying to quote people when replying .

I've been having that problem since I got my iPad a week ago. The workaround I found is to preview the comment, which seems to clear that problem (until it happens again.)
posted by Room 641-A at 5:51 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

In dark mode on both mobile and desktop Chrome, the "Current Challenge" section of the Music Challenges page has white text on a white/very light gray background.
posted by Small Dollar at 5:51 AM on September 25, 2014

This is a great theme. I just have one tiny problem with it because I browse in a weird way.

I often set my scroll wheel to slowly go down the page I'm reading at roughly the same rate that I read. But if you do this with the modern theme, once the page gets past the hamburger and shows the floating bar, the scrolling kind of jumps. Maybe the hamburger is being hidden at that moment?
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 5:52 AM on September 25, 2014

Oh, but that "menu bar in the comment box" bug seems to be fixed for now.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:52 AM on September 25, 2014

If it is the hamburger being hidden, it seems kind of unnecessary because it happens after the user has scrolled past the hamburger anyway. Also, that's the first time in human history that someone has uttered that sentence.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 5:54 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Mobile: If you hide contact activity in the 'sidebar', there isn't an obvious way to turn it back on.
posted by zamboni at 5:56 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hurray! The iphone text scaling bug seems to be gone. I no longer need to fear posts by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints.
posted by zamboni at 6:07 AM on September 25, 2014

+1 for the new theme.
+1 for Dark Mode.
+1 for the new shade of green. (It's like my favorite green shirt is always on me now.)
+1 for letting users choose.
+1 for the well-executed announcement and rollout.
+ infinity for keeping on keeping on.
posted by notyou at 6:09 AM on September 25, 2014 [14 favorites]

The wiggles-side-to-side issue in ios 8 (iphone 5) that I described here has happened twice more in this thread, and again in a question on the green, all in portrait and without having switched to landscape and back within each of those threads.

> I can select text just like normal in posts, but whenever I try to select a single word or sentence in a comment, I can only select the whole comment. This makes it harder and more annoying to quote people when replying .

Also this, on my phone.
posted by rtha at 6:12 AM on September 25, 2014

works great and looks awesome on my note 2.
posted by nadawi at 6:15 AM on September 25, 2014

Came for the Professional White Background jokes, wasn't disappointed.
posted by The Michael The at 6:17 AM on September 25, 2014

So, what do people think of the new IRL scheme? It's very… brown.
posted by zamboni at 6:19 AM on September 25, 2014

Bug report: Safari on iPhone 4 iOS 7.1.2 ('cause the 4 ain't hip enough for iOS 8)

Vertical is fine, but inside any post horizontal mode has half of the page offscreen. This is unaffected by either me logging out and back in as well as refreshing the page.

The front page of any site is fine in both vertical and horizontal modes though.

Vertical
Horizontal
posted by romakimmy at 6:23 AM on September 25, 2014

IRL shares shades from a sunset to remind us all to get outside and meet people once in a while.

Does Oregon really have brown sunsets?
posted by zamboni at 6:30 AM on September 25, 2014

I was a terrible beta tester, 'cause I liked it at first glance(and have been using the plain white since forever) and immediately emailed Matt to say so, while warning him that MeTa would eat him alive for the white background. Especially since this was right around the time that Rhaomi released a dark background for FanFare and lots of people loved it, so it was hilarious to see people thanking him so profusely for making a dark background when this new white heavy background was brewing.

Interesting to see that everyone generally digs it. Shine on, you unpredictable bastards.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:39 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The mobile version looks FANTASTIC on my phone. Absolutely loving both Dark and standard themes, and the interface so far is easier to use than the classic.

I tried the comment copy thing, and as a data point I'm not experiencing the whole comment only issue. I'm running Android OS (4.2 Jelly Bean), though with a special Fairphone interface.
posted by harujion at 6:41 AM on September 25, 2014

I think I lasted 20 seconds. Professional white forever!!!
posted by Admiral Haddock at 6:41 AM on September 25, 2014

Looks like mefi navigator is dead in this theme, though. I don't think that script is maintained any longer, but it should be fixable.

Mefi Navigator is still working just fine for me (installed inside of TamperMonkey in Chrome, and I'm using the dark theme, in case that's relevant).

But Mefi Deleted Posts stopped working for me. Is anyone else using the deleted posts script without problem?
posted by nobody at 6:42 AM on September 25, 2014

I use Opera 12.x as my primary browser alongside a couple other desktop browsers, and Opera for Android, so I'll try to test that way... Not figuring out how to switch to the "dark" color version of the modern theme just yet, though.
posted by Ky at 6:47 AM on September 25, 2014

Room 641-A: I've been having that problem since I got my iPad a week ago. The workaround I found is to preview the comment, which seems to clear that problem (until it happens again.)

Oh yeah, once I hit preview everything works fine with selecting and copying text on the iPad. And actually, I like the layout of the comments a bit better in Preview mode, it uses space more efficiently, to my eyes.
posted by Kattullus at 6:48 AM on September 25, 2014

I was all prepared to hate this but it's actually really nice. I'll get used to the weird stuff. Like the new green? That new green is weird. IT LOOKS SO WRONG. But it's fine. Probably.

The only real problem is that it breaks the crap out of GraphFi which is my favorite little bookmarklety thing ever.
posted by phunniemee at 6:48 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

Count another nonvote for "It looks great!" and having a DARK MODE button makes me feel like I'm Xur on the flagship of the Ko-Dan Armada.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:49 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've always had the "can't select specific text" issue in iOS when I try and select text within a comment that was loaded with the "X new comments" box, but if I refreshed, I could select normally. In the new theme, it happens on all comments.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:50 AM on September 25, 2014

Please keep around the classic mode so that those of us who don't always access metafilter from strong, happy, healthy internet connections will continue to be able to. Unless you don't want a bunch of traffic from Cote d'Ivoire next summer, and want me to go quietly crazy.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

The Michael The: "Came for the Professional White Background jokes, wasn't disappointed."

Yeah, big ups to Anil Dash for being gentlemanly about it. I'd be considerably more pissy about it, if I were in his shoes.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is very pretty and sort of disorienting, but I like it.
posted by dismas at 6:58 AM on September 25, 2014

Ideally, I'd like to adjust exact background color by hex code in preferences, but that's probably going too far in terms of resources. :P
posted by Ky at 6:58 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm in the do not like party. The new banner lay out and what not, it's nice and not terrible. That's about it for what I found attractive about it. The new formatting, font and white background make me feel as if I'm on a tumblr site or wordpress site. Metafilter has an identity that you pick up when you visit the site and this one seems to compress it into a run of a mill site. Truly, it feels like someone decided to make a knock off stealing the content and this is the result. Thank you for preserving the classic mode, I will be making good use of it.
posted by Atreides at 6:58 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Not figuring out how to switch to the "dark" color version of the modern theme

On the phone when you click the sidebar menu it shows up under the ad, and in the iPad it's just under the ad in the sidebar. Note: it only shows up on the main pages.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:00 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Bug: in Fanfare, viewing by Most Popular, the post titles have incomplete links: http://.metafilter.com/871/Breaking-Bad-Better-Call-Saul-Rewatch

On Safari, iOS 7.
posted by isthmus at 7:11 AM on September 25, 2014

Things seem to be going spectacularly wrong for me in the new view. In dark mode on the blue, the link color is exactly the same as the background color so that I can't see the text of any links until I'm hovering over them. Screenshot. I also notice that when I'm in my preferences, the text in the text boxes is white, so it seems to disappear until I click into a specific text box, at which point the background of the box greys out just slightly so that I can see the white text.

Over here on the grey, when I'm at the comment box typing this in, I'm only halfway down the page. When I continue scrolling down, after the footer stuff the page just turns blank white all the way down. So when I was at the top of the page and attempted to drag the scroll bar all the way down to get to the comment form, I just got white and had to manually scroll up until I found where the comment box is.

It's also veeeeeery slow to respond in a way that the other views aren't. And typing in the comment box has a tremendous lag, so much so that I can type a whole sentence and watch the letters appear in live preview one by one over the space of thirty seconds or so.

All of that is on Windows, using IE9 (I know, I know, but this is at my office.)
posted by marginaliana at 7:11 AM on September 25, 2014

On the dark version of the blue, highlighting the name in posted by (with my mouse, to copy the username to quote), it's very hard to see if the name is highlighted. The highlight colour is just a slightly different shade of the same colour, it would be nice if this were more easily visible.

I really find the white jarring, but the dark I think I can get used to.

I assume this just changes the CSS and not any content on the page, right? If so, how/why does Google care? Does the algorithm really judge design choices in making its ranking choices?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:12 AM on September 25, 2014

I'd be interested to get an update in a few weeks on the number of active users using each design.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:12 AM on September 25, 2014

All of that is on Windows, using IE9.

Yeah, the new theme does not work in IE9 and below as Matt mentioned in the post.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:15 AM on September 25, 2014

Oops, I completely missed that mention of IE9 in the post, sorry! I'll just throw in my 'don't forget those of us in locked down corporate environments,' then.
posted by marginaliana at 7:18 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I switched back. I just didn't see any benefits to the new one, and the fonts looked super janky in Chrome.
posted by smackfu at 7:19 AM on September 25, 2014

If so, how/why does Google care? Does the algorithm really judge design choices in making its ranking choices?

I'm not Google, but here's my take. Google's algorithm takes human behavior into account. It can track when people click a search result and then immediately click back because that wasn't a link they wanted. On our side we can see via our traffic stats that MetaFilter has a high bounce rate. That is, people click on a MetaFilter link in search results and then click away instantly. Google knows this too and they factor that into their algorithm.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:24 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I really like the new theme. I've been using the white background forever, so the change is not so drastic. The only thing I found weird is that the gap between comments seems too large.
posted by dhruva at 7:27 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Really enjoy the new design overall, the layout, navigation, and how it looks on Mobile. I can't see myself switching back.

But agree with a several other commenters here about the letterspacing. It's just too tight to be (comfortably) readable. I created a quick "letter-spacing: 0.02em" style in Firebug for regular text and things were immediately so much nicer. Even .01em is an improvement.
posted by joinks at 7:30 AM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

The text has literally been on the about page since June of 1999, before the site launched, but yeah, I should remove that ending prep or rewrite it completely.

Oh, no! Don't do that. :( Removing that old patina significantly lowers the value.
posted by Melismata at 7:37 AM on September 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

Is there a subtle glow effect on the white text in the menu bar when you mouse/trackpad over the menu options? Or is that just my eyes going weird when switching between the green highlighted black text back to the white text? I feel like the white text... pulses or something.

Whatever it is, don't change it.
posted by emelenjr at 7:39 AM on September 25, 2014

Huh, I totally missed the comment on IE9 in the original post. I guess my follow up would be, given that pre IE10 versions of IE still seem to make up at least 35% of the desktop browser share, what's the timetable on making this template the frontpage default? I can't imagine that clicking through to a non-working site is going to decrease bounce rate.

(I'm coming at this from a place of really liking the new design, it just irks me that I can't use it in IE9 or, apparently, IE11).
posted by selfnoise at 7:44 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

On an IRL Mobile event page, there are no iCal/GoogleCal links for the event, and no way to get them (I find them very useful).

When I request the desktop version of the page in my browser, (iOS 8 Safari), the page renders exactly the same, except that the iCal/GoogleCal links show up.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:52 AM on September 25, 2014

Sorry, I can't make it two weeks on the new theme. I think the potential is there, but it needs to be worn in for quite a bit longer before general release. The old theme is comfortable because it's had so many little changes made to it, not just because it's old.
posted by michaelh at 7:52 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

But, but, we have to have infinite functionality for the pinkie ring display in the future!
posted by y2karl at 7:59 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm finding that things are taking a lot longer to load in Modern theme than they used to in beta. MetaFilter has always had lightning fast load times for me, even on crappy computers with slow connections. However, when I hit the Preview button, the thread renders instantly. It's really noticeable, so I'm assuming it's the various javascript doodads that preview mode doesn't include (favorites, flags, sidebar etc.) that take so long to load.

Also, actually, I mentioned this before, but the comment layout looks a lot more natural in preview mode. It doesn't have the acres of empty space that the regular layout has. Here's the difference. The preview layout seems better to me, with more text on the page and therefore less scrolling and therefore quicker reading.
posted by Kattullus at 8:00 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Android vanilla Internet (also looks okay in Firefox but I use the built-in for MeFi.)

No problem with rotation. No problem selecting.

Still have the (likely Android) problem that all pasted text inserts itself after the first letter in the text box.

I can actually navigate within the text box - Finally!!! - and can see several lines of text.

Seeing preview is tricky in modern, but maybe I need to get the hang of it.

Yay and thanks and after this the cabal cannot be denied! Some members have been outed.

[On edit - preview view has no edit screen. Will try in Dolphin or something. ]
posted by Lesser Shrew at 8:03 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's like masturbating with your non-dominant hand.
posted by digitalprimate at 8:09 AM on September 25, 2014

Sorry if this has already been asked and answered, but this is a long thread. I actually really like the look and feel of the new theme, but is there any way to retain or toggle on the "x posts and xx comments since your last visit" line? I always liked to use that as a quick indicator of how much activity there is to catch up on when I visit the site. Thanks.
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:17 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

That Modern template will be a no for me. Not reading san-serif fonts.
posted by cass at 8:18 AM on September 25, 2014

Curious--that's a deliberate omission in the new theme. We had to make some choices about what to cut and what to keep, and while almost everything made it that welcome note didn't. Sorry about that.
posted by twist my arm at 8:21 AM on September 25, 2014

Thanks, twist my arm.
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:23 AM on September 25, 2014

Thank you for keeping the classic as default. I sincerely thank you. Modern is not for me and that's okay.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 8:29 AM on September 25, 2014

My immediate visceral reaction to the new theme was to hiss at it in distaste but then I found the Dark Mode button and all was well in the world again. :)

Thanks so much for Fanfare Dark Mode -- my husband will finally be able to sleep through my late night internettings again!
posted by Jacqueline at 8:31 AM on September 25, 2014

I think it looks great, and if it attracts new users and people like it, I'm pumped.

Two things will keep me from sticking with it unless there are workarounds:

1. The missing "X" new posts text. This is vital for helping me scan for new posts since my last visit. Without it, I need to look for the first post to have a (y new) link different from the (x comments/answers) link without any sense of how far down the page/how many pages back that might be.

2. The floating top nav bar. Totally unneeded for how I use the site. Whether in dark or light mode *I* know what site I'm on, and I don't need to be reminded. The home key will always bring me back to the real header if I need anything that's up there. I get that this was a mobile-first decision, and I'm a desktop-first user, so not surprised this one isn't doing it for me.

But I love that those things may never have workaround and I can continue to love the site as I always have. Options!
posted by SpiffyRob at 8:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Kattullus: "Also, turning off Live Preview makes the Post Comment button vanish, forcing me to hit Preview first before getting the Post Comment button. Has it always been like that or is that a bug?"

Always been like this (at least since the preview button was introduced) by design. One has to preview a comment (live or button) before posting.
posted by Mitheral at 8:39 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think this looks great. The menus look much less confusing than before.
posted by malocchio at 8:43 AM on September 25, 2014

I just have to comment that I have been a professional white background user since I found it existed. I like the new theme, but somehow it has me preferring the dark mode initially. Not a complaint, just an interesting observation. I'll probably keep the white background at work but switch to colors on all my other devices.
posted by misskaz at 8:43 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'll be honest, I don't love it, but I am pretty consistently opposed to change so my word is generally not to be taken.

I'm not sure if I missed this point already in this long thread, but the modern theme seems to have really wide margins compared to the classic. Is that a thing for mobile? Otherwise it just feels like an artificial way to put less content on the screen.
posted by Think_Long at 8:48 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

For new stuff, I'm usually in the Smeagol "We HATES it" camp, but this looks really nice. Well done.
posted by johnofjack at 8:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

To get it to activate on my phone, I had to go to the Preferences screen and save for modern setup just as I had done on my laptop. After that, it activated on mobile as well.
posted by One Hand Slowclapping at 8:54 AM on September 25, 2014

That's because preferences are device specific.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:56 AM on September 25, 2014

And if you select something in the edit window, the highlighting even matches the main MeFi theme. Nice.
posted by johnofjack at 8:56 AM on September 25, 2014

Also, it seems a little contradictory to have a heart by the 'favorites' in the menu at the top, when culture/site design has a favorite render as a "+".
posted by Think_Long at 8:59 AM on September 25, 2014 [14 favorites]

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
posted by tristeza at 8:59 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

I like the dark mode a lot. I think I will save the white background for when I need to navigate in a cave using only my phone for light. Like The Descent , only phrased as an AskMe question....
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:07 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

The lack of pinch-to-zoom, combined with the teensy-tiny links for reaching the comments for a thread on the mobile view, makes it hard to hit the link target. (Why is the underneath text so small? I miss being able to crank up the font size.)
posted by leahwrenn at 9:11 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

--..The floating top nav bar. Totally unneeded..--

Agree 100%: I hate things that move on my screen that I don't mediate. It's just a distraction.
But otherwise I like what you've done with the place. Well done everybody and yay for the dark theme.
posted by peacay at 9:17 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Most of the new design feel very square until you get to the bottom of the page. Then suddenly there are rounded rectangles for the comment boxes and bottom search when everything above is hard corners? I think it would be more cohesive if it was all square or all rounded.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 9:18 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

The floating thing with extra white space off to the right which rtha has described has been happening to me too. I'm on a Sony Experia (Android), Chrome 37. Also colour contrast could be improved in Memail when choosing to view inbox/sent/contacts etc. It's currently showing pale green on white for non-highlighted options. In dark mode anyway.

Still loving it.
posted by Athanassiel at 9:25 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

.The floating top nav bar. Totally unneeded..-

Disagree. On a long thread (for example, this very one), I like that I can get to the menu without scrolling back to the top.
posted by dnash at 9:29 AM on September 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

OMG. IT'S SO SHINY AND NEW. YES.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 9:29 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The only little UI bugs I've noticed so far:

- The "B I link" box underneath this comment window looks out of style and janky compared to beautiful bootstrapified everything else. Old fonts? Old colours?

- The favicon doesn't match the new MF colour scheme (at least not yet, depending on how often Chrome updates it).

I'm on Chrome, OS X Mavericks.

Otherwise, I'm in wait-and-see mode, but I agree that there is less info on the page than before, and I don't like the distracting animated drop-down menu bar.
posted by milkb0at at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2014

I like this.

When I highlight text in Metatalk, the highlight color is Metafilter blue. Maybe it should vary by subsite?
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The new theme got written up briefly at The Awl. I expect more publicity in the "Ancient website finally updates" department.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2014

It's a great start. Well done.
Some observations...

• The text is really bold/huge and overwhelming. This, imho, is a real drawback to viewing responsive or mobile-first websites on a desktop monitor. The fonts become really aggressive and in-your-face.

• The by-lines under the FPPs are too big. They're almost the same size as the post text. In the Classic style, they were very visibly smaller and acted as a natural separator between posts.

• Following on from the above observation, if one is browsing with the FPP titles turned-off, all of the posts tend to visibly run-together. Again, because the by-lines are almost the same size as the body text, there's not a good separation.

• I'm undecided about ditching the white lozenge behind the MeFi logo. I've come to think of it as being a part of the identity.

• All the top-of-page navigation takes up wayyyyyy too much room. There are five layers of nav or blank space at the top of the page.

• Also, not a fan of green on blue. bring back yellow on blue.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:32 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Has anyone else had problems getting MeFiQuote to work with the new Modern style?
posted by julen at 9:32 AM on September 25, 2014

Possible bug?

On mobile (Chrome for Android, Nexus 5 running Android 4.4.4), navigating to a profile using Classic gives a search profile bar that is at the left edge of the screen, instead of being indented.
posted by Quilford at 9:41 AM on September 25, 2014

The floating top bar sucks because it makes the effective viewport smaller than the actual window viewport, which subtly breaks page up and page down. It doesn't break them as bad as other sites with taller floating bars, but it does break them a little.
posted by ryanrs at 9:50 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Some thoughts:
- I love the constant menubar. It's one of my favorite things about modern website design in general, and really well done here.
- I thought I would hate the fixed width text, but it's actually OK, and the font is great, as far as I am concerned.
- The green accent color should go back to yellow. On Ask in particular it looks really bad.
- The <<Older/Newer>> bar should be below the comment box. The comment box is part of the thread and should not be divided from it by navigation elements.
- Given how many people are going to stick with the Classic and Plain Themes, I think the new subsite colors (FanFare, Jobs, IRL) should be integrated into those themes.
- The update breaks MeFi Quote, MeFi Deleted Posts and howlsofoutrage. I'm sure unintentionally, but I hope whatever problems have been created can be easily solved, because I really like those scripts.
- I really really hate the username truncation. It would be better to not have it at all and replace it with "Profile".
- I feel pretty strongly that the logged out view should be the Dark Mode. It's been said above, but the distinctively colored backgrounds are part of MeFi's "brand" and should be emphasized, not diminished.
- 100% agree that the "favorites" icon should be a [+] not a heart.
- The new look needs new iOS home page icons (FanFare never had one) in addition to favicons.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

The dark mode is pretty cool, but the button was really hard to find and I'd like to have it in the floating menu bar so I can switch at anytime.
posted by malocchio at 9:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Disagree. On a long thread (for example, this very one), I like that I can get to the menu without scrolling back to the top.

A billion times this. I've gone from "I'm too set in my ways to change" to "This is not just pretty but super useful so I'm going to use this everywhere" in about 16 hours because of that.

Well, that and the Dark Mode Widget because it is the best.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:55 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

It's like masturbating with your non-dominant hand.
posted by digitalprimate

eponetc
posted by COBRA! at 9:55 AM on September 25, 2014

I really really hate the username truncation.

I concur with this. Some usernames "work" but many don't. I'd find a way to switch it up.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 9:56 AM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Needs more kittens. Otherwise, likable.

Also works smoothly on the Nintendo 3DS web browser, which is a bonus. (seriously, I like using that browser for MetaFilter as it uses both screens to scroll up and down and is smooth on the eye for long pages)
posted by Wordshore at 10:01 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Tried it on my mobile phone. Text is way, way too big.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:05 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm quite happy with it on my desktop, and I'm even trying out the dark mode instead of having the professional white background that I've used for pretty much forever.

But, on mobile, one issue I'm having is that if I rotate my phone I get sent back up to the top of whatever page I'm on once the browser goes from landscape to portrait or vice-versa, which can be pretty annoying. I'm on a droid phone from late 2011, so I'm a bit out of date, but not horribly so.
posted by LionIndex at 10:05 AM on September 25, 2014

I am looking at this page without having changed anything (still the old grey site); Metafilter Navigator is claiming that Brainy is the OP ("Poster") in his second comment, but not his first. Weird.
posted by Melismata at 10:06 AM on September 25, 2014

- The <>> bar should be below the comment box. The comment box is part of the thread and should not be divided from it by navigation elements.

After being somewhat undecided about this for a bit, I find that I agree wholeheartedly with moving the older/newer to below the comment box.
posted by rtha at 10:09 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

I agree that the floaty navbar is too tall.

Can the dark widget be added to the preferences? I had to seek it out and it really seems like it should be with preferences because it's a preference.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 10:27 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

If anyone else is using the metafilter favorite posts filter extensions, I've fixed it for the new theme here.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 10:29 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Bug: Sometimes when I rotate my iPad (iOS 8, Safari) the landscape version of a thread gets zoomed in, so that the width displayed is exactly the same size as the text area. This isn't a very annoying bug.

Once it happened that the whole tab went blank when I rotated, but that's only happened once.
posted by Kattullus at 10:49 AM on September 25, 2014

The scrolling is happening in laggy chunks in IE10 (10.1.19) as well. It's pretty distracting in longer threads like this.

I do like the look, although I'll have to get used to having so much space on the sides.
posted by blurker at 10:52 AM on September 25, 2014

This is where I confess I barely looked at the design in beta (I am a terrible beta tester and I know this) but am deeply pleased with it now that it's in release-worthy shape. I am a crusty old neophobe when it comes to UI but I'm really pleased with how this came out. And as usual the team is ready and waiting to tweak - pb is seriously the best, most responsive programmer I've ever worked with.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 10:52 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, and after I posted my comment above, it took me up to the top and I had to scroll back to the bottom of the thread.
posted by blurker at 10:53 AM on September 25, 2014

Wow I really, really like this new theme. I think it looks much better!
posted by Librarypt at 10:56 AM on September 25, 2014

I really like it a lot - especially the dark version, always nice to have choices.
Thanks!
posted by NoraCharles at 10:58 AM on September 25, 2014

I am yet another Metafilter Pro Whitening Formula user who prefers Dark Mode in the modern theme, so increment that counter in your anecdatabase.

I'm really impressed with the redesign! It shows a lot of care. Congrats to matthowie and the team.
posted by chrchr at 10:58 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Here's a couple images - Safari, ios 8 on iPhone 5s

Weird rt. bounding issue in Music

General usability issue with a couple crowded buttons at bottom of the mobile window. You can also see the weird cursor position in that one, but again, it's probably an Apple thing.

Trying to be helpful with bugs, not critical, since I never managed to get my act together with the beta. Overall, I love the new theme, especially dark.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:59 AM on September 25, 2014

Agreed that this is overall quite impressive in the way that it feels like Metafilter & feels current at the same time. Great job.

I'm a bit in the "too much white space" camp (on mobile I feel like I'm reading faster than I can scroll sometimes). For those using Firefox I've found you can fiddle around with checking and unchecking the "Zoom text only" control in the View menu to fine tune the margins vs. text size.

If you'd like the teeniest least important design note ever, I think the username in the "Posting as" line above the Comment box should be bold, like usernames after actual comments are.
posted by yarrow at 11:00 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I didn't notice the titles in the modern theme and don't seem to mind them (I always kept the title font size set to zero in the classic theme) so I guess that's an improvement as well.

After using it for a while, though, I really do miss the "x new posts since your last visit".
posted by Curious Artificer at 11:13 AM on September 25, 2014

I love it. Not only do I love it, but I love the way you guys rolled it out. In fact, I don't think I've ever loved a design change *process* more than I love this one.
posted by cacophony at 11:20 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

But, on mobile, one issue I'm having is that if I rotate my phone I get sent back up to the top of whatever page I'm on once the browser goes from landscape to portrait or vice-versa

Ooh, yes, that is kind of a big deal and presumably not intended. I'm getting with Opera Mobile on a relatively new Android phone (well, this one's less than 24 hours old, but it was released a year ago).
posted by ambrosen at 11:38 AM on September 25, 2014

I also love it! I especially like the floaty menu bar. Scrolling up to the top and having the menu organisation switch around is confusing me though. I can't use my muscle memory without having to think whether I'm at the top of the page or not. I like the organisation much better on the floaty bar than at the top of the page; it seems much easier to remember what is where. BUT why no drop down arrow next to the little dude?

Also when I select several paragraphs in metatalk, the selection comes out dark blue, bright green and rusty orange. Surely that's not intentional?
posted by emilyw at 11:40 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The link button under the comment box isn't working for me, it's just a blank button without any functionality. Chrome 37.0.2062.124; Windows 7 Enterprise, SP1.
posted by malocchio at 11:44 AM on September 25, 2014

I agree that the floaty navbar is too tall.

Do you mean on mobile? We took great pains to shrink it vertically to the minimum size possible, it's only 40px tall on the desktop, which is really slim (originally it was about double the size and we tweaked down a few times to get it as short as we could). I admit on a landscape smaller phone, it can take up about 20% of your viewport, but on a desktop it's pretty tiny, and it shouldn't be animated as you scroll (after it initially slides in). It should be fixed and not distract you from reading.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:50 AM on September 25, 2014

On my phone, the floating menu bar (which I noted sucks up more of the screen than I would like, especially in landscape orientation) doesn't show the "hamburger". It took me quite a while to figure out if I touched the sides of the menu bar, which show as just blank colour, it produced the drop down menus on each side. Maybe I'm a slow learner, but some sort of gentle indication a menu is under there would be welcome. This is iPhone 4, ios 6.
posted by Rumple at 11:51 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is iPhone 4, ios 6

I don't know why it's not rendering the SVG icons, the browser is supposed to support SVG.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:53 AM on September 25, 2014

First impression: text density now way too low. Am also completely allergic to floating menu bars; menu is no use until I've finished with the content, at which point I usually just close the tab or hit Ctrl-Home anyway.

I would be happy to try the new theme out for longer if it had squeeze-superfluous-whitespace option and a disable-floaters option. Until then I'll stick with the plain theme.
posted by flabdablet at 12:02 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yes, sorry. On mobile. Chrome on android.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 12:03 PM on September 25, 2014

As I've lived a bit more with Modern, I find the thing that is hurting my eyes the most is the font. It's a nice trendy-ish font, but I'm finding that it doesn't "read" as easily as something a little less design-y. It's too condensed, I think. My eyes don't scan through the lines smoothly. Rather, I find my eyes stopping. on. each. individual. word. as. i. read.

Perhaps returning the font control to the user would help? I know I would prefer to set things a bit smaller, too.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:06 PM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

I don't mind the floating NAV bar on mobile, but I think the total menu section from the NAV Bar to the recent posts dropdown seems a hair too much real estate on my phone. It ends up being maybe 30% of the browser screen which is a bummer.
posted by selfnoise at 12:10 PM on September 25, 2014

pb & mathowie I've been in Light Mode for a while so had forgotten about this bug, but Dark Mode is still flashing-in on each page load for me. On Chrome it seems to be a function of page load order (it's kind of choppy) but on Chromium the page load is too quick to notice, I just get the quick fade to dark. Which is actually more annoying than the choppy page load, heh.

Chrome Version 27.0.1453.110
Chromium Version 25.0.1364.160
Both running on LinuxMint 12 (25.0.1364.160-0ubuntu0.11.10.1)
posted by carsonb at 12:10 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

We just enabled zoom so you should be able to pinch/unpinch (?) now on touchscreens. On iOS we detect the action and hide the fixed menu until you get back to the standard zoom level. We weren't able to do that for Android devices so as you zoom the menu will go wonky.
posted by pb (staff) at 12:17 PM on September 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

Also the IRL post title text/background contrast is really low for me in Dark Mode.
posted by carsonb at 12:18 PM on September 25, 2014

We’ve also gotten a steady stream of feedback from non-members (including Google) that our design makes the site look dated and neglected, and the information on the site may be untrustworthy as a result.

That's a bit rich of them, considering Page and Brin's knocked-up code is just a fucking box on the screen.
posted by Wordshore at 12:19 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also the IRL post title text/background contrast is really low for me in Dark Mode.

Yeah, next on the list. Plus the music display bug devilsrancher pointed out.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:21 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

We just enabled zoom so you should be able to pinch/unpinch (?) now on touchscreens.

Thank you thank you thank you!
posted by rtha at 12:31 PM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

mathowie - here's what it looks like on my phone - no hamburger. iOS 6.1.3, the phone is a 4, almost 4 years old. Landscape orientation is the same look. It's completey usable, and the drop-downs are there, just sort of opaque where they are when first looking at it.
posted by Rumple at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2014

One suggestion from this user: I would love it if the search box was shaded off-white to match the subsite you're in, it's a huge, white distraction at page top for me at the moment.

Maybe just set it to be rgba with an alpha of .5 or something...?
posted by maxwelton at 12:38 PM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Ugh, I hate it! Now let me go try it.
posted by Mister_A at 12:39 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Looks amazing, you guys should be very proud. Still feels like MetaFilter, and all the colors in dark mode look great (other than the links for IRL but it looks like you're on that already).
posted by karlshea at 12:40 PM on September 25, 2014

At the risk of waxing hyperbolic, that utility bar at the top is LITERALLY ONE THOUSAND MILLION BILLION TIMES BETTER than the old way of doing that. There are actually a few new functions up there if I recall correctly; my recollection of the old design grows hazy...
posted by Mister_A at 12:45 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Coming from the plain theme I have to say I really like this and instantly switched over on multiple devices. I would also chime in with the folks saying they don't love the green and would prefer the gold. Also it would be nice if the title links were a slightly different color as it kind of blends in with the post if the first line happens to be a link aswell.
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:00 PM on September 25, 2014

Well, I liked it, but for whatever reason, it loaded abominably slow on my phone, so I've ditched it. Clicking links would only take me to the link maybe 1/15 tries. Plain theme still works fine.
posted by LionIndex at 1:06 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hated everything at first, but after giving it a day of browsing, I really like dark mode quite a lot. But I'm with Thorzdad about the font; there's just something about it that makes it harder for me to scan lines. The really weird thing is that I noticed a font issue like a week ago (on classic, not beta) and thought I was losing my mind.
posted by specialagentwebb at 1:09 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm also not seeing a link button under the comment window, only Bold and Italics. (Firefox, Windows 8.1)
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:12 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

It looks great, especially on my phone. Well done.
posted by theraflu at 1:15 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, I would like the little moon to turn into a little sun when switching between dark and light modes. That would make me inexplicably happy.
posted by malocchio at 1:18 PM on September 25, 2014 [17 favorites]

OH NOES CHANGE COMES TO METAFILTER! But seriously, the new theme in light or dark looks awesome; great job!
posted by thewalledcity at 1:30 PM on September 25, 2014

I absolutely love the new look, but I have a request: Can you guys force the rebecca purple background color on this thread, please? When visiting the page in the light theme, the text is white and therefore unreadable. Also, light or dark theme preferences be damned, that particular page should always be the correct color.
posted by Ridge at 1:39 PM on September 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

I'm experiencing a performance problem on iPhone 4S, iOS 8.0, Safari, though wifi and cell bars look fine. Pages with the new design are too slow to load, resulting in "Cannot Open Page" errors. I switched back to classic and the pages load fine.
posted by daisyace at 2:08 PM on September 25, 2014

[OS 10.9.5, Chrome] Is there a way to change the font / density on the page?

The letters seem very tight against one another, with little spacing between them. But then there is so much space between each comment - the density of content is really different from the old theme. I'm finding it incredibly hard to read, even slowly.

I think on the old theme, I could change the font name and size, but that option is gone with the new theme.

+1 for "dark mode" to be in the preferences panel. It's a preference like everything else. I guess you are imagining people would switch back and forth between dark/light but that doesn't seem like a usual set-up for a content-heavy site.
posted by barnone at 2:13 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I think it makes sense to have dark/light right at hand where it is instead of buried in prefs since it's a thing someone may change often depending upon lighting conditions. Similar to how Twitteriffic on the phone has day/night mode.

Also loving the smooth rollover action of the Post Comment & Preview buttons on the desktop. Very slick!
posted by Devils Rancher at 2:26 PM on September 25, 2014

Yay!
posted by ocherdraco at 2:29 PM on September 25, 2014

I will also belatedly join the voice (es?) saying the "Older / Newer" bar at the bottom of the page aught to go beneath the comment window instead of above it. Seems like it should be the very last thing before the grey line that delineates the footer.
posted by Devils Rancher at 2:29 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

The arrangement of all the menu items at the top is much more logical, and will be far less confusing for new users. And a responsive design was certainly overdue, so well done!

However I'm having the same issue with fonts as some others above. The body font looks looks like it is a somewhat condensed font (is it Droid Sans?) which is a general no-no for legibility for large blocks of text. This is compounded by the fact that letter-spacing/tracking seems far too tight (both in Safari 6.2 and Chrome 37.0.2062.124 in OSX 10.8.5). Unless this is changed (or modifiable by the user) I won't be comfortable reading anything in Modern mode. Please consider using something like Open Sans or Noto Sans instead.

I'm also kind of meh about Monserrat (I think thats what it is?) used for the titles/headers. But that's just aesthetic preference, not readability. I think Source Sans Pro could be a good alternative.

Here's my quick take (on the right) using Source Sans Pro and Open Sans.
posted by Kabanos at 2:46 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Also, the new design makes it more obvious that I am not doing work, at work!
posted by Kabanos at 2:49 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think Source Sans Pro could be a good alternative.

heh, the new theme is using Source Sans Pro.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:50 PM on September 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

Love it on Chrome for Android.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 2:53 PM on September 25, 2014

I'll agree with comments about the rounded/square corners thing, hiding the floating bar as an option, and the "Older/Newer" posts bar thingie needing to go lower, to the footer, because I keep thinking it's referring to older/newer comments.

I'm also using IE11 on a Win8 tablet for this comment and typing in the box has incredible laggy delay, not to mention hitting "home" on the keyboard to get to the top of the page produced a completely blank white screen for a second or two before rendering the top of the thread. I wonder about the lag because I don't associate Metafilter with being horribly script-heavy or something.
posted by Ky at 2:56 PM on September 25, 2014

Yeah, just double-checked. We're using Source Sans Pro for the body font and Montserrat for titles.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:57 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

heh, the new theme is using Source Sans Pro.

For the comments etc. yes? This is where I think a wider letterform would help legibility, hence Open Sans.
posted by Kabanos at 2:57 PM on September 25, 2014

For the comments etc. yes?

Ah ok, I see. For the body copy everywhere, yep.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:59 PM on September 25, 2014

On Android 4.2.2 with the stock browser, I have two issues. First, scrolling seems less responsive. When I start dragging a finger to scroll, it hesitates for a fraction of a second before the screen starts to move, just enough to be noticeably more than on the classic theme.

Second, the sidebar button flips back and forth between an "active" and a "greyed out" look. (The greyed out look matches the mobile screenshot in the post. I don't know how to take a screenshot on my phone.) It doesn't change very frequently; it may be partly in response to my tapping it(?). In either state, tapping it doesn't consistently take me to the sidebar or does so only very slowly. Same thing for the post button at the bottom.
posted by eruonna at 3:02 PM on September 25, 2014

In general I find the suggestion that I should simply "zoom out" at the browser level to be suboptimal and a bad user experience. Not only do I have to do so at every sub-site, but I have to do that from every machine AND every time I clear my cache. That said, I realize it appears to be the new standard.
posted by 2bucksplus at 3:03 PM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

*Goes to preferences and tries this out. BLINDED BY THE WHITE.*

*Reads this excellent post again and hits dark mode widget*

*Standing Ovation!!!*
posted by bearwife at 3:04 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

are/do you have a proper bugtracker open or do we need to report everything in this thread? I love these threads but they are only good for certain kinds of conversation and I am not very confident giving feedback post 500++
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 3:08 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

We don't have a bugtracker. Your best bet is post them here or you can send them in via the Contact Form. Right now bugs are falling into a couple categories: 1.) a bug that exists across all devices (such as illegible light text on light background link colors in Dark Mode). or 2.) a bug that exists on a specific OS/browser combination. We're trying to fix up category 1 bugs right now and we'll move on category 2 when we can.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:13 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm not thrilled with it after a day's reflection - the font/spacing stuff is actually giving me a headache, partly because I have an eye disease that already makes longform reading on a screen a little off as it is. I lack the typography words to explain the problem, and it doesn't quite make sense since bigger and heavier should mean easier to read than the Verdana 8pt font I was going with, right? but it doesn't - and the floating search/title bar strikes me as an offending eyesore, coupled with loss of precious real estate on a phone.

That said! I'm going to give it my 2 weeks if I can, if I last that long. Such a thought-out, labored-over design deserves our patience and a proper adjustment period.
posted by naju at 3:17 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Whoa, completely broken on IE8. Yes I know it's an ancient browser, but that's what my IT people have on a lot of our work computers. :(
posted by rabbitrabbit at 3:18 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I reeeeeally like this.
posted by sarcasticah at 3:20 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not a complaint, but just noticing now that I'm deep into the thread, is there no longer a scroll bar? It's nice to glance at to see just how far down in the thread you are.
Edit: er, disregard, seems that after I hit post, I had one appear somehow?
posted by to recite so charmingly at 3:34 PM on September 25, 2014

Will something change with the little user icon when I get me-mail? I don't check it regularly, but I did notice when the little envelope changed in the old theme. Now, I'd have to already be clicking the user icon before I'd notice. And does the Messages envelope still change?

N-thing the need for the link colors to change on hover. Also, can the already viewed links color be a little more different than the not viewed link color? (I'm not a huge fan of the green text on AskMe, but I'll probably get used to it. Probably... I kind of like it everywhere else.)

Oh! And, while poking around looking at new colors, I discovered the Projects section. You guys! Projects is awesome! Like a whole other front page, but with stuff done by Mefites! I never knew!
posted by Weeping_angel at 3:44 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Can we add some kind of "skip to the bottom" link on this theme? The function that takes you to unread comments isn't foolproof and sometimes, you end up having to scroll many times just to see the newest few comments.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:51 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Weeping angel, if you look at this screenshot, or refresh your page, you'll see what the MeMail notification looks like.
posted by carsonb at 3:52 PM on September 25, 2014

DirtyOldTown, since sidebar content is now at the bottom of the page, clicking the "Sidebar" button at the top-right will take you to the bottom and you can scroll up from there.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:53 PM on September 25, 2014

especially with the COMPLETELY HYPNOTIC dark mode button which I could just push-push-push-push all day

posted by jpdoane at 3:53 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can we add some kind of "skip to the bottom" link on this theme?

On mobile devices? Click the sidebar link, the 'sidebar' is actually down at the bottom like where the nav menu was before. Or on desktop just use the 'End' key on your keyboard. 'End' + 'Page Up' actually, is what I use.
posted by carsonb at 3:53 PM on September 25, 2014

I get the same lack-of-hamburger as Rumple - I'm on an iPhone 3GS with 6.1.3, so this may not be a common issue. It also lags a lot when scrolling. Otherwise, I really like the new look!
posted by BigJen at 3:54 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I mentioned way upthread as well that on iOS 6/Safari (and also Chrome), the svg icons are not appearing. I think we can assume that it is A Bug Thing.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:05 PM on September 25, 2014

I love so much of the new theme (and really, really like it on mobile) so in an attempt to keep using it without the floating top bar driving me nuts, I made my first Stylish script. It keeps the menu at the very top of the page, but rids you of the floating top bar.

Metafilter Top Float Off

I spent 2 minutes on this and know precious little about CSS. But it works for me and I hope it works for you if you try it.
posted by SpiffyRob at 4:09 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

...and it doesn't quite make sense since bigger and heavier should mean easier to read than the Verdana 8pt font I was going with, right?

Not when the bigger and heavier type is also somewhat condensed and used as a text font. Bigger and heavier works best in display sizes, say 16pt and up. The condensed nature of the the font, combined with it being fairly bold, combines to make hard to read. Your choice of Verdana is interesting, as that's also my choice on the Classic look. It's a regular weight and not condensed and flows really well. It doesn't get in the way of the reading. Rather, it facilitates it. The current font used in the Modern look for body text actually hinders smooth reading.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:15 PM on September 25, 2014 [12 favorites]

Not sure that I like the new theme, but I am giving it a try. One bug that I noticed, iPhone 5s, iOS 8, Safari, was that a long link in a particular comment in one thread seems to be sticking out past the right-hand margin, adding a bunch of white space to the right of the blue content area, making it a little more awkward to scroll vertically.
posted by JiBB at 4:16 PM on September 25, 2014

Also, after hitting preview on the iPhone, I'm taken to the preview of my comment with the text:

(Your comment is currently being previewed, hit post to commit it or continue editing below.)
[Post Comment] OR [Preview]

below it, but no text area is visible below in which to continue editing.
posted by JiBB at 4:19 PM on September 25, 2014

I literally *just* noticed (and see pb mention it upthread) that the body font is now Source Sans Pro, which I much prefer to the one that was being used during the beta. I just now switched to Verdana in Firebug to compare (Verdana is what I have always used for MeFi) and I think I actually prefer Source Sans, in everything but letter-spacing, where Source Sans continues to feel a little bit tightly kerned for my tastes. But that's a very minor thing.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:45 PM on September 25, 2014

stavros, we didn't change the fonts during the beta, they've been the same for over a month.

pb has fixed a bunch of bugs today (music layout on mobile, dark mode IRL, etc), and we'll play with the idea of a Google webfonts picker over the next few days and see what we come up with.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:53 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I use a handful of extensions — viz. Deleted Posts, Navigator, Quote, Mark Contact Contributions, and Scroll Tag. Up until an hour or two ago, they were all working fine. Now it seems like they work sometimes and not others. I'm still trying to track down what has changed that's causing this behavior.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:53 PM on September 25, 2014

stavros, we didn't change the fonts during the beta, they've been the same for over a month.

Dude, now you're just messing with me. I know you're not, but goddamn it, my brain is apparently getting away from me, here. I feel like 100% certain (and said in one of my emails to you about how I didn't care for it much) that Montserrat was being used as the body font early in the beta.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:00 PM on September 25, 2014

Thanks JiBB, and everyone who reported it—full HTML preview should now have a textarea where you can edit your comment. It wasn't showing up at small screen sizes.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:08 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm liking the new design. The only thing I miss is the clock. I had it set to server time so that I would know what time I was speaking to most people.
posted by unliteral at 5:10 PM on September 25, 2014

Can you inject some humor into the MetaTalk tagline? That etc. seems lazy. Why not "feature requests, bugs, and many prancing ponies."
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:27 PM on September 25, 2014

Or a picture of a donkey, in a straw hat. Because: donkeys in straw hats!
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:28 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm still trying out the new theme on my computer, and I noticed that the text in Recent Activity still flows to near the edge of the page. Comparing the two, I still prefer the width of text available there, rather than the big white block of (wasted) space, so I imagine I'll probably head back to the old professional white. I do like the menu bar at the top (of the non-mobile variety) quite a bit though.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:45 PM on September 25, 2014

The new theme stuff is good by me, except that it breaks the User Notes doohickey in Greasemonkey. That sucks.
posted by Coatlicue at 5:46 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm liking the new UI on my laptop, but I switched back to the old plain text version on my phone. The persistent banner at the top makes it too obvious what I'm reading at work!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 5:50 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Another IE11 bug/issue... the persistent search box on the upper right of the screen has a "Search..." text that is all the way in the lower left of the box instead of being centered correctly (at least I think the look of it in chrome is correct, since it looks much better).
posted by selfnoise at 5:51 PM on September 25, 2014

Several people have mentioned some Greasemonkey scripts not working, so I just want to share a little gotcha that got me just in case it might be the cause of some such issues that other people are having too:

Some of the ones I use also stopped working, and it didn't matter whether I used modern or classic. But then I realized that when I first switched to modern, I also noticed another preference option that I'd never noticed before: "Use Secure Browsing? (Experimental)". When I saw it I figured hey, I like secure browsing, and so checked it, and then promptly forgot about it while I played around with the new modern theme.

When I realized that, I went back and turned off secure browsing, and several (but not all) of my scripts started working again. The issue was that Greasemonkey scripts specify the URLs they run on, and if a script doesn't say it should run on https://metafilter.com/, then it won't run on https://metafilter.com/, even if it says it should run on http://metafilter.com/.
posted by Flunkie at 5:59 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wow, love the Dark Mode. Thanks!
posted by Short Attention Sp at 6:17 PM on September 25, 2014

I may not ever get through all the comments here. So I thought I would just skip ahead and give another two thumbs up for Dark Mode. I have some issues that make bright white backgrounds a problem more often than not.

I am old and have terrible eyesight, so I plan to give it a few days before I get all judgy. I need time to adapt. But I am already leaning towards yay rather than nay. Good work, all y'all.
posted by Michele in California at 6:30 PM on September 25, 2014

Started using it on my phone. Only major complaint is that links don't open a lot of times unless I hold them (on iphone) so the box pops up with the open/open in new tab/etc options. Kind of annoying but not a deal breaker.
posted by Aranquis at 6:31 PM on September 25, 2014

ob1quixote: I use a handful of extensions — viz. Deleted Posts, Navigator, Quote, Mark Contact Contributions, and Scroll Tag. Up until an hour or two ago, they were all working fine. Now it seems like they work sometimes and not others. I'm still trying to track down what has changed that's causing this behavior.

So, I think all I had to do is make sure all the URL regexes inside the scripts say "https" instead of "http," but damned if I know. They work now.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:32 PM on September 25, 2014

I love so much of the new theme (and really, really like it on mobile) so in an attempt to keep using it without the floating top bar driving me nuts, I made my first Stylish script. It keeps the menu at the very top of the page, but rids you of the floating top bar.

Yes! This is exactly the one change I was wishing for (er, in the whopping day since the new theme was rolled out). I'd love for there to eventually be an in-house option to turn off the floating menu - the reduction in real estate is small, but SO much more annoying to me than it reasonably should be - but for now this has convinced me to install Stylish. Thanks, SpiffyRob!

And other than the floating top bar thing, add me to the throngs chiming in to say they like the redesign, and Dark Mode in particular. Looking great!
posted by DingoMutt at 6:33 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Umm. I hate to be the one to say it - but dark mode, with titles turned on, the front page looks like cybersquatter bullshit at first glance. I'm not certain this will get us out of Google's purgatory, without unique and precociously photoshopped gifs accompanying each new entry.

Google delenda est.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:35 PM on September 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

but dark mode, with titles turned on, the front page looks like cybersquatter bullshit at first glance.

You're right, it kind of does, but dark mode isn't the default. The Google penalty only applies when people back out of a page from search results, so if someone is familiar enough with the site that they've customized its look, they're probably not going to bounce when Metafilter comes up in a search.
posted by zixyer at 6:46 PM on September 25, 2014

BUG REPORT: in chrome on Nexus 4, turning the phone horizontally, and then back to vertical, the main text area does not correctly readjust to the size of the screen. Screenshot.
posted by lollusc at 6:47 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

The Google penalty only applies when people back out of a page from search results

Nope, not even. This is received wisdom, which is the best WAG that SEO scum can wave around.

This is the hell mathowie is in - Google won't fucking tell him what the problem is, and every motherfucker on the planet has an opinion on how to please the Great God Google. At some point, we have to acknowledge webcrawling is a failed state, and move onto something new.

Google delenda est.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:56 PM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Used it on my phone quite a bit today. Strangely enough I LOVE the header bar on my phone. Maybe it is because the MetaFilter "logo" takes up so much more of the screen width - it seems more branded and less generic. Also the contrast between the colors on every site looks better on my phone than on my monitors. Maybe my monitors need to be recalibrated.

I too had the problem where links would not open unless I click-held and opened in another tab, so I didn't open a lot of links. This is in the latest release of Chrome Mobile running on Android 4.4.3.
posted by muddgirl at 7:15 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's a lot to like about this. There's also a lot holding it back from looking... professional.

The green works nice when sparingly used as an accent color, but anytime it's used as a background color in a block, like in the user menu or the current nav tab, it clashes and screams over everything else. Playing with the CSS and taking it away focuses the site so much better and makes it feel more cohesive.

The double-stacked tab navigations really fight with each other, too. Just lines and colors all over the place. The CSS box model can really negatively influence design choices when you start drawing boxes in boxes in boxes... it's really not necessary to put everything in different colored boxes to have a decent visual hierarchy. Simplify and it will feel less cluttered and more usable.

Once you scroll down from there, the actual content looks nice, I think. I'll be giving it a shot for a while, at least.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 7:22 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

the new design makes it more obvious that I am not doing work, at work!

Yeah, especially that floating menu bar. Please give us the option?
posted by Rash at 7:26 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Weirdly, I tried Dark Mode for a while and feel similar to how Slap*Happy describes it - so I switched to the "professional white" and am enjoying it more. Perhaps I had to work through complaining about the white in FanFare before I broke it in. (Or was broken.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:39 PM on September 25, 2014

Small readability issue: in dark mode, clicking on "contacts" (within the profile) has a bunch of them highlighted in a way that makes them unreadable to me.

Also, I'm finding the jump down the page using the spacebar to be just a hair too large, so I keep having to scroll up one line. I didn't need to do this in the classic mode, so maybe it's an issue with how far it moves to "page down," or it might be a side effect of the big change in font/spacing.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:51 PM on September 25, 2014

Matt, thank you for allowing us to keep it the way it has been for years. I understand the update and the reasons for it but at my age it just feels comforting for something online just to flippin' stay the same for awhile.

And if I change my mind, that new design is nice.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 7:58 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Love it! Two questions / suggestions, which may be answered in the 600 comments above, but:
1) the skip to the end feature: is that now called "sidebar?"
2) any chance of making "recent activity" more accessible -- maybe swapping with "random?"
posted by salvia at 8:09 PM on September 25, 2014

Yay for fixing the Music on mobile bug, and yay for fixing the missing mobile text- entry box on preview! You guys are fast!

Found another odd one- clicked through to the "Archives" link at the top of the MetaTalk front page (Safari ios 8) & the "Archives by Date" section is spilling out of the grey container to the right, making all the dates & the persistent header twice as wide as they should be, the right half on a white background.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:10 PM on September 25, 2014

Weirdly, after sticking with anildash mode at work and old-school dark mode at home, I'm starting to maybe prefer anildash mode. This is not something I expected to happen. (MetaTalk still looks better to me dark, though.)
posted by chrominance at 8:11 PM on September 25, 2014

I've mostly now answered my own questions, but for the record, my vote is that it might be worth making "recent activity" easier to find and renaming "sidebar." But this is generally great!
posted by salvia at 8:14 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Overall I really like the new theme - especially the navigation. I am using it on my laptop, and very happy with (though I did need to hide live preview due to lag - but this is an older machine & a very long thread!). Ideally I'd have the option of a wider max width for text, but it's not a dealbreaker or anything. I zoomed to 75%, and now the text is just the right size.

I used it on my phone (iPhone 5) for a while, but there's just too little text on the screen - I prefer a small font with as much text as possible on the screen. So, I switched back to the classic theme. I will definitely switch to the new theme on the phone if/when we get the chance to adjust font size!
posted by insectosaurus at 8:16 PM on September 25, 2014

I like this, and I usually fear and despise change, so the fact that I like this is making me anxious.
posted by pemberkins at 8:20 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

You know how when you go out of town for a lengthy chunk of time and you come back home and your house feels off somehow? Like it's just a place that's been staged to look like your home but nothing feels quite right? But then once you actually go do something like sit on your couch or make yourself a snack it goes right back to being your home again?

I feel like this redesign is kind of like that.
posted by phunniemee at 8:25 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Just want to add my voice to the chorus: I like a lot of the functionality of the new look. Hate the font with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. It reminds me strongly of the instructional letters hung on the walls of kindergarten classrooms, and feels infantile and patronizing. Even after living with it for a day, it's still quite irksome, and much more so on desktop than mobile. As others have noted, the kerning is so tight it doesn't really feel crisp, either, on desktop --- with all the new space on the sides it feels like the comments are the last few Alpha-bits clinging together as they float on a sea of milk.

I had no idea I could feel this strongly about a mere font, but there we are. i have a renewed appreciation for the feelings of all my graphic designer friends on Comic Sans.
posted by Diablevert at 8:28 PM on September 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

There seems to be something wonky with the fonts on the search results pages (iPhone 4S; Safari).

I'm also finding it a little difficult to select the '123 new' link on threads. I think it's partly just that the new theme is slightly less responsive than the classic.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 8:37 PM on September 25, 2014

Huh. I rather like the general layout and colours. This month has been all about the delightful surprise of yellow-to-green for me, so the limey accent colour is really appealing. I have no strong feelings about the fonts either way, but I'll probably want to change soon because restless. I'm not sure about the line heights. I may have some concerns about the line heights. I like a spacious design, but this feels a little -- loose? Rattly?

I guess the big test for me now is how well it functions to get me around the site and whether I start getting lost and grumpy. But for now, thumbs up for a change!
posted by maudlin at 8:49 PM on September 25, 2014

I am glad this is finally out of beta testing, because I was biting my fingers so hard when everyone was complaining about the lack of color in FanFare in the recent thread discussing design. I wanted to write "just wait, there's hope!" but I didn't, because Matt said he'd roll this out in a week.

There are features that require some acclimation, and the layout is weird if you're used to certain features in certain locations, but I'm keeping Modern.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:57 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

It will take some time to grow. I definitely like the mobile style. I'm a person who doesn't like super large text and giant text boxes for data entry (but neither do I like FB/G+ style boxes -- old LJ or Mefi sized boxes were my favorite).

I imagine that this will be tweaked in the days/weeks ahead; I haven't fully explored - but navigability to features certainly seems easier, I think(?) I think I might be more likely to visit other parts besides the blue now.
posted by symbioid at 9:10 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

A couple of people have mentioned that they are getting sent back to the top of the page if they switch from portrait to landscape. I don't get that behavior, but the switch from portrait to landscape (and back) is offset by quite a bit and I have to scroll some distance to get back to where I was.
To give you a concrete example -- If I'm here in landscape mode I get sent here if I rotate my phone. Given how readily the phone swaps orientation (I know I can turn this off, but I generally *like* it), it's hard to keep my place reading a thread.

I did switch back to Professional White and confirm that it does not do this - If I can see a comment in one orientation, I can still see it if the phone tips sideways. Even though I kinda dig Dark Mode the sloshing up- or down-thread 10 comments with every tilt of the phone is a tad sick-making.

I'm using an iPhone 4ish with iOS 7.0.6.
posted by janell at 9:14 PM on September 25, 2014

Wow, this must have been a HUGE project. Kudos!

But although I like the Modern theme a lot -- much more than I'd expected -- I still don't like it enough to switch. It feels slower/jerkier than the classic version, and I don't want to sacrifice the font customization. I also agree with Rhaomi that the dark-mode green is too dark & the visited links look incongruously more intense than the unvisited ones. (The IRL brown-on-orange is very hard to read, too.)

It would be very nice to have the Modern-Dark FanFare color scheme ported over to the Classic theme. Consistent, too.
posted by Westringia F. at 9:15 PM on September 25, 2014

My new favorite thing is tags being visible on mobile. I can go delete my mobile bookmarks for the tag pages of AskMe and MeFi now!

I'm really liking this.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:41 PM on September 25, 2014

So, I'm reading this with Safari 7.0.6 on OS X 10.9, and I've used my pinch-to-zoom-out feature of the laptop trackpad to make the font bigger. (It's maybe zoomed out to about 24 pt.)

(1) The font is really nice at this size. Not too squished together, very readable.
(2) The green is awesome against the gray. It's much lower contrast against the blue and green.
(3) The floaty menubar is gone. Is that supposed to happen? It comes back if I pinch back. (You said something about this for mobile, but this is desktop.)
posted by leahwrenn at 9:55 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Looking at it via Mac laptop--Firefox.
I'll keep it as my preference for a while, but at first read, there just seems to be too much wasted space in the left/right hand margins.
As such, I really only see two or three postings when I used to see more on the screen at one time. I tried using browser font size adjustments but it then gets the font much too small for long term reading.
Color-wise, dark mode is cool but I don't know whether I will ever warm up to the font shape.
posted by calgirl at 10:02 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Dark mode is pretty (and should be the default), but when in dark mode, it seems like when a page loads it displays the non-dark mode for a second, so I get a very unpleasant strobe-like flash before I can read stuff.
posted by speicus at 10:04 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm also on an iPhone 4 with iOS 6.1.3 and I also can't see the top menu bar on my phone.
posted by sockermom at 10:07 PM on September 25, 2014

I like it. I like it a lot and am assuming that 'dark mode' (which I prefer, perhaps because it's more 'Metafilterey') came from my characterisation of FanFare as 'The Dark'. Don't bother telling me otherwise (ie the truth), because I'm not listening.

I'm also seeing the landscape vs portrait page-moving thing too (iPad 3/iOS7 and iPhone 5s/iOS7, both with Chrome). It doesn't seem to do it when you're at the top of a page, only if you're scrolled down below the title of the thread or the title of the first thread on the page.

I'm also seeing a (different) weird thing on the portrait/landscape switch with the same devices - the lower nav elements (either one or two lighter-coloured bars, depending on the view) disappear and leave a white bar where they were. Refreshing the page fixes it, but it recurs when you switch orientation again. It looks exactly like the flash of white that happens when you scroll back up and the full nav bar set-up re-appears, but it stays like that. On further testing, it doesn't seem to do this in Safari on these devices although it did the first time I rotated the device, but then appeared after a few seconds.
posted by dg at 10:08 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm not sure how I feel about it on my laptop, but I love the modern style with dark mode on my phone! There's only thing (and this might be something I just don't know how to change in my settings?) that I'm not loving. On my HTC One/Android, using the default internet browser, from the main page or Ask MeFi I will usually hold down on a link and bring up the menu to open that link in a new tab, since tapping the link and then using the back button usually results in losing my place on the original page. When I do that on my phone in modern, it will bring up the menu so I can open it in a new tab - but it also opens the link in the original tab as well, making the "Open in new tab" function useless. (The Gawker sites do this now too after their most recent redesign.) Is this a bug or a feature? Or something I'll just have to learn to live with? Thanks!
posted by skycrashesdown at 10:08 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The title font size seems different in Projects: smaller and (to my eyes) nicer, but inconsistent with the other subsites.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:08 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is there a way to skip to the bottom of a thread? It is helpful - particularly on super-long threads like this - to be able to pop right down to the bottom.
posted by sockermom at 10:13 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

The "older" and "newer" links on the bottom seem quite crammed & hard to read, despite not being any more truncated than before. I think it's the closeness of each to the | in between, plus the space on either side in the dark box containing them....
posted by Westringia F. at 10:16 PM on September 25, 2014

Got around to using it on my iPad, and as expected, it's excellent. A real improvement over the previous mobile experience. However, it's a totally different story on my MacBook. The spacing and fonts are brilliant on my tablet, but look very different on the desktop. There, the space feels wasted yet the fonts feel cramped - a hard to explain combo.
posted by modernnomad at 10:23 PM on September 25, 2014

The "hide share links" option, which remains when Modern is selected, is seemingly being ignored.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:27 PM on September 25, 2014

Is there a way to skip to the bottom of a thread?

The scrollbar seems buggy to me -- if I scroll all the way down it snaps me into the the too-tall footer, when my intended destination's actually the comments box, which feels awkward, scrolling back up to.
posted by Rash at 10:34 PM on September 25, 2014

I am very much liking this on my phone.
posted by sarcasticah at 10:45 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love everything about this. Thank you for the hard work!
posted by barnacles at 11:27 PM on September 25, 2014

I really want to be able to use a serif font - I like most of the new layout for navigation, but the font is lemon juice on a papercut annoying. Can someone point me to how to do that in Chrome on a Mac? I wish we could set a font override on the template. It's fine for a mobile, where a sans-serif on a small screen is okay, but on the bigger desktop screen, it just looks like ad-copy, not text.
posted by viggorlijah at 1:42 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

*tries it out, recoils, goes back to classic*

Thank god for being able to choose, Metafilter team, and not being forced to use.
posted by infini at 3:10 AM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

I admit on a landscape smaller phone, it can take up about 20% of your viewport, but on a desktop it's pretty tiny,

Depends on desktop. Full screen 31" monitor? Half a 15"? If you dig in your stats you may be able to come up with size info ....
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 4:14 AM on September 26, 2014

I like the redesign, and I think the new body text font works well. Thanks for all the hard work!

I just have one suggestion, and that's changing the color of the current subsite in the top bar. Especially on FanFare the green on purple is hideous to me. If the green could be replaced with the background color of the sub-bar that would be much nicer (again, in my opinion), like this. Actually, maybe the top user bar as well? Like this. This is mainly about FanFare, Jobs and IRL where I think the green is difficult combined with the color of those subsites.
posted by bjrn at 4:26 AM on September 26, 2014

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but on my LG G3 (using Chrome) it goes weird when I tip to landscape and back to portrait.
posted by K.P. at 4:47 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I preferred the yellow to this green which in my eyes is perilously close to the ugliest green ever. It also means I'll have adjust the colours on my desktop at work, because I'd gone for the classic Metafilter blue and yellow to make me feel cool and interesting.

I like the rest of the new design though, particularly the dark option. Thumbs up.
posted by h00py at 5:35 AM on September 26, 2014

A couple more minor issues (all in Firefox on a mac in dark mode):

The flagging menu shows up as crazy small -- maybe it's just the same size as it always was, but next to the super sized new text font it seems tiny.

In Recent Activity, the color for box around your own recent comments, the background for things marked as best answers, and the bar on the right to indicate a response from the person who posted the question needs more contrast from the background color; at least on my screen for my eyes it is hard to see.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:47 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm also seeing what lollusc reported here. Furthermore, having switched from vertical to horizontal there's a jump in the document when scrolling down switches the nav.user top banner to/from position:fixed.

The reveal of the scrolling top banner would be much less distracting if it came from underneath the non-scrolling top banner, rather than having an animated movement down.
posted by eemeli at 5:50 AM on September 26, 2014

Just to add another positive voice, I really really like the new design, both on Chrome/Windows 7 and on Chrome/Android (HTC One Max). I'm running Dark Mode on both. Great work everyone!
posted by jazon at 6:49 AM on September 26, 2014

I changed to modern just a few minutes ago, thought I'd found the biggest bug.
posted by sammyo at 6:53 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, on my main windows desktop, running firefox, I changed to Modern with dark mode on and that was okay. (still not sure about that font.) But when I fired up MeFI on safari on my iphone and also on my macbook, I still saw the old classic format. When I checked my profile, it was still set to modern. The only way I could get to modern on those two devices was to flip myself back to classic, save it, then change to modern again and save it. (and then reenable dark mode)

Weird.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:57 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

That's because themes are device specific. You have to hit "save" for the theme you want on each device. This is nifty, because it means you can use different themes at different locations: plain white at work, modern on devices, classic at home (or whatever you want).
posted by ocherdraco at 7:02 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Okay, changed to Modern on my Android. A lot to like here. Will leave it classic on my computer.

This is how to roll out a new design! I feel respected as a user and I feel freeer to appreciate the newness. Again, thanks, Matt!
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 7:03 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Unlike a certain site whose name has two syllables and rhymes with "boing", this is a nice redesign. I like the opt-in-iness and the dark theme option. Bravo!
posted by Foosnark at 7:10 AM on September 26, 2014

I really love it. I wish the font was just a teeny bit smaller, though.
posted by _Seeker_ at 7:16 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Looks great on my desktop! I appreciate the simple control for dark mode, so I can do Pro White at work and the normal colors at home.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:51 AM on September 26, 2014

Apologies if its already been mentioned, I did a quick CTRL-F to no avail.

Bug: Modern theme, Win7, Chrome (Version 37.0.2062.124 m) 'link' is missing from the controls on a reply. Working ok in IE9 on same PC.
posted by Ness at 7:54 AM on September 26, 2014

I know this was mentioned upthread, but I really miss "swipe to favorite" on my phone. Enough that I will probably switch back to Premodern.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:01 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ness, this may be the same problem that I had earlier; if so, then your browser is probably just zoomed out. Try selecting "View" from the top menu in Chrome, and then choose "Actual Size."
posted by taz (staff) at 8:14 AM on September 26, 2014

On an LG G3 Android 4.4.2, in landscape you can move every page left by one pixel, revealing white space.
posted by Small Dollar at 8:29 AM on September 26, 2014

Really like the new theme on my laptop, however on my phone (Windows Phone 7.8) the theme seems to be quite broken. The " hamburger" and search links on the top do not work. Also the top menu links are shown on top of the body content and take up almost half of the screen. I cannot take a screenshot on the phone, but can try to take a photo when I get home.
posted by baueri at 8:40 AM on September 26, 2014

Scroll to bottom option in the hamburger plz
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:45 AM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

This looks pretty nice and isn't overly confusing. It feels kind of gamified, somehow, which I don't mind. That said...

1. Titles. I won't be using this theme until we can hide titles again and adjust font sizes. I appreciate the way the previous themes privilege information density over beauty. It helps me focus on people's meaning, rather than formatting. I think that focus is one of our strengths as a community.

2. Fonts. I would love it if there were an option to still customize them somewhat, as I still love me some Verdana. Being able to view everything in the same fonts helps me keep a consistent voice in my head as I write. I still put Microsoft Word docs in Times New Roman, for instance, not because I dislike change, but so the voice I read pieces in and write in remains consistent. The same goes for my writing here.

3. Hearts. Yep, the favorites icon should not be a heart. It should be a +. This is a key part of site culture, and anyone new will figure it out. I think it's important to keep this consistent so it's clear that clicking these + links over here makes things appear under this + icon up here.

And yeah, I haven't looked at this on mobile yet, but if there's no scroll/skip to bottom link anymore, that would also be a problem for me. I use that all the time, especially for long threads.
posted by limeonaire at 8:49 AM on September 26, 2014 [8 favorites]

sonic meat machine, the sidebar button is effectively a scroll to bottom button. (On small screens, the sidebar is below the main column.) It's pretty neat!
posted by ocherdraco at 8:51 AM on September 26, 2014

Scroll to bottom option in the hamburger plz

On small screens the sidebar content is now at the bottom of the page. If you click the "Sidebar" button at the top right you'll go to the bottom of the page and you can scroll up from there.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:51 AM on September 26, 2014

I've got to say, I love the new theme. More obvious tags, and really clean. Thanks all!
posted by Sophie1 at 8:52 AM on September 26, 2014

I do like the new themes, especially on Android mobile devices. It's hugely better than the older version. I greatly appreciate the work there.

There is one thing is don't understand though: Contact Activity. How does one turn it back on? I can toggle it off in the new theme, but there's no obvious way to turn it back on. I have to switch back to the old theme to turn it back on. What am I missing?
posted by bonehead at 9:05 AM on September 26, 2014

Just log out and back in and Contact Activity will be back.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:10 AM on September 26, 2014

Just log out and back in and Contact Activity will be back.

That seems… suboptimal. It's not a high priority, but some sort of toggle in preferences would be nice.
posted by zamboni at 9:14 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Agreed that it's not optimal. Not sure it belongs as a Display Preference on the preferences page, but we could make the option more clear once you hide it. I think people are doing a lot of poking around right now and turning it on and off repeatedly probably won't be something that's needed as much down the road.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:18 AM on September 26, 2014

I'm in the middle of moving and so wasn't able to say this yesterday when I noticed "my" bug fixed, but major major props to pb for the rapid bug squishing .

*applauds* Bravo, sir. I tip my hat to you.
posted by romakimmy at 9:18 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sure, glad it's working for you. Just want to mention that we appreciate the bug reports and feedback. There's definitely a lot to unpack and think about here. We're listening and trying to fix universal problems before we get to device/browser-specific problems. So thanks for your patience while we work through things.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:23 AM on September 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

Hi, is this where I come to complain about a thing which I am not forced to use?
posted by JeffK at 9:38 AM on September 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

So far I'm liking this having looked at it on my Windows laptop, my Mac laptop (which grumbles a little bit when loading pages but then it is a month shy of entering its second decade) and on my phone (an HTC One). I've used the white background since pretty much the first day it was available, so it's maybe not as drastic a change for me as for some folk who are used to The Blue being blue, The Grey being grey and The Green being the same sickly shade of green it always was.

I'm kind of determined to stick with the new design for at least two to four weeks, just to see whether it sinks in pleasantly, or nags at me like a stone in my shoe. First impressions: I usually like a nice clean san serif font, but I'm not totally sold on this one; the tracking (and kerning, though not quite so much) on the new font looks ... wide. Especially in this comment box. I very much do like, mostly, the static-once-it's-dropped-down menu bar, but like someone else said way up there, that search box is a big visual distraction on what is otherwise a flat box of site-specific colour with green accents. Loving the maximum width of text, though - I always get a headache when reading something that runs literally from one edge of the screen to the other.

Live preview seems a little slow to display the text as it's being typed (on my Windows machine that I'm currently on), even in comparison to live preview on my ancient wheezing iBook using the previous white background theme.

Three shades of blue (on the MeFi front page; substitute subsite variants as appropriate), with the top level having a big green box on the top right seems really visually cluttered, which isn't helped by the fact that on the Mefi/Ask/FanFare/etc and Home/FAQ/About strips, the various options aren't horizontally aligned with each other (such that FAQ is directly below AskMeFi, About is directly below FanFare &c.) and neither appears to have any horizontal alignment with the green personal settings strip at top right, with the exception of the left hand edge of the search box aligning with the left of the Log Out option. Of course, the old design of the top of the homepage was also pretty visually cluttered; nothing was aligned with anything else on that either, and I'd guess it was pretty unintuitive to the new/non member, but I'm so used to that that I kind of ignore how much of a mish mash it is. It's probably just a matter of being familiarised with/conditioned to accepting a different norm. If I stick with it, I'll probably have forgotten what Classic view looks like in six months.

Titles on the home page I'll probably get used to pretty sharpish - they're invaluable when browsing on a mobile and I'm coming round to them on a lap/desktop.

One (perhaps petty and very specific) gripe I haven't seen anyone else raise: why no date/timestamp for when the homepage or the thread was loaded anywhere? On classic/white it was directly below the MeFi logo, and the time that the thread itself was posted appearing on the "posted by" line on the front page, and below the title on individual thread pages. Like I say it's a small thing, but I liked that anchor, such as it was.

Oh, and to echo a few other people: you can basically take all of the above as falling into old man yells at cloud territory, but please, for the love of God, move the Older/Newer threads box to beneath the comment window.

On preview:

limeonaire: 3. Hearts. Yep, the favorites icon should not be a heart. It should be a +.

Shit, I totally missed that. Yeah, keep everything else, but the favourites icon really ought to be a + (or maybe a [+] for that matter).

All above nit-picking aside, though, this is great. I can't imagine how much behind the scenes work it must have been over the past few months, especially when taking into account the upheavals and departures from the staff MeFi as an employer has had to deal with, and the concomitant stress and uncertainty. Seriously, it's an amazing job all round, and it's this sort of thing - and the way it was rolled out - that reminds me why I'm happy to chuck my feeble (in comparison with what I get out of the site) cash contribution MeFi's way every month.
posted by Len at 9:42 AM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

+1 for [+]
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 10:05 AM on September 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

+1 for [+]

Yes I agree please oh please oh please.
posted by phunniemee at 10:08 AM on September 26, 2014

It's a subtle but important change. I agree: [+] please.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 10:10 AM on September 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

Happy to report metafilterest works, switching themes (kittys!) is probably on the list, yes?
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 10:13 AM on September 26, 2014

eh, the joke doesn't work in the modern theme so we'll show classic there.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:21 AM on September 26, 2014

I am generally grumpy about change, but I tried it anyway. It's weirding me out, but you shouldn't be concerned about that. What might be of bigger concern is the "too much white space" issue: on my not-so-big laptop screen I only see 2 questions (and they are short) when I am all the way at the top of askme. Scrolling down the maximum number I ever see is 4 at once.

Mostly an issue for me because my wrist gets sore when I have to scroll too much (on whichever device). Maybe I'll just learn to use the spacebar more. But I'll be sticking with classic for now (professional white background at work, classic at home). I am a bit sad about that, because I like some of the other changes (easier to get to favorites, which I use as bookmarks, as well as recent activity). So if we're asking for silly ponies I'd ask for a way to tune the white space.
posted by nat at 10:21 AM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

I decided to go all in and switch over and I like it. Thank you.

One interesting thing, though, is that after reading through a few threads I will go click on my metafilter shortcut, forgetting that I'm already here. My subconscious doesn't recognize the new theme as being metafilter!
posted by something something at 10:23 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

re: metafilterest eh, the joke doesn't work in the modern theme so we'll show classic there.

MetaFilter: coding it live!
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 10:28 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

On small screens the sidebar content is now at the bottom of the page. If you click the "Sidebar" button at the top right you'll go to the bottom of the page and you can scroll up from there.

Are there any plans to change the wording on this? I imagine you'll all get really sick of answering this question soon - it's come up at least a dozen times already in this thread, and with good reason. It's not at all obvious that "sidebar" should take you to the bottom of the thread.

I like a lot of things about the new design but I just can't use it until the body font issue is fixed. The text is unreadably dense in a vast sea of white space. If I get really bored this weekend I'll play with making my own script to fix it to my liking, but for a site whose main draw is huge blocks of interesting text, this seems like a pretty big issue. The green links in the dark mode are also fairly unreadble.

I'm also wondering if there are any planned tweaks to the code to make the new site more responsive. I find the new site irritatingly slow - there are delays typing text into the comment box, and long frozen delays when loading longboat threads like this one. I'm running a very capable modern Win8 computer and I get the same behavior in the most recent versions of Opera and Chrome.

I agree that it would be nice to have an option to hide the header bar, and that the font in the new logo looks just a little 2009 content farm-y.

There's a ton to like, though - the new navigation is really nice and usable, and the dark/light mode toggle is fantastic. Thanks for all the hard work, and I hope that none of the many criticisms in the thread sound too harsh - everyone just cares so much about MeFi that we all want to help make it better in our own little ways. I really appreciate the thoughtful and considerate way that this was rolled out.
posted by dialetheia at 10:36 AM on September 26, 2014 [9 favorites]

I wasn't sure if it was my TW connection the first night, but both Wed. & last night reading on my iphone, there was a very long lag - upwards of 10-15 seconds, where the page would start to load, then stall out, then finish loading. Not sure what's up there, but I checked my speed with the Ookla app & had a 31 ms ping & 34 mbit down. CNN & other major sites were loading pretty fast. Tried to switch back to classic on the phone to compare, but it stalled out so badly trying to load the user prefs page that I got frustrated & closed the window & read a (paper!) magazine. Harper's is still pretty great, BTW.

It seems quite snappy™ on the desktop.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:36 AM on September 26, 2014

Regarding the menu bar. When I'm scrolled down in a page so just the navbar is showing - I said already that I like being able to get to the menu without scrolling back to the top, but one thing about it is throwing me off. I feel like when I click the word, (i.e. FanFare, Metafilter) I'm expecting that would take me back to that subsite's home page, the way it does when the full menu is showing at the top of the page. Instead it opens the drop down menu, and I have to click again to choose the home page from the list. I feel like if I want the drop down menu, I know to click the "hamburger," but clicking the word should just take me right to that subsite.

(on the off chance this is actually a browser thing, I'm in Chrome Version 37.0.2062.124 m on a Windows 7)
posted by dnash at 10:53 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Overall I think it's great. I'm not seeing any performance issues on my MBP mid-2011. I do agree with the others that the leading is a bit wide. One thing I do miss is the ability to change the point size of the headlines. I had mine dialed down a bit, and now to see them larger than the body text of the posts throws me off a little bit.

Also, my Post Comment rainbow unicorn button still works (yay!), but my Preview narwhal is gone (boo!).

Also also, +1 for [+].

Hooray for change!
posted by slogger at 11:28 AM on September 26, 2014

I like it. Thank you.
posted by bq at 11:33 AM on September 26, 2014

Hmm. I have been using the modern theme (in dark mode) for the last day, and it really bothers my eyes. The simple theme is fine. I think it's the "Source Sans Pro" font - I looked at some other websites with that font which similarly bothered my eyes. They almost seem to have a glare and I find myself squinting weirdly to read it.

Maybe I'm just a weirdo and the only one, but maybe I'm not. Is the new theme bothering anybody else?
posted by zug at 11:38 AM on September 26, 2014 [9 favorites]

I'm sorry to report that I couldn't get through the whole week on the new theme. The new one has just too much white space and padding.
posted by rebent at 11:53 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

I tried the mobile version. The menu items are smaller (and thus harder to hit with fingers) than on the old mobile version! But it's great not having to scroll miles to get from the middle of a thread to the menu bar. Also there seems like a missed opportunity to make favourite/flag buttons that are big enough for touchscreen use.

I do think "sidebar" is a very funny word for a bar which is not on the side, but which might be on the side if you were using the site on a completely different device that you may not even own.
posted by emilyw at 12:09 PM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

infini: *tries it out, recoils, goes back to classic*

something something: My subconscious doesn't recognize the new theme as being metafilter!

I've been using the modern theme at home, and I have come to enjoy it. For a while, my brain didn't recognize the new design as MetaFilter, either, possibly compounded by the fact that I only had the theme on one of my computer/devices (beta testers had to set up a host file re-route). On the whole, I've come to prefer it, except the font sizes seem both too large (for the body text) and too small (for the small text).

Question:
Why can't users select their own fonts and font sizes in the modern theme? Is that in the works?

Bug:
In Firefox 32.0.3 (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:32.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/32.0) on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, the Modern theme was quite sluggish to scroll down with this thread with 700+ comments, while the classic theme (professional white, for this work computer) scrolls without issue. I will try a longer open thread to see if the modern theme is as annoyed by other threads.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:11 PM on September 26, 2014

I really like the look of the new design, but the plain old professional white doesn't have the banner at the top that the new one does, which is an important point when you're reading MeFi on the sly at work.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 12:13 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Some things I notived in the mobile form of the new design:

• Cannot select/copy text from page
• No [scroll to menu] link that allows scrolling to the bottom of a long post
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:15 PM on September 26, 2014

Not sure if this is a bug or a quirk of the font, but bold text looks about half a point smaller to me. For example, in the line below, the word "Bold" in the middle is shorter than the words around it and hardly any bolder, really.

Not bold. Bold. Not bold.

Chrome 37.0.2062.124 m and Windows 7.
posted by that's candlepin at 12:26 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

On an iPhone 5s:

I can't select individual words that are italicized

The typeface is too large, the tracking is slightly too wide, and the leading is (more than the tracking) too large.

The persistent header is too tall. I usually just tap the title bar to go to the top (or press the home key on a computer), so I don't find it terribly useful, and takes up a lot of real estate on a small screen.

There is no way to turn off front-page titles. I never would have guessed that the lack of titles was a significant design feature before they were turned on, but they really have a negative impact on how I experience the site. Combined with the too-large type in the modern theme, I can only see about one front-page item at a time. I find this unusable, so I'll be going back to the classic theme for now. I know I've said it here before, but the classic mobile stylesheet is probably my favorite on any website I use regularly, including many slick modern sites.

Thanks for the hard work on this. I will give this theme a try again in the future to see if any these issues get improved.
posted by stopgap at 12:32 PM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

You're just being eponysterical
posted by infini at 12:35 PM on September 26, 2014

Are there any plans to change the wording on this? I imagine you'll all get really sick of answering this question soon - it's come up at least a dozen times already in this thread, and with good reason. It's not at all obvious that "sidebar" should take you to the bottom of the thread.

Yeah, it has come up several times here, but I think this is one of those muscle memory things to overcome as a user. The link says "Sidebar" because it describes where the link goes, not the behavior. If we changed it to "Skip" it doesn't tell you where exactly it is going, why, or give you an indication of where you will end up, just somewhere down there, and is how the link used to appear. I think the best approach is keeping the descriptive title of "sidebar" to identify what you'll see if you click it and do the user re-education part to remind everyone that's what works in place of the old skip button hack.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:40 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

As an illustration of how much less content is visible now, here's the old style compared with the new style. The classic theme shows three times as much post content (not even including dates and post metadata), and that's before I scroll down and the modern theme loses more space to the persistent header.
posted by stopgap at 12:46 PM on September 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

And to give a bit of an update, we're testing out new font tweaks with options, will try out a + sign in place of the heart in the top bar, and will eventually rework the older/newer block into something more useful and better looking.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:47 PM on September 26, 2014 [8 favorites]

Font/type people -
I've also had a similar experience with the body type being... somehow off, or hard to read chunks of. I'm reading on a laptop, and coming from Verdana in Classic, which I find very easy to read.

I'm wondering if anyone who knows about fonts/typefaces/etc can shed light on why.

Some people have said it feels too squished horizontally (letters - or words? - too close together), others are saying it's too stretched (letters too far apart)... Then there's the issue of vertical separation of lines and the size of the font. Making the font smaller by zooming out my browser did help some. But I still want to understand what is going on with this font that makes it hard for me to read at its assigned size. Looking just at Google's sample of that typeface, Source Sans Pro, it seems totally fine. And it's widely used elsewhere and is supposedly very "readable". So I wonder why it seems off in our application of it..... plus, of course, it would be nice to understand how to choose an alternate font that wouldn't have the same problems. (This is for my own curiosity, I'm not speaking for the collective here.)
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:49 PM on September 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

stopgap, that's why we left the classic themes there for your continued use. If you want to optimize for information density, that's the option for it. One of the goals of the redesign was to make the site more legible on more devices, and the old designs were all over the map readability-wise on different devices, where the new one is more consistent, but does take up more vertical space. It's a trade-off worth doing in my opinion, scrolling is acceptable if it means an easier to read site.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:50 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

When I saw the FPP, I honest to god took a moment to think about the date to check whether it was April 1.
posted by Zed at 12:54 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

FWIW, to respond to LobsterMitten, I like SourceSans Pro and I think it displays fine for me on MeFi — though I might be biased since I've used it myself in the past. The tracking and leading are minor quibbles compared to the point size. Setting the browser zoom level is not an option on a mobile device. I suspect other people's issues come down to browser rendering quirks, since I've dealt with the same issues in my own web design projects. I don't really know of a great way to get consistent appearance across browsers.
posted by stopgap at 12:56 PM on September 26, 2014

Something I've noticed is that my ctrl+double click invocations to Google Dictionary don't pop-up the definition anymore. That may be the same thing that's making the MeFi Navigator pop-up not work.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:03 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

will eventually rework the older/newer block into something more useful and better looking.

Yay! Please also consider re-locating it to below the comment box for logged-in users.
posted by carsonb at 1:20 PM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yeah, relocation is something we'll experiment with.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:29 PM on September 26, 2014

Just chiming in with another, "I really hope they change the heart up by Favorites to a [+] because a heart implies 'love' and I'm just really not into my favorites like that - it's strictly platonic."
posted by NoraCharles at 2:02 PM on September 26, 2014 [8 favorites]

Some people have said it feels too squished horizontally (letters - or words? - too close together), others are saying it's too stretched (letters too far apart)... Then there's the issue of vertical separation of lines and the size of the font. Making the font smaller by zooming out my browser did help some. But I still want to understand what is going on with this font that makes it hard for me to read at its assigned size.

I was wondering the same thing, LM. For me, the letters themselves are too bold and too close together. It has absolutely nothing to do with font size, and changing the size doesn't help at all. The boldness is the biggest problem, and it's really exacerbated by the tight kerning of the font.

Here's an interesting question someone posted about the difference between the way Source Sans Pro renders on a retina-type screen vs. standard computer monitor DPI, maybe resolution differences have something to do with it. I think the "muddiness" they allude to is the boldness I'm perceiving. Other people whose eyes are bothered by the new theme, are you reading on a retina/mobile display or on a plain old monitor?

I went to find another site that uses Source Sans Pro to see if it looks similarly strange to me, and somehow every other implementation I can find appears to have wider letters than we're seeing in the body text even at the same font size. It's almost like we're using a half-bold, condensed version of the font somehow. The mockup Kabanos made comparing the site in Source Sans Pro to Open Sans demonstrates the issue to my mind - Open Sans is easily ten times easier to read in that image.

Incidentally, I switched into the new theme to write this comment so I could examine the font issue closer, and the slight lag on my typing is absolutely intolerable. Again, I'm using a good modern Win8 computer with updated Chrome so I don't think it's my machine, and this doesn't happen in any other text boxes on other sites. I type very quickly and the typing lag is the biggest dealbreaker for me so far. Plus, when I went to preview my comment, my browser completely froze for 15 seconds (likely due to the longboat thread, but I worry that the previous issues with long threads being laggy will be exacerbated in the new design).
posted by dialetheia at 2:09 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Re: body font. I like it, but, yeah, the legibility is...less. It seems more tightly spaced than the old Verdana. If I hadn't looked at the stylesheet, I'd have thought the letter-spacing was set to negative-whatever; unless something funky is going on in the CSS (is it possible "0" means "no pixels at all, please"?), I guess the font is just naturally that tight. Maybe try bumping up the letter-spacing a half pixel or something?

Also, personally, I agree that the default's too big (90% zoom much better, matches rest of internet), but I'm assuming we'll eventually get the ability to adjust that (and the font itself) in preferences once everything's nailed down?
posted by Sys Rq at 2:09 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, for what it's worth (probably not much), for me the fonts look absolutely terrible in Windows 7/Chrome 37, unless I enable the "disable-direct-write" flag in Chrome. (I think I have that logic right - the double-negatives involved in the Chrome flags are hurting my brain.) Witness. My Win8 machines are fine with the default settings.
posted by jferg at 2:10 PM on September 26, 2014

Mobile nav text idea

Sidebar = down menu
Sidebar = [down pointy triangle or arrow] menu

Skip = ret home
Skip = home
Skip = up to home
Skip = [up arrow or up pointy triangle] home
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 2:14 PM on September 26, 2014

Loving the new layout. The old theme was so good that I'm surprised I don't hate the new one, but I think I will give it a chance. Two gripes, though: I want the gold back, the green is ugly, and also the new layout seems to make my phone take a lot longer to re-render the page after a screen rotation. Other than that, great job.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:19 PM on September 26, 2014

I'm sure this has been considered already, but could the font thing have something to do with the font-weight setting? (pardon the terrible meme faces)
posted by dialetheia at 2:20 PM on September 26, 2014

If you click the "Sidebar" button at the top right you'll go to the bottom of the page and you can scroll up from there.

The non-intuitiveness is strong on this one. Maybe change the term in both places ("menu," say)? But calling it "sidebar" and having it at the bottom makes the language police cry softly.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:27 PM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

Has the green turned more green since the beta? Or is it just this monitor, and my phone? It used to be mildly different from the usual MetaFilter yellow/gold color, but now it's distinctly green, which is weird.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:27 PM on September 26, 2014

dialetheia, you could try disabling Live Preview. I'm not sure why it would cause a lag in the Modern vs. Classic theme--that code didn't change at all. But I'm guessing that's causing your typing problems. There's a small "Hide" link to the left of Live Preview—click that to remove it.

Dip Flash, we can't change the term to "Menu" because there's no Menu there.

Nope, we haven't changed the green color flt.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:30 PM on September 26, 2014

Here's an interesting question someone posted about the difference between the way Source Sans Pro renders on a retina-type screen vs. standard computer monitor DPI, maybe resolution differences have something to do with it. I think the "muddiness" they allude to is the boldness I'm perceiving.

Yes, this fits with my experience. Looks pretty good on my retina display iPhone. Looks very muddy and cluttered on my work display, which is a cheap regular ol' monitor.
posted by naju at 2:40 PM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

Thanks pb, that worked for the typing lag! I even tried looking in preferences for an option to disable live preview. The new site is still noticeably slower though - it took over ten seconds for this page to load where it took maybe two seconds on classic.

Re: "sidebar": I think this is one of those muscle memory things to overcome as a user.

I hear you that users will definitely need to adapt to new ways of doing stuff, which is fine and to be expected, but almost nobody seems to be able to figure out that they should use that button in the first place in order to develop that muscle memory. Not everyone is reading all the way down here, and for every user that's posted here and been pointed in the right direction, there are probably at least ten users who still think it's impossible to skip to the bottom in the new design. I think even including a little down-arrow with the "sidebar" link would make it much less opaque. I imagine it's orders of magnitude more common for people to want to skip to the bottom than to find the sidebar, and as somebody above pointed out it's not even a "sidebar" in the mobile site, so if we're parsing the language closely, it's equally strange to have a link to something that refers to its placement on a page you aren't even accessing.
posted by dialetheia at 2:40 PM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

A minor thing: In this story http://www.metafilter.com/143095/GUTS-Canadian-Feminist-Magazine I had to read the article headline ("GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine") about three times before I read "guts" and not "cuts". It seems that the font (Source Sans Pro? Montserrat?) does not, at that size, distinguish well between the letter c and the letter g. Lacking the proper font terminology, I will say that the line back to the center in the 'g' (surely not a serif?) is missing, and that makes it hard to discern the difference. Tested in most recent Firefox and Chrome, on Win 8.1, on a Lenovo T440s with a fancier-than-usual-but-not-quite-retina display.
posted by aureliobuendia at 2:53 PM on September 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

One last quick question - is it intentional that the highlight color is Mefi-blue across all subsites? I have a nervous tic of highlighting things while I read (don't ask, I'm just strange) and it's driving me slightly batty. I don't expect anyone to change anything to accommodate my habitual double-clicking, but it seemed like it might be unintentional since the color clash is so striking.

I had the same issue with GUTS/CUTS, aureliobuendia.
posted by dialetheia at 3:00 PM on September 26, 2014 [8 favorites]

Yeah, in aureliobuendia's example, it's striking what a lousy G is in the headline/title versus the completely fine G in the first line of the body of the post. I usually think of font-nerd-designers as perfectionists, sometimes even magnificent-obsessives, but sometimes when you get down to it they often privilege some arbitrary design rule over actual legibility.
posted by Rumple at 3:04 PM on September 26, 2014

I have a nervous tic of highlighting things while I read (don't ask, I'm just strange)

Not that strange - my wife does this, too.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:06 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Dip Flash, we can't change the term to "Menu" because there's no Menu there.

I've read this entire thread, but just this minute when I changed my phone's settings to the modern theme I couldn't figure out the "skip to bottom" path until I came back here and searched for the word "skip." This is seriously not just non-intuitive, but nonsensical. Speaking a non-computer-designer-person, the "sidebar" should be the hamburger thing that opens a bar on the left hand side here on my laptop, or maybe that neat list of contact activity I get on the front page on the right hand side. Clicking on the hamburger on the phone opens a menu, which is intuitive and awesome but doesn't take me to the bottom. Clicking the thing labeled "sidebar" (which I didn't see at first because I was working with the usual menu locations) on my phone takes me to the bottom, which shows me the same things I see at the bottom here on my laptop and in neither place seems to have an obvious connection to any side or bar.

That button or whatever you call it needs a new name (as does the "post" button down at the bottom -- I'm already on the post at that point, no?).

At any rate, that's what it looks like very much from the outside as a motivated and willing but slightly puzzled user.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:06 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, another reason I'm against the floating menu bar is that when I scroll down a page by hitting space (Mac OS 10.9.5, Safari 7.1), a line of text that was just below the edge of my window can then get scrolled under the floating menu, so I skip it entirely. Doesn't matter on mobile, as I'm dragging for a continuous scroll, but it mildly breaks page-at-a-time navigation on the desktop.

Down with floating menus!
posted by JiBB at 3:13 PM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

I only just gotten my iPad so maybe I've got the terms mixed up, but separate from the mobile/sidebar function I'd like to specifically request a SKIP button that will work on the iPad, please.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:18 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I like the redesign and all the consideration that went into it, so thank you to all who developed & tested. Don't like the new typefaces but, eh.

My quibbles, one small and one large:

Small: the "search" field is grayed/light-blued/greened out in dark mode. I'm a long-time professional-white user, but could that field stay darkened in either mode? It would make the floating menu bar less distracting for white-screen users (which I guess is the default now).

Large: how big a deal is it in the modern design to give us the option to turn off titles? I've read the whole thread but don't think I've seen a response to this? I suspect there might be overlap between people complaining of visual clutter and those who prefer titles OFF.

Oh--and one other teeny-tiny thing--the MF logo in my tab header (chrome) is still in the classic style, which makes me homesick. :(
posted by torticat at 3:23 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

The only way I could get to modern on those two devices was to flip myself back to classic, save it, then change to modern again and save it. (and then reenable dark mode)
I noticed that the modern theme seems to be highlighted by default when you open preferences, regardless of which theme you have saved. I did the same thing on one of my devices - thought it was already enable, so closed preferences, but had to open them again and actually click on the modern theme thumbnail (even though it was already highlighted) and then save preferences. It's possible I did something wrong along the way, but the modern theme being highlighted instead of the actual theme that is active definitely threw me.
posted by dg at 3:29 PM on September 26, 2014

>are you reading on a retina/mobile display or on a plain old monitor?

I'm reading on a plain old laptop screen, 1600x900. This screen has 140 PPI, compared to a macbook pro (230), and an iphone (325). So, yeah my screen has much lower density than higher end displays.
posted by zug at 3:31 PM on September 26, 2014

I swear I'm not even a font geek, but I really hate the capital G in the headline font, visible here. It looks like a C that's just badly made. And then I'm thinking "is that a bad C or a bad G?" So, for my pony, I would like a capital G with a little horizontal bar, like God intended.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 3:34 PM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh, I see that's been covered. Therefore, I would like to withdraw my pony request, and you can make that someone else's pony and I will save my pony voucher for some later date.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 3:36 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I still want to understand what is going on with this font that makes it hard for me to read at its assigned size. (This is for my own curiosity, I'm not speaking for the collective here.)
posted by LobsterMitten

Webfonts will never be able to compete with an OS system font - heres a detailed explanation of why.
Apart from just generally sucking, the other issue is that Google are very likely using the webfont referral headers to track everywhere you go, I mean, I can't think any other reason why Google are providing fonts with free (well freeish) licensing and free hosting. If you aren't paying for it...
posted by Lanark at 3:49 PM on September 26, 2014 [10 favorites]

Joy-- I can see my whole name now and there is a [+] instead of a heart!
You guys are the bees knees, thank you!
posted by NoraCharles at 4:17 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, we just did the following:

- replace heart symbol with [+] symbol
- change "Messages" to "Mail"
- up the max username to 15 characters

pb is a monster, and we're working on a ton of other fixes.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:22 PM on September 26, 2014 [19 favorites]

I can't think any other reason why Google are providing fonts with free

I'm not saying they're not doing nefarious things, but the better the web is, the better Google does. It is particularly very much in Google's interest that content authors feel they can get stuff to look good without making images of their text.
posted by aubilenon at 4:23 PM on September 26, 2014

I very much miss being able to skip to the bottom on my ipad. It's been requested by others, so I'm just adding to the chorus: please restore this function!
posted by devinemissk at 4:43 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

That's because themes are device specific.

... I hadn't realized. In that case, I was weirded out by the Modern theme being highlighted even though my current theme was classic. Which is a different issue, and one that's less confusing, at least to me. :)
posted by rmd1023 at 4:58 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

I still think I am right about this: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2947/15177687978_2792347d47_b.jpg :)
posted by ericost at 5:13 PM on September 26, 2014 [10 favorites]

Yeah, ericost, I think you are right. On the Classic theme, the titles are de-emphasized a bit, and I was never 100% happy with them in the new design as they are now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:16 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm in agreement with ericost - the whitespace below the headline is too damn high! :-)
posted by jferg at 5:18 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

pb is a monster.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:24 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

> That button or whatever you call it needs a new name

Just want to add my voice to the chorus clamoring for it to be called something other than "Sidebar." Seriously, that's a terrible name; stop clinging to whatever perverse affection it has inspired in whoever chose it. Otherwise, I like the new theme (Dark Mode, natch). But it would be nice to have a choice of fonts.
posted by languagehat at 5:32 PM on September 26, 2014

Concur. Sidebar makes no sense in the mobile world for the way the site is now built. Totally appreciate that you guys don't want to just huck it out the window, but maybe this is a device-sensing contextual somethingorother that you add. It's not a sidebar; a new word or indicator is necessary.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 5:38 PM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there a way to make the Dark Mode default for those who want it to? Like in the Preferences section?
posted by divabat at 5:38 PM on September 26, 2014

this handy dandy deleted threads bookmarklet no longer works.

javascript:void(as=document.body.getElementsByTagName('a'),ids=[],links=[]);for(i in as)if(as[i].href && as[i].parentNode.className=='smallcopy'&&m=as[i].href.match(/^http:\/\/(www|ask)\.metafilter\.com\/(\d+)\//)))ids.push(m[2]);for(i in ids.sort())if(i>0)for(d=parseInt(ids[i-1])+1;d'+d+''); void((W=window.open()).document.write('Deleted threads: '+links.join()));void(W.document.close());

posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:59 PM on September 26, 2014

Found the dark mode button, thanks - it was not intuitive that it was only on the main pages, but I found it eventually. Really like that I now have tags and contact activity through the 'sidebar', but agree that name doesn't fit the purpose.

A couple of issues that may be my browser rather than the redesign:

- When the phone turns from portrait to landscape or vice versa my place in the thread is lost and I have to scroll to find it again, or refresh the page if I have clicked on a timestamp. Not a major issue, but a bit annoying.

- I've been randomly logged out a couple of times since using the new theme. Perhaps I am fat-fingering the phone somehow but I don't really see how.

- Twice I have had the dark mode randomly turn off although I have been on a post page and not a main page. Again it could be a fat-finger issue, but I don't see how.

Otherwise, I like it! It was obviously a huge amount of work - thankyou. And thanks for adding pinch to zoom, it's great. I concur with divabat's comment above though - I would love the dark mode to be a setting rather than a button so I don't get blinded by the white if I do fat-finger it.
posted by goo at 6:01 PM on September 26, 2014

I'm spending some time with it on mobile for the first time, and while I really like the legibility of the default text size compared to Classic mobile, the formatting bar under the comment box is really hard to make out for my old person eyes. In Dark mode, some of the contrast of text on white background is less than ideal, also: right now I'm noticing the pale gray-green "sidebar"/"posts" in the white sidebar/post button is pretty low contrast, as are the lime-green menu items in the white drop-down "recent posts" menu.
posted by drlith at 6:10 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I actually like the floating menu bar, but I've been caught twice now by the fact that the
Person icon on the floating bar is right over where the logout button is on the normal menu, and I've been near the top of the page, gone to click on the person icon just when the floating menu disappears and I've ended up accidentally logging myself out. No big deal, but a little annoying,
posted by lollusc at 6:36 PM on September 26, 2014

On the floating (mini menu?) bar, there seems to be a lot of space between the subsite name and drop-down menu and the (overly large) search box.

Suggestion: Clickable Top-of-thread and bottom-of-thread widgets, and maybe a bookmark widget for those long long threads.

In the blank space between the Hamburger/Logo/Menu & the search field? I agree that this is a sensible pony, probably a nice roan color with a white snout & probably named Chester or Frannie. I like this pony.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:39 PM on September 26, 2014

IPad mini, see no sidebar button at all. Cannot skip. Safari crashed 2x trying to comment here. Otherwise love look of Dark Mode.
posted by misha at 6:48 PM on September 26, 2014

Can't see sidebar at all on my iPad mini.

Old = sidebar
New = navbox

My old person eyes on iPad mini and MacBook Pro (both Retina) adore this. First site I don't have to widget big enough to read.

Yoohoo for change, carefully designed and gently managed!

Please make a new thread soon for Newtheme2.0

IOS 7.2.1, iPad mini retina:
Below text area where I'm entering comments now, the format bar is barely 10px high, only the B is visible, others are lost in gray
posted by Jesse the K at 6:54 PM on September 26, 2014

When you do get around to doing browser-specific fixes, can I suggest the default mobile for windows phones (I know, I know) be classic MeFi? Having it point to the Modern theme would make people run screaming into the night .

The Modern theme is totally hosed on Windows Phones (because the browser is a stripped down archaic IE that boldly strikes out on its well-worn path of interpretive dance implementation when faced with standards) - once I switched, I couldn't get to logout (or login), preferences, recent activity, profile, etc. The Hamburger and the user icon do nothing when clicked on it, and the top of the page (covering any top links and part of the first post -- this includes all theoretically visible links to settings; it also covers up the login fields, and on some subsites the headers for multiple subsites are visibly stacked) is links to the various subsections - and once I switched from Professional White to FunTimes Color/Dark Mode, almost all hyperlinks were the same color as the background color, which makes it very difficult to manage and try 17 workarounds to getting to the site functionality. I had to look up the customize/settings URL on my laptop so I could type it in and restore readability/functionality by selecting Classic theme. In short, IE sucks.

If you don't want to direct windows phones to a different stylesheet by default, then adding a Login/Logout Link and a Link to the Settings Page at the bottom of the page (which currently only shows the subsites list, the search, the funding reminder, and the Contact Links on Windows Phone) or enabling the Links and Members lists would work for dedicated users. But it would be far more usable to just default to Classic Mode and maybe warn folks about Modern Mode on Windows Phones.
posted by julen at 7:12 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

So I assumed since the new design is in part to keep the non-member googlers on the page a little longer and hopefully get them to look around, that the modern theme would be the default for people not logged in. But I just looked at not-logged in and it's the old design. (which I have to admit, after only a day or two (how long has it been? It's so easy to lose track of time on metafilter) looks terribly dated to me). So, what's up with that? Shouldn't the site be feeding Google the new style sheet?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:35 PM on September 26, 2014

mathowie: "The plan is to incorporate feedback from this thread for further tweaks to get the best possible out of this new design before we make it the default new design for logged-out readers of the site as well."

It's not turned on yet for not-logged in, as per plan.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:44 PM on September 26, 2014

Huh...ok, thanks for enabling my being too lazy to read the whole thread (or the whole original post).
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:53 PM on September 26, 2014

Yeah, the plan is to shoot for Oct. 1st to make it the logged-out default.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:05 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

See no sidebar button on my Mac, either. It's an iMac running OS X 10.9.4 (mavericksgodhelpme) and latest Chrome version 37.0.2062.124.

[I am fully prepared to accept this is Apple and not you guys, though, so if you tell me it is on my end I will believe you. Apple has been awful lately-- I am only on my Mac now because updating my iPad to 8.2, which I did right after my last comment in this thread, bricked it. I had no other option available than to do a restore. Luckily I have a backup from yesterday to recover from, but...yeah.]
posted by misha at 8:13 PM on September 26, 2014

I believe sidebar is mobile-only.
posted by rtha at 8:38 PM on September 26, 2014

the sidebar link would only show up if your browser on your mac is <480px wide or so.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:42 PM on September 26, 2014

Well, derp, obviously. Ignor that last bit, sorry.
posted by misha at 8:43 PM on September 26, 2014

The mobile version is nicely readable but the big permanent top bar on this tiny screen is a deal breaker for me.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:07 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am un-elipsesed!
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:17 PM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

iPhone 4s, OS 7.1.2, chrome browser, modern skin, link underline enabled.

I've noticed I have the "click the link & nothing happens". After I turned on link underscore, I could see what was really happening.

Click link, underline disappears. Wait a few beats, underline returns. Click link, underline disappears. Wait a few beats, underline returns. Maybe repeat a few more times till finally on click the action takes place.

Tried both at "normal zoom" & pinch zoom.

The underline disappearing at click indicates the first part of the action sequence is triggered; when it times out finishing the action or doing the next part, the underline returns.

This indicates to me that there is an expected sequence of events that are failing/timing out.

I tested this on favoriting, comment link, but not post titles links.

Also when click fails, there is no "communication" back to the site (indicated by the reload bar), leading me to think the page is acting, sending out a request to complete the action, but timing out in sending or response to the action or acknowledgement.
posted by tilde at 9:22 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's definitely a lag when typing in this thread in Chrome on Windows7. If I open the task manager, Chrome is spiking to 25% (i.e., 100% of the CPU the tab process is running on). Once the typing stops, the CPU % drops back down.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:25 PM on September 26, 2014

I'm trying to live in the new design but it's hard. I switched back "just to see the difference" and... I don't want to go back! I'm going to try it for a few more days - interface changes take time and adjustment - but I'm a creature of habit, and old-school Metafilter just feels more like home. MetafilterModern makes me feel like I'm reading Metafilter in my dreams - it's sort of the same, but not really the same at all...
posted by sockermom at 9:49 PM on September 26, 2014

Correction - it's not "wait a few beats & the underline reappears" it's 'wait a few beats and give up & touch the screen in any way again & the line reappears'.

Or someone is making live changes again. ;)
posted by tilde at 9:56 PM on September 26, 2014

"MetafilterModern makes me feel like I'm reading Metafilter in my dreams - it's sort of the same, but not really the same at all..."

I had a really hard time with this because the dark blue of metafilter acted as a cue that I was reading serious stuff and needed to slow down and digest ... Shifting to modern I kept skimming like I would at huffpo or buzzfeed. That was probably the hardest part of the adjustment for me ... But after a week or two I resettled and now I get the cue to Take Stuff Seriously from other visual cues on the site.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:17 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I just realized the new theme doesn't have the "help fund Metafilter" bar at the top. Do you have too much money now?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:25 PM on September 26, 2014

mathowie: "The footer has been redesigned to include a bit of the About page text, a more obvious contact form link, as well as the location of the donation/pledge information that was previously in a top-bar message on the Classic theme."
posted by Chrysostom at 10:30 PM on September 26, 2014

Fan fare is not part of my routine, but if it were, I might agitate for a change away from purple (Dark Mode, which is the best mode).

That's really distinctive. Maybe too distinctive?
posted by notyou at 11:01 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Fanfare, brought to you by the Eggplant Marketing Board.
posted by zamboni at 11:04 PM on September 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

JiBB: "I'm against the floating menu bar is that when I scroll down a page by hitting space (Mac OS 10.9.5, Safari 7.1), a line of text that was just below the edge of my window can then get scrolled under the floating menu, so I skip it entirely. Doesn't matter on mobile, as I'm dragging for a continuous scroll, but it mildly breaks page-at-a-time navigation on the desktop."

Yep. I didn't articulate this in my earlier comment (because I'd forgotten what drives me insane about floaty menus) but I've got my mouse wheel to scroll down a page at a time and this is why I hate floaty menus as they don't play well with page at a time scrolling (space bar/page down/etc.). Some places have floaty headers and footers and are basically unusable.
posted by Mitheral at 11:10 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm having big issues copy/pasting on phone and iPad, but I also just upgraded to the new iOS so the issue could be that also. And typing at the bottom of this long thread is super laggy (again, maybe an iOS issue).
posted by Dip Flash at 11:10 PM on September 26, 2014

I'm completely unable to load Fanfare on iOS 8 using Safari. The loading bar at the top gets to like 10% really fast, then starts from zero again, and just does that cycle as long as I'll let it. Anyone else having this problem?
posted by Night_owl at 11:15 PM on September 26, 2014

Just wanted to point out how really, really cool the all-in-one design is. Like how you can narrow the browser window down and get the tablet or mobile view, based solely on the width of the page. That's really neat, and not something you see a lot of on other sites.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:16 PM on September 26, 2014 [6 favorites]

Small issue, found with New Post on FanFare Talk, but you may experiment to find where else. In Dark Mode, the "FanFare posts are currently being queued...." box a) does not show the text at all and b) looks just like a text input box rather than a notice, which flummoxed me, a somewhat experienced site user.
posted by dhartung at 11:29 PM on September 26, 2014

Thanks, Chrysostom. I realize you may not always be here to read for me and to me, so I'm going to make an effort to RTFPost before asking any more questions.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:45 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

[osx chrome] After trying out dark mode for awhile, then peeking back to normal mode... I think most of the things I dislike are really just aggravated by dark mode. It's to the point now where I don't even want to look at the blue, because my eyes just don't want to read it.

The font is worse in dark mode. It's not bad as black text on white, but as glowing white text on black it looks heavier and scrunched. I think it's naturally too tall and condensed; itseems like a lot of newer fonts are, tbh—but its worse in dark mode.

Another problem is there's too much green in dark mode because all the links go from a sedate blue to eye-grabbing designer green. It's kind of ugly and my eye doesn't really want to find a place to start reading. (It also makes titles even more prominent. Something else I'm noticing about titles is: a lot of them are, well, kind of dumb and superfluous. Having them as giant colored text doesn't make me want to read more, and it's annoying when scrolling down because it's just more of these giant dumb titles.)

Dark mode also makes selection colors weird—but I think even in 'light mode' this just looks bad. I kinda don't want a site changing my selection colors.

Of course I could just not use dark mode, but dark mode is MetaFilter. Light mode is... some other site.
posted by fleacircus at 11:49 PM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

Redesigns are good in my book and at first blush I liked this (in Dark Mode). I'm sure it took a lot of work and I love that it was offered as an option instead of flipping the switch one day. There are two things I've noticed though, one about functionality and the second about visual identity.

One of the things I love about MeFi is that it's a responsive, text-focused site. I can open 30 tabs and keep them around for reading without any lag; I can use MeFi when my ISP throws a tantrum and nothing else will load; I can use MeFi using a shared connection when it's getting hammered.

The new theme takes longer to load, so it may not be consistently viable. It doesn't matter when you're on 50 or 24 Mbps but when your transfer speed is insufficient or throttled, it can make a difference between browsing or giving up. Will see how it works on mobile.

I'm awfully glad you are bringing back font options. Being able to read a lot of text in a single screen is great for readers and allows people to write longer, more fleshed out comments.

Visually, I find the old gold accent more appealing than the green one and it feels like giving up part of the visual identity of the site. I liked the white background behind the logo and I'd love to see an option to change the accent and the top-bar colour to MeFi gold. So far I like the background colours of AskMe and Fanfare and the jury is still out for the MeFi and MeTa backgrounds.

And yes, I also think that the default white loses part of the distinctiveness of the site -- someone posted a link to a site with a blue header and white background and mistook it for the new design of MeFi before remembering I had Dark Mode on and it was another site.

I'll keep the new theme for a while though and see how it works out. Thanks for putting in the work and for taking suggestions into account!
posted by ersatz at 1:28 AM on September 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

It took me an embarrassing long time to realise that when people were talking about a hamburger, they really meant those three horizontal lines.
What are those lines supposed to represent? A drop down list?
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:36 AM on September 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

cyber pancakes
posted by fleacircus at 2:07 AM on September 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

... it was a genuine question. This icon is not familiar to me.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:31 AM on September 27, 2014

I think it is supposed to be a list of items, though to me it just looks like a thing that says "press me". I didn't know it was called a hamburger until this thread; Googling "hamburger icon" works.

Usage seems to be somewhere between, "oh i'm just a drop down menu" like in Chrome, and "NAVMENU COME FORTH!!!" like in the Kindle app or Google maps app.
posted by fleacircus at 3:03 AM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Too-Ticky, it's a fairly new widespread use of an icon that's being used on mobile layouts to indicate a list (like a box with several wavy lines in it would look like a written list from a distance). I'd seen arrows and other icons used, but I think Squarespace and some other popular templates settled on this for their mobile design to show a drop-down menu and it's become widely used only over the past year. I actually chose not to use that on a template six months ago because it was familiar to me, but not to a bunch of less internet-heavy users we checked with.
posted by viggorlijah at 3:05 AM on September 27, 2014

Thanks. I do use the internet a lot, but not on any mobile devices (well, a laptop was originally intended to be just that, but), so that may be why it wasn't familiar to me. Now that I think about it, I remember seeing it briefly on Firefox before I installed an add-on that restored a (to me) more usable interface.

It reads as an ornament /decorative element to me, not a button. I will probably keep forgetting what it does.
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:15 AM on September 27, 2014

Quick feedback after a few days of using it:

Feels like a huge improvement over the "classic" desktop and mobile sites, especially the reorganisation of all the links and menus at the top of the page. I'm a big fan.

Works perfectly for me in Chrome on Windows 8.1 and Android 4.4.4, and in IE on Windows 7 (all latest stable versions).

Across all the subsites, I strongly prefer "night mode" over the new mostly-white design, but this could just be habit speaking.
posted by metaBugs at 4:42 AM on September 27, 2014

It's beautiful. Where previously I was only using the white theme, I've now switched to dark mode because it looks so nice. I also like that tags have made it into the mobile site. It is a little slower typing into the comment box for some reason, though. There's definitely a lag that wasn't there before. I'm on Chrome, Android 4.4 on a Nexus 7 tablet. And the sidebar button can be confusing, but I've seen a lot of sites where the sidebar morphs into the footer on smaller windows, which works well. It's just the terminology is different (Skip to Menu? Footer? Footbar? Bottom?) . Only small quibbles. Great Job!
posted by bluefly at 4:42 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I keep thinking that I'm logged out when getting to the end of the thread and seeing the Older/Newer links. That type of site navigation commonly signifies the end of the main content for the page. I've never ever seen it above the comment box.

The font is really nice on iOS 8 on Chrome. On my giant desktop it's basically unreadable for me, especially combined with the colors of Dark Mode. That green color against the blue (on Metafilter itself) is truly eye-piercing and hard to read! The weird highlight color just seems unnecessary and annoying too.

It's interesting because the old theme increased readability on the desktop but not on mobile devices. The modern theme seems like the reverse.

In case anyone else is wondering, "Sidebar" is only visible on mobile view (or if you shrink your browser view). But then it doesn't go to a sidebar, it goes to the bottom of the entire page, which is super confusing!

The font issue is basically a deal-killer for me on a text-centric site. If that gets fixed I think it will be a really fresh and nice update. Kudos on developing such a massive project in the midst of so many other changes.

On preview: when you hit 'preview' on your phone (iOS 8 chrome) it reloads so the very bottom of the page is showing (About MetaTalk) then you have to scroll up to the comment preview above the comment box. It's a bit disorienting and confusing.
posted by barnone at 5:56 AM on September 27, 2014

I love love love this new design. I had tried to make metatalk thread about accessibility on mobile (which I frequently use as assistive technology, making the hobbled mobile experience "frustrating", to say the least.) Then I got a sneak peak of this, and I'll say it again:

*sniff* I love you guys. This is fucking awesome.

That being said, though, I of course have a few suggestions/observations.
- I think increasing the line height of the "paragraphs" on the desktop version will go a long way to improving readability.
- There are additional areas that feel too cramped, like the byline, that could use some spacing help.
- (Peaking at the source code) Am I really seeing that there aren't paragraph tags? Is that possibly hurting Metafilter with Google? Why are there no paragraph tags? *brain hurt*
- I also miss the yellow/mustard link/highlight color.
On mobile:
- please bring back swipe to favorite!
- Favoriting using the [+] is still too small, even with the zoom reenabled. (I really just don't want to zoom every time I favorite. There has to be a better way.)
- the style/link bar below the comment box is still pretty small.
- I would love for "sidebar" and "post" to be in one of the dropdown menus, so you could easily pop to the top and bottom where ever you are in the page. That way, in long threads on mobile, we're not stuck in the middle and have an eternity to scroll to get to either end. My wrists especially would appreciate it.
- new posts style/link bar in the extended description is the desktop version. I like the html bracket tag options on the mobile style view.

Please forgive me if this has been covered, I am still churning through all the comments. The above are just nits that I was picking; overall I really love the new design and am happy to see it implemented.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 7:40 AM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Heres a comparison of the current new logo vs Helvetica Neue notice the height of the letters i and L and the terminal stroke of the letters e and t.
posted by Lanark at 7:42 AM on September 27, 2014

I keep thinking that I'm logged out when getting to the end of the thread and seeing the Older/Newer links. That type of site navigation commonly signifies the end of the main content for the page. I've never ever seen it above the comment box.

Growing chorus! Growing chorus! Comply with our collective demands! :-)

No seriously, this does bug me a little bit & seems like an arbitrary change from the "classic" layout, that I can't find a rationale for.

Much love to pb & Matt for being so responsive to everything already - I know you guys are squishing real bugs first.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:37 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Believe it or not, the Older/Newer links are above the comment box in the Classic theme. It looks different in the new theme, we understand that and we're thinking about other ways to show it.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:58 AM on September 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Believe it or not, the Older/Newer links are above the comment box in the Classic theme.
Ahhh, you are (of course) totally right! So sorry. Goes to show that you can't always trust recollections from memory.

Looking at it now, the Older/Newer links in the Classic theme are a much smaller font, and the little arrows are directly in line with the comments above. They fade into the background more, I suppose.

In the Modern theme, the Older/Newer text is either the same size or slightly smaller than the main content, and they have a big shaded bar behind them, which ends up highlighting that section. The text is centered above the comment box, which combined with the highlighted bar, ends up acting almost as a 'header' for the comment box. I think that might be causing some of the confusion...

Amazing how these little tiny things can have such a big impact on the overall experience, and how subtle changes make you rethink your interaction. I know y'all have given this much thought and testing, so thanks for so kindly helping us get through this process too.
posted by barnone at 9:31 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't believe it! .... *changes prefs back to classic* Uh... Oh, they're just so much smaller that you hardly notice them. I guess it's the dark bar they occupy in the new theme that seems to set the space apart from the comment box.

Funny how bad human memory actually is. Remind me never to testify in court.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:51 AM on September 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

a) I am super grateful that this is an opt-in thing. This is a genuine sentiment of respect and adoration for Matt and the mods, not a shitty euphemism for 'yuck'. I love a lot how this is being handled.

b) My (unsupported by facts) feeling is that this and the titles thing are/were an attempt to appeal to people who aren't here, in response to a loss of eyeballs due to google being an idiot/asshole, with the slight nudge from a person from google (?) saying 'ur site looks old and therefore suspishus'. And this and the titles thing feel to me like a perfectly wonderful human doing a 'why doesn't s/he like ME???' and trying to get into football or French poets or drop the emo thing or whatever so the object of desire will suddenly find Our Hero/ine acceptable/appealing.

But we're all here. I mean, how many heavy/regular vocal users are there who are not remotely shy about pony requests or complaints about things that are less than ideal? The site has been evolving based on user needs the whole time. It fits like an old shoe. Now it's being changed in response to the projected/imagined/anticipated needs of non-users, who are myriad, and who will have a huge number of reasons for not being here and/or becoming members. And the old shoe hasn't even sprung holes or anything.

And the site already has a strong brand, visual identity, and cultural identity. And a non-zero number of people have responded really positively to that over the years and have not been raising a ruckus to have the site changed in any of the ways that it's being changed in. This feels really inorganic - not change for the sake of change, because I know the site needs to make money and I assume that means growth, but it feels like desperate change to try to address a problem that I don't think is/was caused by any of the features/characteristics you're changing now/recently. (ok and also the thing about making it work across all devices.)

Google fucked up. If they hadn't, the numbers wouldn't have dropped. That isn't a reflection of the opinions of all the people who have found MetaFilter all these years and either joined or not joined, visited or not visited, with the site as it has been all this time. Nothing about the people who land here has changed, just that fewer of them are finding us. The way we look isn't what's causing fewer eyeballs.

c) When I came here I reacted like Harry visiting the Burrow for the first time. The new design feels like the Weasleys went to Ikea with their prize money instead of Egypt. Or like when friends get their teeth fixed but I keep missing the way their front teeth overlapped a bit. Of course you need to do what you need to do, and it seems like the new thing is very well done and very well thought out and you're paying attention to usability and checking in with users, and again - all that is wonderful and I'm grateful for how it's being handled. But on the off chance that the future includes this becoming non-opt-in, could the current styles be available to users as MetaFilterRetro or something? All the hipsters would dig.

d) You're the prettiest monkey, Matt. You know where all the bananas are. Trust yourself. Thanks for making MetaFilter; I know you didn't make it for me but means a lot to me.
posted by you must supply a verb at 9:56 AM on September 27, 2014 [10 favorites]

Re: the font bolding problem on the desktop; I ran into this with a site I run, using chrome. There are ways to fix it, as someone posted upthread, but a quick fix is to throw "-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;" into the body style.

Also advocating bringing back the metafilter logo and scanlines. They don't take up too much weight and will help keep the mefi feel. (and the mustard. Bring back the mustard).
posted by [insert clever name here] at 9:58 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

the first impressions of this perhaps too critical eye are that the user bar at the top is too bright and stands out too much; the page header is too busy and maybe in need of re-organizing; and in dark mode it doesn't feel right that the byline of a post has a darker background colour than the page. I will be back in a couple of weeks to elaborate.

but I do like it and I expect to really like it soon, especially the mobile version. nicely done.
posted by spindle at 10:12 AM on September 27, 2014

Now it's being changed in response to the projected/imagined/anticipated needs of non-users

There's definitely an aspect of "what have we heard from people who don't like the look of the site from outside" informing this in one way or another, but there's also a lot of "what have we heard from people who are here and have been for years". A more responsive and fully-featured mobile site, for one big example, has long been a much-asked-for thing from regulars; a lot of smaller changes are things that have been proposed or asked about over the years as well.

I don't mean this as a "this is exactly what people asked for, don't blame us" sort of thing. The new design has a bunch of decisions in it that fall all over that user-request spectrum from Eternal Pony Request to Just Seemed Like A Good Idea. I just don't want to encourage the idea that this is some sort of cargo cult attempt to please an imagined absent audience; the goal is fundamentally just to have a good, modern revisit of the existing Metafilter feel, something that will answer a lot of users' and readers' desire for a different theme/responsiveness approach to the site we all like.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:26 AM on September 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

I wasn't sure about this at first, but switched on both desktop and mobile, just to try it out. After only a few days, I cannot imagine going back. The usability is through the roof better.

I still think that there's something unintuitive and inelegant about the [sidebar ->] thing on mobile. But I wouldn't pretend to have a better idea, either.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:31 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

cortex - Yeah - I should have kept qualifying my statements in section (b) to reflect that this was the way it was/an issue in my imagination - I didn't mean to make it sound like the bit you quoted was a statement of fact or an accusation, sorry. And the response has been overwhelmingly positive, here - so obvioulsy the new design is scratching a lot of itches.

Sorry - I didn't mean to do a straw man thing, my comment was just the rambling of someone who's scared of change.
posted by you must supply a verb at 10:35 AM on September 27, 2014

If it hasn't been said yet, thanks for changing the [<3] to the [+]!
posted by cooker girl at 10:35 AM on September 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Another vote for liking the change to [+].
Could we please have the menu bar vanish as we scroll down and appear as we scroll back up? Would maximize readable space on small screens.
posted by arcticseal at 10:43 AM on September 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

A few minor bugs:

In all mobile browsers, the drop-down subnavigation menu on the Activity pages (to switch between My Activity, My Favorites, etc.) always initially says "My Activity" regardless of which item is currently active.
In Firefox for Android, the other drop-down menu on that page ("Showing activity from: [All sites]") doesn't work at all. Tapping it does not cause the menu to display.
In Firefox for Android, I'm also seeing the same long-press bug reported above.

posted by mbrubeck at 10:49 AM on September 27, 2014

(I didn't understand what "hamburger" meant at first, either, I think it took me a few seconds to realize OH! it's those vertical lines in the upper left hand corner... and then I experienced a frisson of pleasure. You know, that you get when you experience the "click" of understanding puns, or solving a puzzle.

So, yay for cryptic use of jargon.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 11:16 AM on September 27, 2014

Oh, one pony request (already, I know, I know):

So, I like it and I've switched at home. Mobile rocks. But! I have to use the approved browser at work. That's currently IE7. The modern theme doesn't work at all, which isn't that surprising. None of the Gawker or Kinja sites do either.

I'm not asking that you support IE7; that would be ridiculous. I also realize I'm a pretty small-probability edge case. The pony is just to make sure that if I find myself not logged in, that there is actually a possible way for me to log in and switch to the classic theme, which does work fine in IE7.

Maybe the simplest solution would be to not mess with the design, but just have a secret alternate plain-jane login page that would set my classic theme cookie.
posted by ctmf at 11:33 AM on September 27, 2014

So, just leave classic on at work? Design preferences are device-specific.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:59 AM on September 27, 2014

Yes, but they only show up as long as we're logged in. So if, for some reason, cmtf is not logged in, those preferences will not be applied and it may be hard to log in. At least that's how I understood the comment.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:09 PM on September 27, 2014

Yes, I don't always use the same one at work. Plus, they seem to lose all the cookies at unpredictable intervals anyway. Once modern is default, if I don't have any way to log in I eventually won't be able to get the theme preference back.
posted by ctmf at 12:13 PM on September 27, 2014

A one-click toggled cookie for switching to the Classic theme while logged out is something we've definitely talked about the idea of at least, yeah; I think the plan was to roll it out in conjunction with making the new theme the default for logged-out readers.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:15 PM on September 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

Other people have definitely mentioned that kind of issue with the body text font in the new theme, kanata. Does it bother you only in Dark Mode, or in light mode too?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:19 PM on September 27, 2014

Re: the font bolding problem on the desktop [...] a quick fix is to throw "-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;" into the body style.

It does help on OSX/Chrome for me.
posted by fleacircus at 1:36 PM on September 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Firefox on Windows XP - the text font on Dark mode is garish. But then again the computer I was using for that one is kinda old and crappy.

Fanfare on Dark mode is really intense and hard to read. Is that rebeccapurple? is there a way to tone it down a tad?
posted by divabat at 1:42 PM on September 27, 2014

Also I have Modern set on my preferences, but when moving to another computer that already has me logged in (this is a Mac OSX running Chrome) I'm still in Classic Mode. Do I have to log out & log in again?
posted by divabat at 1:44 PM on September 27, 2014

Theme preferences are device-by-device. So you'll need to switch the new computer over (in Preferences) too if you want to try Modern there.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:45 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I just checked my Preferences on this computer (the Mac) and it has my layout set as Modern?
posted by divabat at 1:53 PM on September 27, 2014

Yeah, the preferences are remembered on the website, they just need to be saved on individual devices.

So when you set your Prefs on one computer, the next computer you log in on will have those Preferences pre-set but not saved. You have to click the 'Save Preferences' button on each device to set the individual cookies.
posted by carsonb at 1:58 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

I feel like I felt when I first saw iOS 7.
posted by bendy at 2:06 PM on September 27, 2014

ooohhhhhhhhhhh thank you!
posted by divabat at 2:16 PM on September 27, 2014

fleacircus or others, any chance you can tell me how to do that?
posted by barnone at 2:23 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love it oh so much.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 2:27 PM on September 27, 2014

I use Chrome's developer's tools (View->Developer or right-click->Inspect Element) and fuck around with the css on the right window.
posted by fleacircus at 2:48 PM on September 27, 2014

fleacircus, my eyes and nascent headache are deeply grateful for that tip.
posted by dorque at 3:10 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is there a way to make that stick across sites?
posted by divabat at 3:36 PM on September 27, 2014

divabat: if you can install Stylish, then you can go to "Manage installed styles" -> "Write new style" and just create a style like this:

body {
  -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
}

and then tell it to apply to URLs on the domain metafilter.com.
posted by dorque at 3:45 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

OMG SO MUCH BETTER THANK YOU
posted by divabat at 3:56 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

That anti-alias trick fixed my muddy/bold body text too! Thanks a ton. This is 1000% better.
posted by dialetheia at 4:27 PM on September 27, 2014

Hmmm, I followed dorque's instructions, but didn't see any change. Could someone idiotproof this by offering the script for installation through userstyles.org?
posted by naju at 4:44 PM on September 27, 2014

Come Villagers ! Provide yet more content for nothing ! Haste Ye to teh Interwebs ! Shiny new buttons!

*tugs forelock*
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:48 PM on September 27, 2014

I was a beta tester too, and the body font was my number one issue, by a mile. I absolutely love the redesign and had little criticism overall, but I immediately thought (and still think, even more strongly now) that the font choice and its styling are hugely problematic for readability and accessibility reasons. Here's a few things that I believe are making the font an issue for people:

Its letters are over-embellished for a body font. Look at all the t's and l's in the previous sentence (especially where there are two of the same letter together)… they all have tails and that adds unnecessary visual noise. The a's, k's, and g's are also very elaborate, and should be simpler, were this font meant for large blocks of text. Finally, the letters which have horizontal bars of some sort (t's, r's, e's, f's) have really narrow horizontal bars, relative to the letter's height. Notice how the tail on the t is almost equally if not more noticeable than the horizontal bar of the t — the tail is unnecessary, but the horizontal bar is crucial and gives the 't' it's 't-ness'.

Next issue is that the font is condensed, so that each letter takes up less width than a non-condensed font would, relative to that letter's height. So the letters appear squished together, because overall the words which they form take up less left-right space than you're visually habituated to.

Third issue is that the font has been designed with fairly bad kerning. Kerning refers to the space between the letters. This kerning is very uneven…look over the sentences in this paragraph and notice 'su' in 'issue', 'ba' in 'bad', 'ke' and 'rn' in 'kerning', 'ev' in 'even'. And on and on. Yet in other places it appears very loose or inconsistent (either because of actual kerning, or juxtaposed letter shapes … 'on', 'ap', 'ith').

These details are subtle, but in aggregate they cause huge amounts of eye strain. Or at the very least, some cognitive dissonance. For this particular case though, the only thing that can be done to fix* it is to change the font altogether, because the letters, condensed style, and kerning aren't adjustable in ways that can overcome the issues when combined here.

That's my 2¢ as a graphic designer who loves typography.

*That 'fi' in 'fix' … I can't even can't even …
posted by iamkimiam at 5:06 PM on September 27, 2014 [28 favorites]

Oh. Apparently if you're using Stylish on FF, you need this instead:

@-moz-document domain("metafilter.com") {
body {
  -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
}
}

Sorry, I'm mostly on Chrome over here.
posted by dorque at 5:06 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, tonight I've been trying Modern on my iPad Air. I have to say it definitely looks much better here than on my desktop screen. I have no idea why. Even the webfont is easier on the eyes on the iPad (assuming nothing changed font-wise between yesterday and this evening). So, MeFi will most certainly stay Modern on my iPad. Cool!

One thing I've noticed when reading the site in portrait orientation (my preferred way with a tablet) the right sidebar in Fanfare takes up an inordinate amount of screen. It's ginormous, and text of the posts gets squeezed into a fairly narrow column.

As for the purple theme...Yeah. Sure. I can live with that.

Also, I just noticed how terribly narrow the formatting buttons below this text entry box is on this iPad. Maybe think about enbiggening them a bit?

As per the note below the live preview...Y'all get a hug.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:16 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm like, the 9032nd commenter in this thread, but felt compelled to post anyway. The new theme is really great. I'm sure it was a ton of work. Great job, folks.
posted by AV at 5:49 PM on September 27, 2014

On OSX mbp non-retina monitor, the font is just rubbish. Throw it on to my retina screen, and it's just fine. I do think it's the font weight issue mentioned upthread, but the antialiasing trick is a easy work around. I haven't any idea what it does on windows; but it might be something related to font rendering for non-retina displays on MBP (I'm pretty sure it is... that's what a lot of people have complained about using @font-face.) I don't know if it will or won't fix everyone's problems with the new font, but I suspect it will help many.

The long and short of it is that I think the inconsistency in liking or disliking the font comes from people using different desktops. Problem in OSX Maverick non-retina, bad and too thick, emphasizing the problems with this font's tracking. Older versions of OSX, probably fine (I know this cropped up on one of the OSX versions before Maverick, but don't know which). People with retina MBPs are seeing the font rendered smoothly. Windows? I got no idea.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:19 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

My (possibly pretty out of date) impression is that OSX and Windows have very different approaches to font rendering, with Windows going for a horizontal sub-pixel approach to rendering that distorts glyphs in favor of sharp edges, vs. OSX's preference for whole-textarea antialiasing that yields more consistent glyph rendering but a general tendency toward bluriness that the advent of high-dpi Macbook/iMac/Cinema and Retina displays has seriously mitigated in exchange for refresh rate performance.

So I wouldn't be surprised if there are significant performance/rendering differences across platforms even as the OS and browser engines converge somewhat on modern high-resolution rendering sensibilities.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:37 PM on September 27, 2014

Source Sans Pro was "conceived primarily as a typeface for user interfaces", not for giant swathes of text. I suspect that is a big reason why lots of users are finding it unsuitable.
posted by Quilford at 6:40 PM on September 27, 2014 [13 favorites]

I like the new layout. While playing around with it here are some issues with using it on OSX macbook pro, chrome:

while writing a response, the link button was not available but the bold and underline were
when going through my recent activity and going to the link to the latest quote it would only take me to the top of the thread.
If I go through all my favorites and go to the [more] link it will again, shove me to the top of the page though the link is to a comment
If I followed a link in a thread or FPP and then backed back into the original page it throws me to the top of the page. An example would be a scroll to the bottom of the front page, follow the link, reverse back and end up at the top of the page

The issues I have with iOS8, chrome and safari I will blame on the weirdnes of Apple and not necessarily the site.
posted by jadepearl at 6:52 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have a nervous tic of highlighting things while I read (don't ask, I'm just strange)

Not that strange - my wife does this, too.

I do too (and I have a librarian friend who also does). I actually just did it unconsciously after posting this. I always notice highlight color on sites because of this.

A one-click toggled cookie for switching to the Classic theme while logged out is something we've definitely talked about the idea of at least, yeah; I think the plan was to roll it out in conjunction with making the new theme the default for logged-out readers.

This made me think of something else: I don't think you're going to do this, it sounds like, but I hope you guys never totally phase out the old "professional white" version. At work, it looks like work, and that's a good thing.
posted by limeonaire at 7:08 PM on September 27, 2014

In lockstep with the notion that we're not gonna phase out the Classic theme, we're also not going to phase out the concomitant Professional White Background version of same.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:40 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

It looks pretty good, especially in dark mode, and it's responsive on my phone. But with the floating menu at the top, large font and increased whitespace, I can see far fewer comments at once without scrolling. Reading a thread like this one involves a lot more scrolling, and zooming out isn't ideal for reading lots of comments. So, think I'll stick to classic mode for now, at least on mobile- thanks for offering it as an option, though I do understand the need for occasional design updates. FWIW, I'm using the latest Dolphin on iOS 8.0.2 on an iPhone 5S. I'll check later with my laptop.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:20 PM on September 27, 2014

Yes, the more I use the site with the new design the more I think Source Sans is a terrible choice for a main text font. Certain details (like the curl on the end of the letter "l") are great for headlines but weird and distracting in this context. Maybe something like Open Sans would do the trick?
posted by speicus at 9:44 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yet another design that uses as much space as possible to display as little information as possible.

If .container were changed to .container-fluid, the design could take up the whole width.
posted by anemone of the state at 10:15 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

ohhhhh I'm so conflicted

I love the cleaner new LiveJournal-y looking design, and yet swipe-to-favorite doesn't work anymore, and that has a WAY bigger effect on me than you'd expect
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:53 PM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

I guess it's time to write up a new quote script (or is this in the works? because that would be neat).
posted by boo_radley at 11:33 PM on September 27, 2014

Can "Recent Activity" be one of the options that show up on the floating menu please? It's the page I go to most often.
posted by divabat at 12:17 AM on September 28, 2014

I've been tweaking the design for personal use, and came across a display bug for hover text in Firefox -- the Gecko engine will obfuscate the handling of visited link states in order to protect user privacy. As a result, if you set the link colors to the old MeFi style:

default: gold
visited: pale
hover: white

...hovering over a pale visited link will cause it to change to gold first, then white. Remove the cursor, and it will change to gold first, then back to pale. Food for thought if you're thinking of adding hover states and visited colors back in while still keeping the nifty CSS transition effects for standard links (as opposed to the top menu elements).
posted by Rhaomi at 12:40 AM on September 28, 2014

(And honestly, I'd rather not have transition effects on standard links anyway; it's a little too distracting there.)
posted by Rhaomi at 12:47 AM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can you please describe the nifty link transition effect? I don't think I'm seeing that. If I hover over a link, the underlining disappears and that's all. And now I'm getting curious.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:01 AM on September 28, 2014

I think it used to be active but is turned off by default right now; I'm just seeing it because I'm tweaking the CSS on my end. But basically if you set a custom hover state color, the new color will fade in rather than switch instantly. It's similar to the effect when you hover over the menu buttons, or when switching to Dark Mode and back.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:43 AM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

The new theme is great. So great that I've removed all custom CSS for *.metafilter.com. Well done, all the web dev people!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:10 AM on September 28, 2014

"Recent Activity" is one of the options when you click on the person icon at the right of the floating menu, divabat.

Also, bug: I can't select text within some comments while on my iPad Mini (iOS 8, Safari) even in preview mode. With some comments it's possible, but others not. It appears that if the paragraph which contains the text I'm trying to select is five lines long or more, then I can select individual words. If the paragraph is four lines long or less, then I can only select the whole comment. The length of the comment as a whole has no effect, just the paragraph length. For instance, I can only select individual words in the first paragraph of this comment by Thorzdad. If I try to select any word from any other paragraph, I select the whole of the comment.
posted by Kattullus at 2:19 AM on September 28, 2014

Another bug, for the profile button in the floating menu bar: There is no text next to the person icon in the drop down menu. It used to have my username but now there is no text at all, just blank space (iPad Mini, iOS 8, Safari).
posted by Kattullus at 2:27 AM on September 28, 2014

Late to the party, but I have to say I love the new look. I loved the old one, too, but I think I find this one a little easier to read.
posted by bardophile at 3:02 AM on September 28, 2014

-webkit-font-smoothing is not supported in FireFox, instead they have -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale; for OSX only. The standard font-smooth CSS property is not on the standards track, presumably because it would make a lot more sense to build these controls into the browser or OS than on every webpage.
posted by Lanark at 3:27 AM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

The new dark version is great, but (sorry for possible redundancy but there are too many comments here to read them all):

- no hover color-change on links
- it highjacked the doubleclick, so the Google Dictionary extension doesn't work any more
- Older/Newer links, should link the name of the posts instead of "Older" and "Newer"

In the scrolled-down top-menu:
- I would expect to get the sub-site menu when I click on "MetaTalk" but it gives me the site-wide menu, while also highlighting the menu-button (not the "Menu v"-button) on the left
- to be honest, I would also expect to get to the MetaTalk homepage when I click on "MetaTalk"
- perhaps instead of the "burger/pancake" use a small "MeFi" logo for the site-wide menu to better distinguish it from the sub-menu and expand the "Menu v" to be also triggered when clicked on MetaTalk
- I wonder if it's possible to expand the search to add a select to choose which sub-site to search in; it would also make it clearer that you are searching the sub-site and not MeFi in total (e.g.: "[Search in] [SELECT; current sub-site preselected] [Q]")
posted by KMB at 3:41 AM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Question: Has the "most popular questions" from the last 7days, 30days, alltime option disappeared?
posted by bardophile at 6:30 AM on September 28, 2014

It's on the sub menu bar that begins with "Recent Posts." The third link there is "Popular Questions."
posted by taz (staff) at 6:39 AM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, I checked it out and I think the new theme is nice. Now that you have my approval, might as well close this thread up.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:37 AM on September 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there a reason why the Dark Mode option isn't persistent? And what happened to the count showing how many new posts there have been since you logged in?
posted by DanSachs at 8:40 AM on September 28, 2014

Loving all the things. Dark mode is the bomb.

Although, typing this comment, I encountered the weird lag several people have mentioned (Safari on iPad, still using IOS7 because I'm askeered to update my creaky old 2nd-gen).
posted by Superplin at 9:12 AM on September 28, 2014

Another thing I noticed while using Modern on my iPad...When refreshing this thread, or posting to it, or initiating anything that causes the page to refresh/reload, causes the page to momentarily switch to a very light gray background before snapping back to my chosen dark gray. None of the other sub-sites behave that way, and this doesn't occur when using Modern on my desktop.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:27 AM on September 28, 2014

Oh, hai! The bright white search bar is now shaded like the subsite. I like it!
posted by Weeping_angel at 9:57 AM on September 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

Love the new theme on my phone. Much easier navigation. One small issue, though...

I prefer to open threads in new tabs.
Unfortunately, when I tap-hold on the thread link, it opens the thread in the current tab as well as giving me the popup menu to open in new tab. This is happening at least on the main site and Ask. Don't know about the other sub sites yet.

Firefox 32.0.3 on Android 4.4.4

Also, when I hit preview,I was jumped way up the page and had to scroll down ALOT to see my preview.
posted by MuChao at 10:14 AM on September 28, 2014

I've been mostly absent from MeFi the last week so I've only just today seen this thread and this development. Like some others, I've long been very opposed to the white background thing and, in fact, I was one of Anil's main antagonists in that notorious thread.

So, at first, I was aghast when I assumed that this was a push to the white background -- not unexpected, because Matt has always been pretty open to the idea.

But, of course, I was mollified and then pleased when I saw the dark option. And the design looks really great! I am just as impressed as so many others are at how thoughtfully and well-implemented this design is. Everyone involved deserves praise.

That said,

"Source Sans Pro was 'conceived primarily as a typeface for user interfaces', not for giant swathes of text."

Yeah, that's a problem. I also want to quibble a bit with iamkimiam's comment -- even though I'm pretty sure she knows more about design and typography than I do -- in that all the fiddly bits are not in themselves a problem for readability in the sense she implies. After all, it's the serifs that make body text more readable, not less, and that's why sans serif typefaces are used for headlines and display and serif typefaces for blocks of text.

This, however, is more complicated with electronic displays because only until very recently (and still relatively rarely) are displays at high enough resolution for the serifs to do the work that they do in actual print to make things easier to read. When the resolution and rendering aren't up to snuff on a display device, then the serifs make things worse, not better.

So, as someone up-thread mentions, I think that this issue is complicated by the fact that there's so much variance in end user's displays.

Anyway, I think the particular problem in this case is a combination of it being a sans serif typeface with some design attributes (like iamkimiam mentioned) and some kernings and other metrics that together conspire to make this not very readable on a lot of people's displays.

Surely there's a better choice?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:27 AM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Using the old theme, on an iPhone. It seems like every time I hit back from a post page to the front page, the front page gets scrolled back to the top. Is that an accidental change?
posted by smackfu at 11:15 AM on September 28, 2014

Mods, do you think you could enlighten us as to what the rationale was for changing the accent/link color from gold to green? I always thought the gold was rather nice, and I'm finding the green to be sort of unpleasant. It's not so bad in Normal Mode where it doesn't seem to be used as heavily, but in Dark Mode (which is what I like, since I've always enjoyed the colorfulness of MeFi) I find it pretty ugly.

Anyway, I'm just wondering why the change was made. MeFi has never been a place where things were changed simply for their own sake, so I'm assuming there was a rationale; I just can't guess what it was. Why did you decide not to simply leave it gold like in the Classic theme?

Also, if anybody is capable of whipping up a Stylish or Greasemonkey script that will bring the gold back (in Dark Mode, at least) I would love that. Love, love, love. Or if we could get a checkbox in our preferences then that'd be even better to me, but I realize that it's probably not a checkbox-level priority.

Anyway, just curious. Why the switch to green?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:37 AM on September 28, 2014 [14 favorites]

Bug report! The "link" thing in the handy HTML helper dealie under the text entry box (this one I'm typing in right now, and every other one) has gone goofy or something. Looks like it's stuck behind the B and I somehow.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:39 AM on September 28, 2014

There are so many Culture ships on Mefi these days.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:07 PM on September 28, 2014 [8 favorites]

After a couple days I have to agree with the people saying the menu change as you first scroll down is very distracting. I have no solution to offer, which sucks.
posted by one4themoment at 2:00 PM on September 28, 2014

My pony: use the top-menu functions while not losing my place.

I keep hoping what I want is on the floating almost-the-menu, but it's not. So then I fn-Up or double-tap the top of screen, and I can then choose what I'm after, but I've lost my place.

Two ways to handle it:

Mobile: double tap floating menu saves current position, then scrolls up to menu, where you've added a "take me home" character, perhaps ↵. Desktop, add a ⇑ to the left side of the floating menu: click this saves current position, zips to big menu, then displays the "take me home" character

Perhaps easier: interact with floating menu (click/tap/wevs) then expands to include the full panoply. Then there's a "shrink me" button to restore current behavior.

FRUSTRATION: Selecting the favorite plus sign. How about including the brackets in the "make favorite" link? That triples the target's width. (Which I can't hit with my wee little fingers.)

Tools: Macbook Pro 10.8.5; iPad Mini Retina 7.2.1
posted by Jesse the K at 2:50 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

just to say it again, i love the green accent color.
posted by nadawi at 2:53 PM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

I like the new look, but can we get the old accent color back ?
posted by Pendragon at 2:55 PM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm also not seeing a link button under the comment window, only Bold and Italics. (Firefox, Windows 8.1)
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:12 PM on September 25 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]

I have been experiencing this as well on my Mac OS 10.6.8, with both Firefox and Chrome, and then discovered it went away if I did Command-Plus to make the text size larger.

(If you're on Windows, it's Control, not Command.)

(And apologies if another user has already pointed this all out and explained it more intelligently than I have. I have a hard time catching important stuff in such a long thread. I searched on 'link button' and didn't notice a similar remedy mentioned. When I searched on 'link', there was way too much stuff to wade thru.)

I'm on my second day of Modern. I love the Dark Mode option. I think that's probably the most old-timey-user considerate design decision ever. I'm happiest with the blue, the grey, and the purple. In the AskMe world, I'm fine in the threads, but the front page is just too many shades of green. I really don't like the way the front page of AskMe looks in Dark Mode, but I'm not going to switch it off, because I do mostly like Modern in Dark Mode everywhere else.

I think Matt has laid out a good case of why this needed to be done. Overall, I'm so impressed with the huge amount of thought and effort that has gone into meeting everyone's needs, wishes and quirks. Much love to Matt, pb, and the entire staff.
posted by marsha56 at 3:14 PM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

And much thanks to the beta testers too, whoever you are!
posted by marsha56 at 3:16 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

just to say it again, i love the green accent color.

I know a lot of the commenters here hate the green but I find it pleasant and relaxing. I always found the yellow so, so ugly.
posted by Aranquis at 3:56 PM on September 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

I know a couple of people mentioned it upthread, but I just wanted to chime in that I would like the option to set the font size on titles to zero in the new design. I like the colors and love dark mode, but still don't care for titles. Is this something that's being considered? Thank you for all of your hard work and a great roll out!
posted by Mouse Army at 4:22 PM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Conspiracy theory time: Matt and team will acquiesce to changing the accent color back to yellow. It's a red herring so people focus on that and not other design changes. (Because that's totally what I would do.)
posted by [insert clever name here] at 5:05 PM on September 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

I know a lot of the commenters here hate the green but I find it pleasant and relaxing. I always found the yellow so, so ugly.
Same here - I always found the yellow a bit jarring and the green (ish) is much nicer.

The more I use this, the more I like it and I'm sure the little quirks and bugs will be ironed out quickly. The only thing I don't really like is something that has been mentioned by a couple of others - clicking on the sub-site name opens a menu, instead of the expected behaviour of taking me to the main page of the sub-site named. I can understand that changing that and having the 'hamburger' open the menu while the sub-site name does what is normally expected might present problems with the closeness of the two elements, but I think it would work more as people expect it to that way.
posted by dg at 5:29 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Feature req: either [& preferably] a sticky dark mode that persists across logins/logouts the way the other profile options do, or a dark-mode toggle on every page.
posted by Westringia F. at 6:10 PM on September 28, 2014

It took a heaping pile of godawful copy-paste css that I don't even really understand and I'm embarrassed to link to, but modern retro yay.
posted by fleacircus at 6:13 PM on September 28, 2014 [15 favorites]

Bug? I'm not seeing the icons in Safari 6.0.5 under Mac OSX 10.8.5 (I am running extensions, but turning them all off does not seem to make a difference) -- screenshot: http://imgur.com/kHyz7Om.png. This means that the "X" to hide the Deck ads and both the drop-down "hamburger" and the "profile" icon in the condensed menubar are completely invisible.
posted by Westringia F. at 6:24 PM on September 28, 2014

And now I actually search the thread and discover the icon issue was already reported. D'oh!
posted by Westringia F. at 6:25 PM on September 28, 2014

> And much thanks to the beta testers too, whoever you are!

Actually this can explain what happened to paphnuty.
posted by ardgedee at 6:29 PM on September 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

It took a heaping pile of godawful copy-paste css that I don't even really understand and I'm embarrassed to link to, but modern retro yay.

YAY
posted by Quilford at 6:52 PM on September 28, 2014

Bug? My username doesn't appear in the condensed-header "profile" drop-down menu unless I widen my browser window to at least ~990px wide. This is especially strange since "Recent Activity" DOES appear in the menu, and is wider than my username. Screenshot: http://imgur.com/4PdjZG7.png. (This is on the same system where the icons are missing, for what it's worth.)

(Also, a browser viewing-window shorter than ~500px tall makes the hamburger drop-down run off the screen in such a way that they can't be scrolled to. I'm probably the only person on earth using browser windows small enough to trigger that issue, though. 640x480 4 EVA!)
posted by Westringia F. at 7:05 PM on September 28, 2014

...clicking on the sub-site name opens a menu, instead of the expected behaviour of taking me to the main page of the sub-site named.
I just realised what actually annoys me about this is that the sub-site name acts differently when clicked, depending on which menu bar is visible.
posted by dg at 8:01 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

While people are debating green-vs-gold, I just thought I'd chime in that I also miss the gold (esp. on the blue), and find AskMe to be a bit muddy when entirely done in shades of green.

Coming back to my earlier comment about the floating menu interfering with space-to-page-down, I just thought I'd mention that articles on the NY Times site seem to also have a floating menu, but somehow it's been implemented such that paging down takes it in to account. If you stick with the floating menu, that might be something to look into.
posted by JiBB at 8:26 PM on September 28, 2014

This may be weird, but I look forward to the increased attention to detail here, and the various user-specific hacks and customizations provided in the thread here. During some quiet time in the coming week, I'll set up a new wiki page for tweaks and modifications to the Modern theme, and detail which older mods don't work with Modern.

It took a heaping pile of godawful copy-paste css that I don't even really understand and I'm embarrassed to link to, but modern retro yay.

Nice work! And by sharing your code, others can improve upon it, and streamline it.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:57 PM on September 28, 2014

I'm noticing an issue with how the flagging pull-down appears. Here's a random post on Music. Note that the [!] for flagging is generally speaking pretty far off to the right.

Here's what happens when you click the [!] — you get this. That is to say, the "pick a reason to flag:" pull-down jumps to the next line. I think this is unfortunate both from a usability perspective (it's confusing) and a design perspective (it just doesn't look great). I also think that the pull-down menu itself looks a bit old-fashioned compared to the rest of the "Modern" layout.

I am using Firefox 32.0.3 on Mac OS X 10.9.5. I observed this behavior even when maximizing my browser to the full width of my 23" (or so) screen.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:57 PM on September 28, 2014

Also, man, bolding is awfully subtle in this new theme.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:05 PM on September 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

fleacircus: awesome. I took it and ran (a short ways :) with it. My version looks like this. Mostly I tweaked up some spacing, got the color to match exactly the old version. Other small things as well.

I put it up on Github, here. It could use some refinement I'm sure.

Notes:
• Tested on (and geared towards) dark mode on the blue only.
• Works well for me on current Chrome, OSX, using the Stylish extension.
• I'm using a high-res Macbook Pro screen, so the size might be too big for some folks. Try it out and see. I usually browse MeFi w/ some level of zoom so this works good for me. If it is too big, try zooming out. If that's a no-go, I (or someone else) can redo the stylesheet w/ smaller text sizes and us big screen folk can use zoom as usual.
• I got rid of the secondary nav (Home, FAQ, About, etc) cuz I never click that stuff. It's the first line of the css, though, so you can remove that rule and you'll get it back.
• I got rid of the css color transitions also cuz they drive me a bit crazy on hover. If you are a fan of transitions that's the last rule in the css.
posted by wemayfreeze at 9:43 PM on September 28, 2014 [8 favorites]

> I'm noticing an issue with how the flagging pull-down appears.

Huh: I can't get the flagging pull-down to open at all with the Modern theme in iOS 7 Safari -- the [!] does nothing, no matter how hard I jab. Works as expected with the classic theme, though.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:34 PM on September 28, 2014

Actually, I can get it to work, but only after zooming really big and being very careful where I tap. It's not nearly as temperamental in Classic.

I also continue to have serious comment-typing lag on iOS in this thread, even with the live preview switched off.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:39 PM on September 28, 2014

Bug: In Dark mode, the "mutual contacts" on one's contacts page have a background that makes them hard to read.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:48 PM on September 28, 2014

Man, after using fleacircus' + my stylesheet I feel so good. This is the Mefi redesign I wanted! All the big structural changes feel great and right but the heart of what I know as Mefi is still there. +1 fleacircus :)
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:28 PM on September 28, 2014

I also continue to have serious comment-typing lag on iOS in this thread, even with the live preview switched off.

Have you upgraded to iOS8? It's a known known issue.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:35 PM on September 28, 2014

Dunno if anything's been tweaked, but I'm now experiencing extremely janky scroll lag in Firefox latest on Win7. Chrome and IE are fine.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:53 PM on September 28, 2014

Belay that last: all good now.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:41 AM on September 29, 2014

> Have you upgraded to iOS8? It's a known known issue.

No, this is under iOS 7; it also occurs only on MetaFilter with the Modern theme, rather than being a general issue, and is exacerbated by having the live preview switched on and by the length of the thread.
posted by Westringia F. at 4:23 AM on September 29, 2014

So I like this on my iPad and LOOOVVE it on my phone.... Count me as one more vote for making the change to dark mode persist so I don't have to pick it again every time I log in.
posted by Cocodrillo at 5:13 AM on September 29, 2014

Just adding to the data point/reactions: I still do not care for titles. I have them turned off, and I've been interacting with the site less since they've started to become the norm. So, it all looks nifty, but if titles can't be suppressed, then I'm not interested in taking this new design for a test drive.
posted by .kobayashi. at 6:06 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

This has been mentioned a couple of times before but, scroll on the new theme seems sluggish (using Firefox v32 on win 8)
posted by rebent at 6:09 AM on September 29, 2014

When I long-press on a link to view the URL or to access its contextual menu to open the link in a new tab, it instead just loads the linked page in the current tab. Is this deliberate? It's pretty annoying.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 6:29 AM on September 29, 2014

Is this deliberate?

No, not deliberate. We're looking into this and lots of other reported bugs right now.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:59 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Article in Digiday: Web 1.0 dinosaur Metafilter modernizes, slowly
posted by mephisjo at 7:20 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Thanks pb.

By the way, glad to see the New Post link readily available in the mobile site. I recall that that was a deliberate no-go until very recently.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 7:22 AM on September 29, 2014

When using the "dark" mode on the blue, the difference in lightness between :link and the body background is way too low. If you look at their lightness, the background is 29% and the (unvisited) link is 55%. It's VERY confusing to the eye, especially given that the normal text is 100% (yay!).

(Yes, I could magic it away with Stylish, etc., but I'm assuming if it's a problem for me it'll be a problem for some others.)

Thanks for all the hard work on the new look!
posted by introp at 7:56 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is pretty great.

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but on this page irl.metafilter.com/go/us/dc/washington ... none of the orange text in meetup description is clickable.
posted by 0 at 8:26 AM on September 29, 2014

From Mephisjo's link: While MetaFilter’s traffic has since risen back to its pre-dive numbers

Is this accurate? If so, that's INCREDIBLE. I have noticed more askme results popping up on google searches - do we have any numbers?
posted by rebent at 9:07 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Copy/Paste is a disaster on the ipad with the new layout.
posted by empath at 9:12 AM on September 29, 2014

I commented out most of the font-related stuff in fleacircus' userstyle because all I wanted was the green switched back to yellow, and It. Looks. So. Good. Y'all.

If someone with more css chops can make a "Switch Green To Yellow" style that would be amazing, as this one still misses a couple instances (most notably in the highlight colors).
posted by Rock Steady at 9:49 AM on September 29, 2014 [12 favorites]

It. Looks. So. Good. Y'all.

Oh wow. That's pretty.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:51 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is this accurate? If so, that's INCREDIBLE. I have noticed more askme results popping up on google searches - do we have any numbers?

From the DigiDay article, in which Matt talked to Digiday (so this isn't just information cribbed from other sources):

Traffic is probably close to where it was a few years ago before this all happened. So, yeah, things have gotten a lot better. The strange thing is that revenue is a third or a half of what it was two years ago, just because the ad market overall has gotten steadily worse.

The line that really confused me was this one:

Facebook is not so great for us, though we syndicate the most popular content. There’s minimal uptake, though Twitter’s a bit better when we tweet out titles of popular posts. But there’s no magic answer.

How is the most popular content syndicated? Through the BestOf blog? And how often are popular titles tweeted? And is there a MetaFilter Tumblr? MetaTumblr?
posted by filthy light thief at 9:52 AM on September 29, 2014

When i got to that bit, i took a few minutes to ponder "How would metafilter make best use of Facebook? Of Twitter?"

Mefi's basically:
* a small number of links
* quality commentary

I think that these two things could be put together in some sort of curated / linkbaty fashion, where the commentary is the content. Think of MeFi proper as the "writers room" and then Mefi Facebook as the Fox News - a headline, a summary of super-flagged comments, a summary of super-favorited comments.

Maybe two posts a day, of the previous days' most controversial conversation.

I think it could work!
posted by rebent at 9:58 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Maybe two posts a day, of the previous days' most controversial conversation.

Words cannot express my horror.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:59 AM on September 29, 2014 [30 favorites]

OMG LOVE

(theme, not horror)
posted by heatherann at 10:57 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

How is the most popular content syndicated? Through the BestOf blog? And how often are popular titles tweeted?

The Twitter and Facebook feeds for MeFi are a combination of the Best Of blog posts along with the top new things added to the Popular page. Basically anything that ends up on Facebook gets a like or two, rarely someone might comment or share it. On Twitter, most things get a few favorites, sometimes retweets, sometimes LOTS of both, plus people reply back with some comments.

It's tough to make bite-sized views of MeFi that fit into a Facebook or Tweet, so I don't think social networks are the big way to go for growth of MeFi (or if "growth" is even the goal we should be working towards).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:03 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think it could work!

It could be its own subsite called shitstir.metafilter.com

or in new web speak i guess Shitstr
posted by poffin boffin at 11:03 AM on September 29, 2014 [9 favorites]

Clearly, we just need to be pushing Mefi content to ello.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:16 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Innovative User suggests #disrupting #MetaFilter to increase #Impact, you won't believe @Mathowie's bizarre response!"

So, do you just start paying me now, or...?
posted by rebent at 11:19 AM on September 29, 2014 [8 favorites]

Maybe two posts a day, of the previous days' most controversial conversation.

So alternating posts on Racism and feminism, with something about Apple every now and then to spice things up.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:21 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

(the idea of that tweet being sanctioned by mathowie is part of the humor, no intention to actually offend said owner of glorious website where i spend 90% of my internets)
posted by rebent at 11:22 AM on September 29, 2014

Another voice to add in the chorus of title-haters here. I love the theme otherwise. The titles are too big and too dark, and they either make most FPP's sound boring or don't tell you anything about the post that isn't in the first sentence. In fact, they are often confusing and/or misleading, if not outright impenetrably vague.

Back to classic for me. Hopefully the titles can be fixed at some point in the future. Otherwise, great work.
posted by yeti at 11:34 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

(That's in reference to the Blue. In AskMe, titles seem to be more topical and relevant.)
posted by yeti at 11:36 AM on September 29, 2014

Also: I will pay $5 to anyone who can create a good propaganda poster for the new design.

You can use these pics (1, 2) of Matt as Mao as a model.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:49 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

If someone with more css chops can make a "Switch Green To Yellow" style that would be amazing

If such a script is made it should be named Old Yeller. (but r u sure u don't want stripes)
posted by fleacircus at 12:03 PM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

After using modern a few days (Mostly on mobile), I've noticed a few difficulties. Touch targets in the byline are nearly impossible to hit at the default zoom level. I think this happened in classic but I didn't notice it because I was able to zoom slightly and the fonts zoomed with me. I was able to zoom once and continue interacting with the thread using the byline links. In the redesign zooming appears to keep the body with the same and therefore text is off the screen. I suspect the body with and the classic on mobile was completely fluid at 100%, with margin. I suspect on mobile the body with sets to the screen with and locks in at that size. Be it 320, 480, etc... And of course zooming and gets rid of the sticky top menu. I could live without that, but having to zoom every time I want to favorite or click a user profile, or even just the common links on the homepage as really difficult and mobile.

Swipe to favorite will help part of that problem, but not all of the problem. When I was using classic, I was about 50-50 using swipe to favorite and using the plus sign.

I spent the past couple days trying to figure out why it was so much harder to interact with those features then on the old theme and that's what I came up with. I suspect a few other people are having that problem too as they've asked for a larger touch size on the +.

I would ask that the staff consider embiggening the byline on touch devices. Fluid zoom would be nice, but I hardly think it's a dealbreaker.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 12:13 PM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

Also, I just wanted to tell the staff thank you for all your hard work. As a former designer, I know how frustrating all of these niggling bits of feedback can be. If it helps you, and my experience the more detailed feedback you get, the more it's a sign that you've done your job right because people are invested in your design and are digging into the details in a way something out right disliked would not be.

So*hugs* to the staff, thank you all for making this so great and being open to user feedback.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 12:16 PM on September 29, 2014 [13 favorites]

Further to my previous comment about bold text displaying smaller than regular text: links also display smaller by the same amount. For example, in the line below, the word "bold" and the word "link" appear the same size, about 1 point smaller than all the rest of the text.

Here is an sentence that includes a link and a bold word.

Here's the example as an image.
posted by that's candlepin at 12:36 PM on September 29, 2014

Oh. I actually like the yellow fix better than the green default, and I really liked the green default.
posted by cooker girl at 1:44 PM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

I like the green line. That is all.
posted by arcticseal at 2:42 PM on September 29, 2014

Oh my god, you guys, the mobile interface is so much better. Thank you.
posted by gingerest at 2:55 PM on September 29, 2014

I really miss that line about how many posts were made since my last visit.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 3:30 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I would ask that the staff consider embiggening the byline on touch devices

Yeah, a redo of the flag/favorite controls on mobile is in the works. I would like it to be as easy to use as the official Twitter client on iOS, those targets are smaller, but relatively easy to hit, and tell you about number of faves, etc in a very small space. That's the goal with a redo for this.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:45 PM on September 29, 2014 [8 favorites]

Love the new look. One little thing: I appreciate that an RSS subscription link has been included at the beginning of each post, but is it also no longer included in a way that Firefox recognizes? At any page when I go to bookmarks "subscribe to this page" is greyed out. Not a big deal, since I can just click on the top of the page, but I did like that feature.
posted by crazy with stars at 3:54 PM on September 29, 2014

Hey! You changed the font! Yay! This is Open Sans?
posted by nangar at 5:32 PM on September 29, 2014

OK, so forgive me if I'm being dense, but is there no way to skip to the bottom of a thread on the new Modern theme, the way you can in Mobile Classic by clicking the menu link? Because in Android Chrome there is no built-in way to do this (as far as I know) and it makes jumping to the bottom of a long thread a real pain in the butt. Yeah, I know, Recent Activity and all that; but RA only shows the most recent 10 comments, and anyway I've never liked browsing MeFi that way. Am I missing something here, or what? Not being able to skip to the bottom is definitely going to make me drop Modern on my phone; it's a deal-breaker, if you ask me.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:35 PM on September 29, 2014

Oh, and, um, sorry for being a broken record but why the green?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:37 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

GSV AOANLA,T: You can skip to the bottom on mobile using the misleadingly-named "Sidebar" button.
posted by mbrubeck at 5:40 PM on September 29, 2014

Ahh, thanks. That really helps!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:42 PM on September 29, 2014

I suddenly understand the new color scheme.

Also, good for you, mathowie.
posted by ob1quixote at 5:50 PM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh, and, um, sorry for being a broken record but why the green?

They've given us those nice bright colours, they've given us the greens of summer, and it's like everything's SUNNY, you know. And you can't help taking screen caps? That's why.

Keep, pls. Take away, no.
posted by maudlin at 5:53 PM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Hey! You changed the font! Yay! This is Open Sans?

Looks the same to me? Compare t and l with here. It could be I need to clear my cache?
posted by Quilford at 6:23 PM on September 29, 2014

Looks really great, especially on my iphone - huge improvement there. Thanks for all of what must have been a huge amount of work and will continue to be as you tweak and fix bugs. Definitely going to take some getting used to but I really like it. Am a white background person - my middle-aged eyes don't like reading light text on dark background.
posted by leslies at 6:34 PM on September 29, 2014

> Looks the same to me? Compare t and l with here. It could be I need to clear my cache?

Yeah, the letter forms and kerning look the same to me. It's more likely a switch from the semi-bold to normal version of same font, but still this feels more open and legible to me. I'd like to hear from pb and matt about what they did and didn't do.
posted by nangar at 6:54 PM on September 29, 2014

No, we haven't made any changes to the font. It's still Source Sans Pro, same weight.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:20 PM on September 29, 2014

OK. Maybe I'm just getting used to it. Anyway, thanks pb.
posted by nangar at 7:31 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I really like how the Sidebar and Post links take me to the bottom and top of the page, respectively.

Also very happy to see tags displayed in mobile view.

Would really like to have the option to hide and show the banner as I'm scrolling down the page - when I don't need it, it eats up a significant amount of screen real estate on my smartphone display.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:00 PM on September 29, 2014

Gosh, I really like this Signika / Open Sans combo.
posted by Quilford at 10:03 PM on September 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

Someone could help us Stylish-clueless folks by posting
A: Just what we need to change the links back from pickles to mustard (I hate pickles on my Metafilter!)
B. Just what we or where we need to change the font. (I'd really like to see this theme with different fonts.)

ok I made a style that does nothing but change the pickles to mustard. (I think I got all the pickles.) It also has bonus font stuff at the bottom you can uncomment.
posted by fleacircus at 12:56 AM on September 30, 2014 [9 favorites]

For just about the first time ever, a website redesign I don't hate. Two issues:
1) Can the dark mode be made the default, or a separate style? The blue background is iconic to this site.
2) That shade of green is truly hideous. Can it be changed to a more traditional gold/yellow?
posted by salmacis at 2:36 AM on September 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love the new design, love the colours (especially the green), dig dark mode. Thanks, it looks spiffy in here!
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:10 AM on September 30, 2014

I like the redesign as a whole, love the dark mode colours. Am fine with the green.

But I'm having a hard time deciding what is important because everything looks like it's in bold. And now that I've given it a few days, I find that I'm getting really tired of that and for me, it makes MeFi a less pleasant place to be.
Also the font looks very fuzzy in the comment box.
Sorry :-(

(I'm on a laptop with 1024x768 resolution, running SeaMonkey on Win7.)
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:32 AM on September 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thanks to fleacircus, I now have my Metafilter without pickles. Thanks!
posted by pjern at 7:22 AM on September 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

I may be the only person with the link/bold font size issue I mentioned above, but I tracked the link size issue to this style:

body.thread #posts h1 a, body.thread #posts .copy a, body.thread #posts .comments a {
font-weight: 600;
}

Something about the font-weight is causing the text height to change. IDK if this is a real thing, or what. I don't think it's an extension issue (no stylish or tampermonkey enabled).
posted by that's candlepin at 7:34 AM on September 30, 2014

Test:

Does this still work?
posted by double block and bleed at 7:59 AM on September 30, 2014

Yep, still obnoxious in a 1000 comment thread.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 8:33 AM on September 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

well now it's 1000, pedants
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 8:34 AM on September 30, 2014 [9 favorites]

Not sure I would view the obnoxious-ness level differently depending on thread length.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:37 AM on September 30, 2014

While I appreciate the spirit of inquiry, please skip the pages-long ascii art, eh?
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:18 AM on September 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ok, we changed the "Sidebar" jump link to "Skip" on mobile. Still working on some of the other mobile fixes.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:11 AM on September 30, 2014 [5 favorites]

It looks like K. P. mentioned this here, but I'm having the same problem with my phone -- tipping from landscape back to portrait makes everything weird. Basically, everything shrinks so that the posts only take up the left 2/3 of the screen, and the "Home", "FAQ", etc menu sort of floats up near the top right instead of running across the whole screen. Sorry not to have a screenshot! I'm on an Android phone, using Chrome.
posted by cider at 11:26 AM on September 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

Random two cents:

I'm excited for the changes, and I hate change. However...I do wish the titles were smaller, and in dark mode, I wish the little line underneath the body of a post were not darker than the post itself. As a reader, my eye goes straight to that line, which just states who posted it and when, then it goes to the GIANT headline, and only then to the body of the post. In classic mode, I always read the body of the post first. The classic design puts the emphasis on the body of the post, and not on click-bait headlines, which is a signature part of the mefi experience for me. Ideally, I could re-size the title/headline and make the line underneath the same colour as the background.

Thanks.
posted by girlpublisher at 11:50 AM on September 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

Fantastic job. If you had just used the white site, I'd have griped for a week or two but eventually I'd have come around. But dark mode is just the right amount of familiar. Switched, never looking back.
posted by rouftop at 3:24 PM on September 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

FYI, DiscourseMarker and I are both experiencing a problem with our iPad 3s where we have to click on a link multiple times to get it to go. Also it took me several minutes to type this comment because of extreme lag.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:13 PM on September 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

Horace Rumpole: same on iPhone 5 with the clicking. Sometimes when it won't seem to click, scrolling the page a tiny bit first makes it work.
posted by ctmf at 4:21 PM on September 30, 2014

The lag issues might be caused more by this thousand-comment MetaTalk thread than by the new theme in general.
posted by mbrubeck at 4:22 PM on September 30, 2014

girlpublisher, this CSS (userstyles.org) will make those bylines transparent (if you don't want to install with Stylish, there's a little 'Show CSS' button there)
posted by Quilford at 4:27 PM on September 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Had to switch back to classic. Shame, because I like the look of Modern better, but it is Waay too lagggy and freezes up about half the time, there's no Skip button on iPad mini, and I have to zoom like crazy to favorite anything, which even then only works after two hits of the plus sign (the first time, the plus sign just disappears, but no favorite is added).
posted by misha at 5:14 PM on September 30, 2014

I had the same problem on my iPad Mini, Horace Rumpole, which was fixed by hiding Live Preview. Now it's just fine, it a tiny bit laggy when typing. Another way, if it's still laggy, is to go to the bottom of the thread and hit the Preview button. Preview mode is mostly JavaScript free, which makes everything quick and responsive.
posted by Kattullus at 5:14 PM on September 30, 2014

Any rough ETA on (the option to select) getting rid of titles so the rest of us can test drive it? I'm really excited to jump in when I can.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:17 PM on September 30, 2014

What is it that causes such consternation about titles?
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 8:38 PM on September 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

It's a subtle stylistic issue so not everybody will get it, but it can be accurately summarized metaphorically as literally worse than the holocaust, slavery, Tienanmen Square, and improper use of "literally" in sentences.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:52 PM on September 30, 2014 [5 favorites]

My problem with them on the blue, though I can't speak for others, is that they cause me to disengage from approaching posts on their content, and so disengages me from deeper (or, wider, at least) participation in the site, and I don't like that. I find myself unable to scan the front page when they're there without speedbumping on the titles -- which, let's face it, are rarely all that useful, taken as many are with trying to make them clever -- and skipping over posts as a result when they don't grab me. It's something I could try and unlearn, of course, but as it stands, it turns me into a short-attention-span skimmer, which is a way of engaging that part of the site that does neither me nor (arguably) the site any good. I have begun to browse the front page of MeFi (with titles) in the same sort of way I browse Buzzfeed (yes, I visit Buzzfeed once in a while, mostly for hate-browsing, I guess), and that doesn't feel good to me at all.

So, again for me, they mostly serve no useful purpose (beyond creating permalink text) and they actually disrupt (at a mostly subconscious level) my engagement with and pleasure in reading new posts that have gone up since I last checked.

I haven't done any greasemonkey/stylish tweaks until the dust settles on the new design, out of respect for the hard work that has been and is being done, but thus far, I still can't get used to titles on MeFi proper, and will eventually, probably, once again nuke them client side with display:none;
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:56 PM on September 30, 2014 [13 favorites]

To belabor the point a bit, I just had a quick look at the 20 posts on the blue for this day (Oct 1) and there are literally none where showing the titles adds anything of value that I can see to the posts themselves. They are just so much extraneous visual noise, for me at least. This is not universally the case, but I find it to be overwhelmingly so.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:00 PM on September 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

My main beef with titles, other than the redundancy and the fact that they're less fun than they were when they were easter-eggy, is that they take up a HUGE amount of real estate. (To say nothing of the GIGANTIC dates, the big gaps between posts, the newly embiggened menu at the top, and now an additional menu below that menu.) On the front page now, looking at it on a 1366x768 monitor, zoomed to the default 100%, I see two posts. One and a half on MeTa. Used to be (in 4:3 CRT days, mind), I'd see at least half a dozen.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:11 PM on September 30, 2014 [5 favorites]

Yeah, my favorite thing about MeFi after all these years is how much of a page is just stuff to read and not the fiddly bits. I find the big titles super off-putting and don't mind if they're there for some reason pertaining to outsider appeal but I don't like them and I'm fine sticking with the old theme while they're non-optional in the new theme. Not a big deal and I'm not mad or anything, but seeing less stuff per page doesn't solve a problem for me and the new theme is less stuff per page. Big dates, big gaps, big titles are all less stuff I like and more stuff I don't like. Nothing wrong if you like 'em, I just don't.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 9:17 PM on September 30, 2014 [27 favorites]

I'm afraid that the people who like the new themes will be mostly quiet, and the people who don't like it will be mostly loud, and it will seem like most people don't like it. I think it's great.
posted by latkes at 9:25 PM on September 30, 2014

I find myself unable to scan the front page when they're there without speedbumping on the titles -

Yup, that's exactly it. Hate being distracted by the least important content on the page, it makes it so much harder to scan the actual links. Though way de-emphasizing titles per ericost's suggestion would definitely help.

Also on another topic (though, hm, these were also my exact two nitpicks in my earlier comment), weeping_angel said upthread:
The bright white search bar is now shaded like the subsite. I like it!

...but this is only true in dark mode, isn't it? Could the search bar be shaded in light mode also? It's irritatingly distracting while scrolling.

But! Again! Nice work and thanks, all.
posted by torticat at 9:31 PM on September 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love it wholeheartedly. I switched to try it out (from original recipe colourful mode), and was enchanted immediately.

Like the green (though I did install one of those scripts above for any days when i'm feeling blue/yellow nostalgic), adore the Dark Mode variations, the new top scrolling bar is ace, A+ would theme again.

The single thing that has caused a bit of strain is the same issue as someone above - that all of the font looks bolded to me, and I have a lot of trouble distinguishing actual bold from it*. It also wearies my eyes a bit after a while. I figure you guys are either working on some font possibilities (given the amount of people mentioning their difficulties with it) or I can find some sort of script workaround or such, so it's no big deal.

In conclusion: i'm a fan.

[I'm using Windows 8.1 and Chrome version 37.0.2062.124 m, if that has anything to do with it.]
posted by pseudonymph at 10:03 PM on September 30, 2014

What is it that causes such consternation about titles?

This particular implementation is actually literally totally made out of and adapted for the web from a plate of beans.
posted by carsonb at 10:06 PM on September 30, 2014

Where is the dark button ya'll are talking about? I like this but I need dark!!!
posted by pearlybob at 1:44 AM on October 1, 2014

In iOS mobile.... Dark please!! My eyes!! They be burning!!
posted by pearlybob at 1:51 AM on October 1, 2014

Gave it a few days but I ended up not liking the new design at all on desktop and switching back to Classic at home, Plain at work. Mostly I found a lot of the link colours/styles (particularly lack of bolding) made the links hard to spot.
- In Dark Mode the visited link colour is too close to white so visited links blend into normal text.
- In non-Dark Mode, the unvisited link colour is too dark and unbolded so is too hard to spot against regular text.
- In non-Dark Mode, the visited links are unbolded so are maybe the same colour as in Classic but unbolding means they are hard to spot again.
- The dark highlighting of the Posted By... line in Dark Mode draws unnecessary attention to that part of the post and so the actual post text seems lost between the Title and Posted By lines.
- The dark highlighting (lowlighting? darklighting?) of the Older/Newer links at the bottom of Post threads in Dark Mode looks too much like the Classic theme's "click here to read new posts!" link so I always see it and think there's new posts to read. Again, unnecessary somethinglighting.

Modern works brilliantly for the mobile site though, so my phone's staying with Modern.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:50 AM on October 1, 2014

The dark highlighting of the Posted By... line in Dark Mode draws unnecessary attention to that part of the post and so the actual post text seems lost between the Title and Posted By lines.

To expand on that, it makes the front page feel more like:
TITLE!
(some stuff)
And here's the important bit - the poster, comments, favourites!!

Which is like... uh, I thought that stuff in the middle was kind of the point of the site?
I have no strong feelings either way on titles, it's more the drawing of attention to the Posted By line that I don't like.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:56 AM on October 1, 2014 [8 favorites]

I find myself unable to scan the front page when they're there without speedbumping on the titles

I was reading this thinking BUT THAT IS WHAT TITLES ARE FOR! I mean they are literally what I use to scan down and find things I want to read.

Then I looked at the front page and realised what the issue is. On literally every single subsite except the main Metafilter one, the titles are concise and descriptive and useful for scanning the page. On the main front page, however, almost every single title is some kind of strange joke or clever phrase or quote that is not useful in any way at all.

Can I suggest that a great fix for this would be for people to write better titles? Ones that perhaps give some clue as to what is contained in the post?
posted by emilyw at 4:05 AM on October 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

Just wanted to say that a) Dark Mode is default mode for me; b) In Dark Mode, yellow seems to work a bit better.
posted by Grangousier at 4:07 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

Then I looked at the front page and realised what the issue is. On literally every single subsite except the main Metafilter one, the titles are concise and descriptive and useful for scanning the page. On the main front page, however, almost every single title is some kind of strange joke or clever phrase or quote that is not useful in any way at all.

Yup. As I said (and others did too) back when titles became a thing, I have no problem with them in Ask (where they are actually very useful) or MeTa (where, you know, whatever)... and other subsites I don't visit much. But they are actively unhelpful and almost 100% noise on the blue, which is part of why I militated strongly but to no avail to have a site option to hide them there.

Can I suggest that a great fix for this would be for people to write better titles?

Asking everyone across the board to change the way they do stuff (and creating a situation where those who do not comply either because they don't know or don't care get flack as a result, which raises the general level of furrowed-browedness) has traditionally not been a very successful approach with this sort of procedural thing, I don't think.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:36 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

I mean they are literally what I use to scan down and find things I want to read.

That's fine, and we differ in that, because I don't really want to scan. Probably shouldn't have used that word, earlier. It implies a haste that I actually prefer to avoid on the blue. What I want is to read and absorb and gently work my fingers into the warm wet posty guts, then dig in deeper if I feel inclined, or move on, at my own leisurely pace. But it's fine and normal that people approach the front page in different ways. I'm not sure what you did before the advent of titles fairly recently, though.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:41 AM on October 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

Modern pony: Option to turn titles off for *each* part of the site.

They're useful in Ask (seconding stavrosthewonderchicken), and a barrier on the Blue, at least for me. YMMV. One of the most wonderful aspects of the Blue has been its ability to surprise me by allowing me to discover things I didn't know I wanted/needed/cared to hear about; I meet the text where it is. Titles draw my attention to the subject and compel a sort of snap judgment, which is why I turned them off in classic.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:55 AM on October 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

Design bug report: In the Dark Mode version of Recent Activity, both the usernames and timestamps are colored link-green, making them run together visually, e.g.:

posted by Sedition Yesterday [+] (cool username!)

posted by condour75 14 days ago [+] (numbers run together)

posted by Rhaomi 5 days ago [+] (Rhaomi-5, days ago)

posted by qxntpqbbbqxl 2 ¾ hours ago [+] (what)

The combination of informal timestamps and wordy usernames can be pretty confusing. On the old design, usernames in Recent Activity were colored grey for contrast (despite being gold elsewhere), while timestamps stayed gold. Maybe go back to that for the dark design?
posted by Rhaomi at 5:02 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

For me, usernames are grey in Recent Activity.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:33 AM on October 1, 2014

I'd like to chime in and say that while I generally like the Modern theme, the titles are a big issue for me. I've tried getting used to it for a few days, and everything else about the theme is fine but that, for basically the reasons stavros mentioned.

If I could hide them (or even simply make them smaller), and also if they weren't links (because I have repeatedly clicked them due to unconsciously assuming it'd take me to the linked content, not the comments), I'd be using Modern 100% of the time, but for now I'm keeping with Professional White on my main browsing computer.
posted by tocts at 5:35 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

Usernames are also grey in recent activity for me (OSX, FF, as well as mobile).
posted by rtha at 5:37 AM on October 1, 2014

ocherdraco: "For me, usernames are grey in Recent Activity."

Wow, totally my fault -- I forgot I have a work-in-progress style tweak thing for the link colors running that must be overriding the normal style on that page.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:38 AM on October 1, 2014

In the Dark Mode version of Recent Activity, both the usernames and timestamps are colored link-green, making them run together visually

From an accessibility standpoint, it's a problem to have two links separated by nothing more than white space.
posted by johnofjack at 5:39 AM on October 1, 2014

Ok, we changed the "Sidebar" jump link to "Skip" on mobile. Still working on some of the other mobile fixes.

So, on my tablet (Galaxy Tab S), I'm getting what I have to assume is the non-mobile site (because it looks just like Modern on a laptop), despite not having the "request desktop site" setting turned on in Chrome. And honestly, that's fine -- the non-mobile site is perfectly usable on it (probably preferable, even).

However: since it's not the mobile site, there is no "Skip" link. Unfortunately, as well as it does with the non-mobile site in terms of readability, Chrome on this tablet still lacks any way to scroll to the bottom or top of a page quickly. This makes long threads (like this one, in fact) basically impossible to use.

It would be really helpful to get a "Skip" jump link in this scenario.
posted by tocts at 5:51 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

i fixed the titles to be more to my liking almost immediately with this already made stylish script.
posted by nadawi at 5:58 AM on October 1, 2014

latkes: "I'm afraid that the people who like the new themes will be mostly quiet, and the people who don't like it will be mostly loud, and it will seem like most people don't like it. I think it's great."

I haven't found the thread to be that way at all. A lot of people have said how much they like the new version.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:09 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

For folks who are still bothered by the large font size on iOS, these javascript bookmarklets to change the font size have been working for me (phone, iOS7). They have to be applied page-by-page, but for long threads it's a useful option.
posted by yarrow at 7:43 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

Overall I think the changes are fantastic - great job!

I am with the users who would prefer that the top menu bar not continuously float, though. I recognize that it's handy to have access to various site functions without having to scroll to the top of the page, and it works way better on mobile than the old site did, but I just resent it when a site takes over a piece of my real estate - especially vertical space, which is limited on my laptop to begin with.

I think what I'd really like for the top menu bar is a disappearing menu like the one found on medium.com. While you're just reading the site, there is no menu bar and you have maximum real estate for the actual text you want to read. But as soon as you start to scroll up (indicating to the site that you're finished with the content on the page), the scroll bar appears and you can access its various functions. If you scroll down again, the menu disappears as though it's scrolling off the page normally. At least for desktop use, this seems like a great way to do it.
posted by whir at 7:55 AM on October 1, 2014 [8 favorites]

Can I suggest that a great fix for this would be for people to write better titles?

I think this is a good idea. In line with my perception of MeFi norms, until now I have approached titles as an exercise in attention-grabbing (usually a quote from the content to which I'm linking). From now on, I'll try to go with straight-up descriptive titles.

Asking everyone across the board to change the way they do stuff (and creating a situation where those who do not comply either because they don't know or don't care get flack as a result, which raises the general level of furrowed-browedness) has traditionally not been a very successful approach with this sort of procedural thing, I don't think.

Fair enough; but it's still worth bringing such suggestions to the table periodically, I think. Some will take it on board immediately, while for others the idea will begin to germinate in their minds. A gradual positive effect is a good result.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 9:18 AM on October 1, 2014

Can I suggest that a great fix for this would be for people to write better titles?

Oh how I wish. It's almost criminal how often Metafilter is championed as this bastion of great writing, yet the titles are so poorly written.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:09 AM on October 1, 2014

I think that is largely driven by the fact that it is not universally agreed what purpose titles serve.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:18 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

This One Simple Trick for Writing Better Post Tiitles will Amaze You!
Seriously, Brandon, you should make a guide for your profile page.

Came back in to say I do like the new look, and I think Apple is to blame for most of the glitches I am experiencing, so I hope they get their act together and fix the many issues OS 8.x is causing users like me.
posted by misha at 10:32 AM on October 1, 2014

Also, there is a script that turns all titles into lines from Reservoir Dogs, which can help if you find yourself over-filtering. Warning, can also lead to shocking disconnect.
posted by misha at 10:35 AM on October 1, 2014

OK, last post about font styling (I hope). Italic text also renders as slightly smaller than regular text for me. Still Chrome 37 and Win 7.

Oh, and I think the new look is pretty slick. Still getting used to it, but I appreciate the work and thought that went into it.
posted by that's candlepin at 11:08 AM on October 1, 2014

the shortening of tags should not shorten tags that would fit within the tag box. IMO, they should not shorten tags at all.

Example: in this post, the tag "wordsthatstartwithw" is shortened to "wordsthatstartw..." when truly the entire tag could fit in the tag box.
posted by rebent at 12:37 PM on October 1, 2014

I actually have grown to like the titles. They often do a good job at adding flavor or a useful bit of context. From the front page right now, all of these titles I find useful or interesting or both.

Leaving the uncanny valley
Ed, by illustrator Chris Jones. Ed's eye. Ed's eyeball. Making of.

dog + water trifecta complete
Hosegame 2014

'Guns will get you into more trouble than they will ever get you out of'
Soon after George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin more than two years ago, George's loyal family learned that sharing his name meant sharing the blame. It also meant a surreal new life filled with constant paranoia, get- rich-quick schemes, and lots and lots of guns. Amanda Robb meets the Zimmerman family and finds out what it's like being related to the most hated free man in America.

“There is such a thing as the courage in remaining baffled.”
Donald Antrim and the Art of Anxiety by John Jeremiah Sullivan [New York Times]
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:20 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

BTW: Definitely getting lag here on typing! Can't find an open longboat on the blue to try against my mefiModernRetro stylesheet to see if that improves anything. But the lag in this here box is pretty bad :(
posted by wemayfreeze at 1:25 PM on October 1, 2014

I think that is largely driven by the fact that it is not universally agreed what purpose titles serve.

Maybe, but it could be that titles weren't that important for a long time, so the most people don't put much thought into them beyond trying to be witty or cheeky.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:33 PM on October 1, 2014

seeing less stuff per page doesn't solve a problem for me and the new theme is less stuff per page.

That's exactly how I feel, except one degree further: I dislike the spacing. After a week's trial of the new theme, I just switched back to "classic" and prefer it. I prefer the fonts, the spacing, the layout. For me, the classic theme seems like a much better rendering of the Tufte adage mentioned above: simple design, intense content.

I did try the new theme. It's not terrible. I just prefer the classic.
posted by cribcage at 3:02 PM on October 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

While I appreciate the spirit of inquiry, please skip the pages-long ascii art, eh?

Sorry, I was trying to check width and didn't think about length.
posted by double block and bleed at 3:19 PM on October 1, 2014

This is really a lot better with the yellow css tweak. That green was horrible.
posted by double block and bleed at 3:20 PM on October 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

My first impression was, "Wow! Beautiful design". Found dark mode and was blown away further. If this is our new face ... Rrrrrrrrrawr! We are sexy ;)

I really want to love the new design and I understand there was a need for a better mobile experience ... I don't want to come across as too negative as I see a lot of thought, work and hard decisions trying to satisfy a wide variety of needs going into this redesign. So my thoughts are based around a Windows 8, Firefox (whatever the latest is) lap / desktop experience. These thoughts have been expressed by others but MetaFilter is important to me so I'm going to repeat them from my point of view.

Issue number one is the amount of dead space and lack of words on my screen. When reading I like to see paragraphs and ideas expressed as a whole. Absorb the length, the speaker, the meta information as well as the body of text. The new design feels constrained. I feel more like I'm reading individual statements rather than a flow of thought and conversation, because I can no longer glance ahead and back as easily as before. And if I do glance back there is a great dark cloud following me around and gobbling up what I have just read or scrolled past. I thought the header would be a great feature, because I had occasionally thought a quick way to jump back to MetaFilter (usually when in the middle of a really long thread) would be a bonus. There is significantly more scrolling involved now. The front page displays so little information I can't just look at Metafilter see 4 to 6 posts at a shot and jump in to something that looks interesting. I need to scroll through 2 or 3 at a time and hunt more. It feels chopped in half.

I have a decent sized monitor, but even with zooming and closing my bookmark sidebar to stretch the site further, it still leaves me with less MetaFilter than before and loads of blank space on either side.

I have been switching back and forth a lot because I want to give the new design a fair chance but I keep getting frustrated being spoon fed paragraphs when I know more information could be displayed. Switching back to classic I get a palpable sense of relief and sufficient material to read I needn't scroll constantly. So maintaining the old version has been tremendously appreciated.

The new design is so pleasant to view and some of the style fixes being offered are closer to what I want, so may go that route, but feel this is an issue that should be addressed MetaFilter side. Not a single clue how this would be done (something about line length that Matt mentioned). I guess I just don't really understand why so much less MetaFilter is displayed. So perhaps this is all more a question than criticism. Why god why?

The other thoughts I have are more minor.

Issue number two, titles. I never minded titles, when they were implemented I left them on but reduced their size and found they provided a sometimes helpful additional line break between multiple paragraph posts (which was rectified with [more inside]). Take them or leave them, I am happy either way. The problem I have is they are now a link to the comments. There is already a link to comments so the redundancy I find odd and would like to know what the thinking was (easier for mobile users to hit the comments perhaps) but I've found myself clicking on them expecting to go to the main link of the post. This is an adjustment thing but really wonder why titles are no longer static.

On Ask you perhaps expect to go to the comments but on MetaFilter I hit the links and read them before the comments (so I can follow the subsequent thought, conversation and related links). By having comments being the first and principal link, rather than (or as well as) last and secondary ... it seems off somehow. So again I am left with questions.

Issue number three, how links work visually. They no longer change when I hover over them. Before they would turn white. I could clearly see what I was pointing at. They are reactionless and dead now. They only fade and brighten after being activated and in such a subtle way it makes mouse navigation feel lacking feedback. Sure the pointer / cursor turns to a finger but with multiple links strung together you can't easily see where a link starts and ends until after you click on it. I understand touch doesn't have hover functions but Metafilter is supposed to be about links, good links, interesting links, wonders pulled from the ether of the web and given address. So I'm left to ponder why such a basic function and navigational aid was simply abandoned. It really needs to be clear when a link has been punched and when one hasn't and I understand you are dealing with a lot of colours but this isn't where subtly should be. I have found myself adjusting slightly but feel their muted nature and lack of highlight hover is ... Hitler incarnate! (this issue may be more important to me than I first thought now that I've pounded out my rant)

Issue number four is really just a stylistic nitpick but since I'm in full blown criticism mode might as well give it all. The darker coloured by line feels extraneous, I figure it was meant to create a clean separation between posts (now that I have thought about it). By having it highlighted or lowlighted it gets distilled in my mind as having a separate and greater significance than it should. It removes emphasis from links and body of post, and puts it on poster, time and comments. On the white background, it fades in and out and flickers and flashes (I'm also severely colourblind so figure this is just my own visual deficit in play) . Again I know this is an adjustment thing but find it visually distracting and an add on that don't really provide additional clarity just clutter.

Issue number five is something I'm not sure what is going on and is probably browser related but I've had trouble with MetaFilter holding its place. If I follow a link in a thread and then page back it sometimes brings me to the top of the thread and no longer at the point I selected the link. It doesn't always do this, and I just tested it and everything seems good now. But it has happened a few times.

Again, despite my criticisms, I'm going to keep trying to adjust and I still want to commend all for the overall balance struck and the way the roll out was done ... proper job!
posted by phoque at 3:21 PM on October 1, 2014 [4 favorites]

The problem I have is they are now a link to the comments. There is already a link to comments so the redundancy I find odd and would like to know what the thinking was

Post titles are links in classic mode too, they just don't look like it. That's probably better. On a post that's short, like this (classic version) , the content is kind of overshadowed by the ginormous title in the modern theme, and it's worse in dark mode.

I think that's the difference, why titles are bad on the blue but okay elsewhere. On the other subsites, the post is the content. AskMe questions exist to be answered and have answers read; FanFare exists for people to comment on; MetaTalk exists for us to give hugs to each other, etc. But on the blue, we're looking for links to other stuff. It's not like a newspaper where the headline is there to get us to delve into a story. I look at links first and that's how I determine if I want to fully read the post. If the title is BEAUTIFUL ART, that's annoying, I can't do anything with that. I can't click on it to get any beautiful art. I want to click on the link IN THE POST that says, "beautiful art".

The hyperlinks in a FPP should be most visible and accessible. That's what I didn't like about titles when they appeared, and I don't like it so much about the modern theme. In classic mode I could live with titles if they were small (the same size as the also-small, also-neutral-colored posted by line). It was better than having some posts be unintelligible because posters put important stuff in the title. On modern, I don't know.. even if they're small, I don't like that they're the same color/links as the links I'm really after. I don't think titles of FPPs should say "click on me".
posted by fleacircus at 4:16 PM on October 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I reiterate that I would really like the option to shrink the titles. And I agree we're getting too little text on the screen.
posted by languagehat at 5:16 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wow I can't believe I never noticed that they are links in classic too, thanks fleacircus. Your thinking on their visual impact now reflects my own. Well stated.
posted by phoque at 5:20 PM on October 1, 2014

It seems the long-press bug is fixed. If so, the new theme (in dark mode), is now my perfect mobile Metafilter experience.
posted by MuChao at 8:33 PM on October 1, 2014

It seems the long-press bug is fixed.

Thanks pb!
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 8:48 PM on October 1, 2014

Sure, tapping should be better. Also took a stab at improving Live Preview. Megathreads like this definitely make the typing lag worse. With this latest version Live Preview is a bit better on desktops but still pretty choppy on tablets.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:43 PM on October 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

Been using the new theme since it was released and I like it! The only thing I miss is the links changing color on hover, but that is a super specific and nitpicky complaint that I will probably get over in another couple of days/weeks.
posted by danb at 10:47 PM on October 1, 2014

NEW BUG: just today, clicking on the [+] to favourite stopped working for me on chrome on iPad iOS 8.02. Instead it seems to take me to the top of the page. I've tried a number of times in various threads at different zoom levels so I'm not just being fat fingered.
posted by lollusc at 6:29 AM on October 2, 2014

fat fingered

"Also, Dude: I believe the preferred nomenclature is 'big boned'."
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 8:02 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I just wanted to point that the default font weight appears to be broken, and is what is causing a lot of consternation on the desktop. dialetheia appears to have called it - the normalize.css doesn't reset font weights correctly. It's really hard on the eyes if you are on a non-retina display, and probably what is causing many of the complaints about poor bolding differentiation.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 8:28 AM on October 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

It looks very good, but it runs slowly. I also miss "Recent Activity" as something I don't have to go into a menu to click.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:50 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

[insert clever name here], according to the article you linked the fix is to set font weights explicitly instead of using bold. That's exactly what we're doing. I'm not disputing that the font weights don't look great with some setups, I just don't think the normalize stylesheet is the culprit.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:45 AM on October 2, 2014

NEW BUG

Sorry, lollusc, I can't duplicate this one. Favorites are checking out ok on a Chrome/iPad. It could be that a background file didn't load for some reason.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:52 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I also miss "Recent Activity" as something I don't have to go into a menu to click.

Yeah I would have thought that Recent Activity would be one of the most-clicked items from the header menus across MeFi and AskMe, so I was surprised to see it minimized in the always-on menu in the redesign. It's possible that this is just me and my me-centered view of the site, but for logged in users, I would think that the stats would show this as well.

So I have to ask: did you guys do any analysis of what the most-visited pages are on the site for users (on desktop and mobile versions) and weave that into the redesign accordingly? You talk about "more intuitive" but I'm just wondering if any of this design is data-driven as far as logged in users is concerned as opposed to A/B testing to get less bounce from visitors? Because there is a ton of data.

Again, no complaints about the redesign or to minimize the hard work that you guys put into it building it and refining it, I'm just surprised there hasn't been more "We looked at how users use the site and we changed things up a little bit to accommodate that even better!" So the mobile-first stuff is clearly doing some of that and it's awesome. I'd like to hear about more of the other decisions that were made based on logged-in user data.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 9:53 AM on October 2, 2014 [12 favorites]

Back to white for me until a different font option is incorporated.

To ride on jessamyn's point - to keep up analysis to see year over year which way the site is read - classics vs nuskin broken by mobile view vs desktop.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 10:02 AM on October 2, 2014

After using the Modern theme for the past week, the three persistent issues for me are:

1. Font weights/style/overall text -- it is so hard to read on my desktop, making it impossible to use a text-centric site like MeFi.

2. Titles and the space they take up. They don't add enough to warrant the space they take up, and seem to structure the new posts in ways that MeFi hasn't historically supported.

3. Recent activity being so minimized - I would have thought that would a really key feature for logged-in members, and it's weird that it's a little tucked away and hidden. MeFi is a site built on conversation, not just the newest and greatest. The placement of "Recent Activity" should reflect that.

It is awesome on my mobile devices, and overall the redesign feels great.
posted by barnone at 10:07 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah I would have thought that Recent Activity would be one of the most-clicked items from the header menus across MeFi and AskMe, so I was surprised to see it minimized in the always-on menu in the redesign

Looking at user data, the most clicked things among logged in members was the nav link to MetaTalk, the home link to MeFi, and RA. The idea for the reorganization of the nav was to make it organized, to move subsite options into just one area, site-specific options in another, and have a permanent predictable place for user tools. In the classic design, stuff is scattered and mixed together throughout.

The link to Recent Activity isn't "minimized" rather I think it's easier to get to and highlighted in both mobile and desktop. On the desktop Classic theme, it's just a small link on the header and footer. Now, it's highlighted in the green bar and offered on the small static menu as you scroll (where before you had to scroll back up to the "ends" of the page to even get to it). On mobile, the only link to RA was in the footer, amid a monster list of link options. Now it's a click on the user icon to always get to it from anywhere.

I imagine this is mostly the getting-used-to part of a new design to find things, but we never intended to minimize any commonly used options, but make them available in stable, predictable places and make them available in more ways in more views.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:13 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

to move subsite options into just one area,

Except for 'New Post', which is ostensibly (according to the current menu design) a 'user tool' and not a subsite option.
posted by carsonb at 11:03 AM on October 2, 2014

Also, and my apologies if this is mentioned above and being dealt with already, but on my Android browser there's no click-confirmation for menu links. No 'active' or 'onclick' style that I can see.
posted by carsonb at 11:05 AM on October 2, 2014

Except for 'New Post', which is ostensibly (according to the current menu design) a 'user tool' and not a subsite option

Right, it is grouped in "user tools" because you have to be logged in to use it. Moving this link took me a while to re-learn its placement after 15 years down in the subsite options, but I think it's more straightforward now, putting all user-only tools in the same highlighted spot.

but on my Android browser there's no click-confirmation for menu links. No 'active' or 'onclick' style that I can see

Yeah, we're adding an active/hover state to the new design very soon.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:27 AM on October 2, 2014

(Can you tell we've had this conversation before, folks?)

Right, it is grouped in "user tools" because you have to be logged in to use it. Moving this link took me a while to re-learn its placement after 15 years down in the subsite options, but I think it's more straightforward now, putting all user-only tools in the same highlighted spot.

It's still the only 'user tool' that is subsite-specific. It disappears from the otherwise static user tools menu on the subsites featured under the 'More' menu (thanks for that at least, by the way), and changes depending on the subsite (New Post, New Question, New Event, New Project). This isn't a muscle memory placement concern for me, it's definitely rooted in the conceptual usage of the link/function. There are arguments both ways, I just happen to discount 'only logged-in users can use it' in favor of 'it's different depending on where logged-in users are on the site'.
posted by carsonb at 11:37 AM on October 2, 2014

In other words, everything in the 'user tools' menu is about the user except 'New Post/wev', which is specified to the subsite. User favorites, user profile, user preferences, user mail, user activity site-wide, user log-out. Creating a post is available to logged-in members only, yes, but it is specific to the subsite the member is on in addition to the logged-in requirement.
posted by carsonb at 11:41 AM on October 2, 2014

And just to be clear I'm not married to this or going to have a fit about it if it doesn't change. I'm just putting my argument out there to see if it makes sense to anyone else.
posted by carsonb at 11:43 AM on October 2, 2014

In the classic design, stuff is scattered and mixed together throughout.

Perhaps, but it's what I'm used to!

Really not liking the mobile version of the new design, thought the desktop version is working just great. Back to the White theme on mobile.

The new design is feels like it's going for an academic version of structure, tends to take up too much space, while hiding everything under various sub menus. Everything feels like it take more clicks to get to, even if actually doesn't.

Looking at that white version's menu on my iPhone 5s, I'm noticing how neatly evertything fits on one screen. All I need to do is click 'Skip to Menu' and everything is there at my fingertips. With the Modern them, it feels like I have to hunt around and remember where this or that is stored.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:16 PM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

In other words, everything in the 'user tools' menu is about the user except 'New Post/wev', which is specified to the subsite.

But the subsite menu is for links that take you to a different subsite. The new post button is subsite specific only in that the wording may change (post/question etc) depending on which subsite you're in, but the action is effectively the same regardless.

The user tools menu makes sense for 'New Post' because it's an action taken by the user, which will result in a new post with the users name in the byline ('posted by') that will show up in their user activity feed once they're done.

Regarding 'recent activity' and mobile layout , I really appreciate not having to scroll up to the top to skip down to the bottom to get to the menu for mobile. I also find the location of 'recent activity'is both more prominent and easier to find and click on desktop too, so for me at least I like the organization of the new theme.
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:28 PM on October 2, 2014

But the subsite menu is for links that take you to a different subsite.

We need definite names for these things, sheesh. I'm talking about the menu under that one.
Home | FAQ | About | Archives | Tags | Popular | Random

I'd put 'New Post' (or new whatever) between 'Home' and 'FAQ'.
posted by carsonb at 1:31 PM on October 2, 2014

Ah, that definitely makes more sense given that 'Home' takes you to the subsite front page, so New Post would fit in to that model taking you to the subsite specific new post page and then you get the more general FAQ and About pages. Personally I think it still makes more sense as a user tool though, since creating a new post is a more individual focused thing, but conceptually I think it works both ways.
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:47 PM on October 2, 2014

Yeah, I understand how since the action is tied to a subsite, it could be argued that it could show up in the site-specific nav, but I prefer it as a tool only available to users (everyone logged out and in can see home, faq, about, tags, random options) in the user area.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:56 PM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't know if this is a bug, but I just went from a thread to my profile and now everything is in Modern. However, in Preferences, it showed up as set to Plain theme. I can get it to switch to the Blue, but I can't get my professional white classic background back because resetting it to Plain is just coming up as Modern. And no offense to Modern, but I prioritize faster loading speeds and as many words visible as possible...so I would like professional white back.
posted by jetlagaddict at 2:02 PM on October 2, 2014

Me too - now I'm on the new theme and everything is ginormous. I would like the old theme please?
posted by winna at 2:02 PM on October 2, 2014

yay I'm not alone!

(Mac, latest Chrome)
posted by jetlagaddict at 2:03 PM on October 2, 2014

Yep, switched back and forth a few times and stuck in Modern.
posted by griphus at 2:07 PM on October 2, 2014

Mac, Safari, same thing.
posted by Kabanos at 2:07 PM on October 2, 2014

Ok, sorry about that, small logic bug introduced while pushing out the modern theme to logged-out users. Should be fixed in a few min.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:08 PM on October 2, 2014

I did not even know that a new theme existed, apparently got switched automatically -- and am very happy with it! If this was a bug, I'll happily switch to it again, on purpose.
posted by Anything at 2:08 PM on October 2, 2014

Ok, plain theme should be fixed now!
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:11 PM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

hooray and thank you!
posted by jetlagaddict at 2:11 PM on October 2, 2014

How do people feel about an appearing/disappearing header bar? So as you scroll down the page it vanishes, but as you scroll up (ostensibly to get to the navigation) it reappears, preempting your need to get right to the top?

It's a not-uncommon UX pattern these days, which you may have seen on Medium, for example. I've successfully implemented it on a couple of sites with Headroom.js (which I have no affiliation with), and it's been both easy and quite effective.

Personally I greatly dislike static, fixed header bars, so I would consider it a great boon.

Full disclosure: I did ask this as a seperate MetaTalk thread, but Matt understandably emailed me to ask if I could downgrade it to a post in here.
posted by Magnakai at 2:51 PM on October 2, 2014 [5 favorites]

The header bar is about 90% of why I don't use the new theme on my laptop (I do use it on my phone), so I'd be happy if it were mostly disappeared. (The other reasons are that I don't like all the whitespace on the sides and I despise the line spacing in comments, but I am pretty sure I could fix those if I tried.)
posted by jeather at 3:03 PM on October 2, 2014

Yeah, we're working on doing the scroll-disappear thing on mobile, and having a show/hide clicker thing on desktop for it, give us another week or so to implement.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:13 PM on October 2, 2014 [6 favorites]

My understanding is some sort of collapsible/hideable aspect of the static header bar is something Matt and pb are beavering away on.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:13 PM on October 2, 2014

See for example that comment Matt posted like seven milliseconds before my now wholly unnecessary comment.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:14 PM on October 2, 2014 [7 favorites]

Yeah, we're working on doing the scroll-disappear thing on mobile

Awesome; thanks guys!
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:19 PM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

Are you thinking about adding a font size preference? I really like the new theme and am very happy to use it on my desktop / laptop, but I just cannot deal with the amount of text visible on a small (iphone 5) screen. It's just too much scrolling. I know others have posted examples as well, but here's mine: classic vs. modern.

That said, I think the new design is way, way better for mobile - all the links are much easier to find and access - and if font size were adjustable, I would be thrilled to use it.
posted by insectosaurus at 5:57 PM on October 2, 2014

Is anyone else finding the new font to be sort of faint in Chrome? I switched from IE 11 to Chrome because the IE scrolling speeds were so slow on this design, but in IE the font is much... bolder, for lack of a better word, and easier to read. I find I can't really look at the site for a long period on Chrome without a headache.
posted by selfnoise at 6:01 PM on October 2, 2014

Have switched to new design on all devices, it's terrific.

Now that you've entered the 21st century, I hope you'll also consider ways to embed pictures in posts.
posted by beagle at 6:46 PM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

bug: [osx chrome and safari] When I load a new post and go down to comment, the Post Comment button is grayed out. When I move the mouse over the text box, it enables and is clickable.
posted by fleacircus at 6:50 PM on October 2, 2014

Are you thinking about adding a font size preference?

Yeah, we're working on a font prefs panel that's similar to what you see on a Kindle. So imagine being able to pick 4-5 different font faces, change sizes in increments from the existing size like so: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and other options (dark/light, titles yes/no). It's going to take a couple weeks to test out and implement but it's on the to-do list.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:23 PM on October 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

Now that you've entered the 21st century, I hope you'll also consider ways to embed pictures in posts.

You mean the functionality disabled on October 22, 2006?
posted by Chrysostom at 7:29 PM on October 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

If, while logged out, you select the classic theme, then log in, then log out, you're back to modern. Can it please retain your choice instead of having you need to choose it again every time you log out?
posted by Flunkie at 8:52 PM on October 2, 2014

So imagine being able to pick 4-5 different font faces, change sizes in increments from the existing size like so: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and other options

Hurray, thank you! Just wondering, will you be offering different font faces for titles as well as body text? That is, will we be able to change Montserrat as well as Source Sans Pro if we so desire?
posted by Quilford at 8:52 PM on October 2, 2014

Flunkie, when you log in it sets your saved preferences. When you log out it clears those preferences and goes to the defaults. We don't have separate logged-in/logged-out preferences.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:00 PM on October 2, 2014

I just realised part of my problem reading at night on white plain mobile is due to having no depth perception & effectively only one eye.

Maybe once you add the ability to change & size fonts, we can have the ability to embiggen [+] & [!] on all themes?
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 10:13 PM on October 2, 2014

Favourites working again for me now. Must have been my iPad being weird.
posted by lollusc at 10:47 PM on October 2, 2014

Seems pretty good, but needs moar img tag.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:53 PM on October 2, 2014

mathowie: Yeah, we're working on a font prefs panel that's similar to what you see on a Kindle. So imagine being able to pick 4-5 different font faces, change sizes in increments from the existing size like so: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and other options (dark/light, titles yes/no). It's going to take a couple weeks to test out and implement but it's on the to-do list"

As long as you're working on it, I'd like to suggest you add controls as in the classic theme... not just titles yes/no, but being able to separately choose the title font size. I personally don't think the backlash against titles would have been so extreme if they weren't so large. I like the new layout, and like titles, but had to do some stylish hacking to get the titles back to the way I had them; the same size as the post text, and de-emphasized. It would also mean people could try the modern layout, which is great, without it being tied to the font/title issues people are reacting to.
posted by team lowkey at 2:52 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

If, while logged out, you select the classic theme, then log in, then log out, you're back to modern. Can it please retain your choice instead of having you need to choose it again every time you log out?
Flunkie, when you log in it sets your saved preferences. When you log out it clears those preferences and goes to the defaults. We don't have separate logged-in/logged-out preferences.

Yes, but could it please retain your logged-out saved preferences for use when you are logged out?
posted by Flunkie at 5:02 AM on October 3, 2014

We'll consider it. For now you could always bookmark the theme-setting page if you need to view the site both logged in and out frequently. After logout, clicking the bookmark might be a little more convenient than finding the theme-switching link.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:00 AM on October 3, 2014

On a smartphone, I can't favorite anything without zooming in to make the + larger. Is this deliberate (e.g. to try to prevent accidental favorites)?

Prior to the redesign, I had become quite adept at hitting the + without needing to zoom in, despite having big-boned fingers.

MetaFilter: improving hand-eye coordination since 2007.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 6:48 AM on October 3, 2014

No, we're not trying to prevent accidental favorites. Sorry you're having trouble. As always, we're thinking about ways to make favoriting easier without making the text harder to read. It's a balancing act.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:52 AM on October 3, 2014

Now that you've entered the 21st century, I hope you'll also consider ways to embed pictures in posts.

I absolutely hope to god pictures never come back. I hate embedded images.
posted by winna at 6:55 AM on October 3, 2014 [5 favorites]

Now that you've entered the 21st century, I hope you'll also consider ways to embed pictures in posts.

You mean the functionality disabled on October 22, 2006?

Yes I was around. The disablement was attributed to security concerns. Every other site in the world seems to have gotten past those concerns. There was no great outcry against images before they were removed. It's time to rethink this. Why should people have to build imgur links when they could just embed the picture? Why should all those SLYTs be links instead of embeds?

I absolutely hope to god pictures never come back. I hate embedded images.

So you never go to sites with embedded images? Say what you like, but a site without images is always going to look like a dinosaur, spiffy new typography notwithstanding. As a business, this site needs more traffic. Making it more visually interesting with embedded images and videos would help accomplish that.
posted by beagle at 7:14 AM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

I've often said to myself, "What this thread needs is more Ceiling Cat and chicken fucking."
posted by Chrysostom at 7:16 AM on October 3, 2014

"There aren't enough elephants pissing everywhere."
posted by carsonb at 7:20 AM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

To images I say thee: "Nay!"

Links do the job. Let's be different than the rest of the internet instead of the same as the rest of the internet. Because the rest of the internet is kind of a cesspit.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:22 AM on October 3, 2014 [7 favorites]

beagle: "Now that you've entered the 21st century, I hope you'll also consider ways to embed pictures in posts."

I was just thinking the same thing recently. Not a return to free-form posting of hotlinked embedded images in comments and such, but the optional inclusion of a decent-quality thumbnail for FPPs, FanFare, and maybe Ask posts, subject to approval. Including a relevant picture of an author, painting, poster, screenshot, album cover, or other illustrating information (sort of like what Futility Closet does but smaller) could be a nice way to further modernize the front page in a tasteful way.

The only potential issue is how the hosting could be handled. Allow third-party linking that could break or be altered, or host them here with the attendant bandwidth/storage costs? Keeping the images small would help, but it wouldn't be nothing.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:28 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

I support images, but I highly doubt most users and mods do.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:35 AM on October 3, 2014

So you never go to sites with embedded images?

Just to make this clear, because I'm not very up to date with what the kids are doing these days: You mean the kind of site where every joker can waste half a screenful with cat macros and reaction gifs and such, right?
posted by Dr Dracator at 7:36 AM on October 3, 2014 [3 favorites]

Getting rid of images was one of the best things to happen to the site. How many pictures of elephants shitting does one need to see in a lifetime?
posted by chunking express at 7:36 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

Every other site in the world seems to have gotten past those concerns.

Yeah, what ever happened with that? I guess the original issue was that you could put an image with a source that was a MetaFilter GET action URL, and the action would get taken. Have sites just moved away from ever using GET?
posted by smackfu at 7:39 AM on October 3, 2014

I would:
1. Love to have images back, and
2. Hate to have images back.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:39 AM on October 3, 2014 [4 favorites]

Looks good. Tweaking a personal css (git.io/normalize) for my needs because my browser (IE10) is locked down (because work) enough so I can't set default font size that way.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:58 AM on October 3, 2014

Another vote against images. I can't imagine why on earth MetaFilter would want to look like the rest of the internet.
posted by languagehat at 8:01 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

BTW, on my preferences I have "display funding message" checked. But on the modern theme it does not show up.
posted by beagle at 8:11 AM on October 3, 2014

Btw, the Mondo Image script can help you achieve a semi-imaged Metafilter.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:12 AM on October 3, 2014

BTW, on my preferences I have "display funding message" checked. But on the modern theme it does not show up.

That is the funding message on your user page, which does show up when I load your userpage. You're probably confusing the text with the old top banner in the Classic theme, which we moved to the footer in the new design.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:15 AM on October 3, 2014

Man, I would love if AskMe questions (not answers) could host pictures, because it's kind of annoying to click on all of the rando picdumps/ Gdrives/ whatever other places us weirdos decide to post the images we need to share.
posted by Think_Long at 8:26 AM on October 3, 2014 [3 favorites]

I guess the original issue was that you could put an image with a source that was a MetaFilter GET action URL, and the action would get taken. Have sites just moved away from ever using GET?

No site should ever have been using GET to trigger any action more complicated than fetching the resource identified by the GET URL. Side effects for GET requests = Doing It Wrong, always and everywhere.

Lots of sites still do it, though. Even sites like banks that should be better run.

My best understanding of the original rationale for yoinking IMG tags on MeFi was that Matt was quite reasonably unwilling to spend money on storage and bandwidth for hosting pissing elephant images, while the alternative (allowing IMG tags referencing sites outside MeFi's control) was a cross-site-scripting security fail.

Browsers have tightened up a fair bit since then, and it's harder to find one that will run arbitrary Javascript just by pointing an IMG tag at it, but once the images had been gone for a while the general consensus was that the site became less stunty and more useful.
posted by flabdablet at 8:30 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

If we ever brought images back, it would be for useful specific instances in stuff like Ask MeFi to go along with a question ("what kind of flower is this?") that would help people get answers. I can't ever imagine free-form embedded images as comments ever again, the pissing elephants were annoying and a nightmare.

One thing I've absolutely grown to love about io9 are the gif parties. They're generally fun and nice change of pace.

An occasional MeTa thread where we could do something similar could work.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:31 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

That seems like it would be a mod nightmare.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:38 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

mod nightmare

Ooh! I would be interested in an ongoing thread where our mods recount the MetaFilter-related dreams they've had while asleep.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 8:45 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

it could be interesting if mefi partnered with, say, mlkshk to provide image hosting
posted by nadawi at 9:11 AM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, we're working on a font prefs panel

That sounds perfect - yay! Thank you so much :)
posted by insectosaurus at 9:26 AM on October 3, 2014

If we ever brought images back, it would be for useful specific instances in stuff like Ask MeFi to go along with a question

What species of elephant is pissing in this image?

(And might the capacity of his bladder compare to that of a rhino?)
posted by Kabanos at 10:48 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

I should add that that rhino thread has a comment about an elephant pissing that is far more illustrative than any image could ever be.
posted by Kabanos at 10:51 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

I changed to Modern and liked it fine and then I opened it from my phone today and was ECSTATIC. This is really great thanks!
posted by janey47 at 11:07 AM on October 3, 2014

Just to make this clear, because I'm not very up to date with what the kids are doing these days: You mean the kind of site where every joker can waste half a screenful with cat macros and reaction gifs and such, right?

SO MANY HUGS FOR YOU

Yes, I don't object to images as such, but I have a violent hatred of the sort of images that tend to appear on sites that allow images.

I was frightened by rotten.com as a wee lass, what can I say.
posted by winna at 11:31 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

If we ever brought images back, ...
The change from 'never' to this sounds like the thin end of the wedge ;-)
posted by dg at 2:39 PM on October 3, 2014

Ugh, please never bring back inline images. I read MeFi at work, and even when there are posts all about cocks the text-only site is safe to load.
posted by janell at 2:42 PM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

Even Reddit doesn't allow inline images.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:14 PM on October 3, 2014

Anti-image people are objectively pro-Reddit.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:17 PM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

ugh I really painted myself into a corner there
posted by en forme de poire at 3:19 PM on October 3, 2014 [6 favorites]

could it please retain your logged-out saved preferences for use when you are logged out?
We'll consider it.

Thank you!
posted by Flunkie at 4:11 PM on October 3, 2014

Anti-image people are objectively pro-Reddit.

Stop trolling.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 8:31 PM on October 3, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm sorry if this was addressed elsewhere, but: when I'm on mobile (iPhone 5s) and follow a link in the middle of a comment thread, when I return I'm back at the top of the thread. Previously I think I'd be taken back to the comment I'd been at before. Is there a fix coming, or am I doing something wrong?
posted by chowflap at 8:38 PM on October 3, 2014

Is there a fix coming, or am I doing something wrong?

I don't think you're doing anything wrong but I'm also not seeing this problem. I'm testing things out on an iPhone 5s too and if I click something in the middle of the thread and then use the back button I go back to where I was in the thread. Losing your position on the page could be related to how much memory the iPhone has available for Safari.

One option you could try is checking the "Open links in new windows?" option in your MeFi preferences. Then when you click a link away from MeFi the page will open in a new tab. To get back to exactly where you were you'd click the switch tab button in the lower right corner. That might be more reliable than the back button.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:08 PM on October 3, 2014

Just a FYI: we added a hover state to links on all the subsites, in each color scheme, so you can tell when you're mousing over a bunch of links broken up across words as it highlights each link in a slightly lighter color. Should be live for everyone now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:02 PM on October 3, 2014 [3 favorites]

The mockup Kabanos made comparing the site in Source Sans Pro to Open Sans demonstrates the issue to my mind - Open Sans is easily ten times easier to read in that image.

Likewise. Modern theme with Source Sans Pro is pretty icky and slow-reading on all three of my devices; I'm going to stick with classic for a while. But I'm glad we have something new that helps some folk.
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:29 PM on October 3, 2014

Yeah, we're working on a font prefs panel that's similar to what you see on a Kindle. So imagine being able to pick 4-5 different font faces, change sizes in increments from the existing size like so: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and other options (dark/light, titles yes/no).

That's fantastic - thanks!
posted by whir at 11:32 PM on October 3, 2014 [2 favorites]

we added a hover state to links on all the subsites, in each color scheme

Thank you, it works fine on my setup and I like it.
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:17 AM on October 4, 2014

One thing I've absolutely grown to love about io9 are the gif parties. They're generally fun and nice change of pace.

I am now imagining a MeFiChan, which would require a verified MeFi handle for posting privileges.

"Imagining" being the operative word here.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:19 AM on October 4, 2014

Apologies if this has been answered but my search is pulling up nothing.. Where is the dark mode widget on mobile? (Using chrome on android)
posted by faustian slip at 5:56 AM on October 4, 2014

How did I totally miss this thread? Did not know about the opt in... now opted in. Looks great.

faustian slip, go to the main subsite page and scroll down. It's at the 'top' of the sidebar content.
posted by zennie at 6:20 AM on October 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

faustian slip, go to the main subsite page and scroll down.

The devil is in the details.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:34 AM on October 4, 2014 [3 favorites]

Huh. My unicorn/narwhal buttons aren't working any more. I thought they worked after I switched to Modern. Has something changed subsequent to that?
posted by rmd1023 at 7:20 AM on October 4, 2014

heh, faustian slip, tap the 'Skip' button at the top right of the home page and you'll magically be where the Dark Mode button is.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:20 AM on October 4, 2014

Pony: a toggle on the preferences page making dark mode permanent for logged in users. Not cookie dependent, please, as they're all deleted when closing the browser.
posted by Bangaioh at 11:24 AM on October 4, 2014

So imagine being able to pick 4-5 different font faces, change sizes in increments from the existing size like so: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and other options (dark/light, titles yes/no).

Pls add Comic Sans to the list. kthxbye.
posted by pjern at 11:37 AM on October 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm a bit late to this party, but it looks excellent. It's retained the spirit of the old site (especially in dark mode) with a pleasant, updated aesthetic. Nice work!
posted by Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra at 11:38 AM on October 4, 2014

So imagine being able to pick 4-5 different font faces, change sizes in increments from the existing size like so: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 and other options (dark/light, titles yes/no).

Pls add Comic Sans to the list. kthxbye.

Agreed.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:04 PM on October 4, 2014

Comic Neue!
posted by zamboni at 1:01 PM on October 4, 2014 [4 favorites]

I did a find in this page and read the first 20 or so comments mentioning "title" in them. I don't want to take us back to the spirited title debate on MeTa, I just want to be able to switch them off. I tried the new design out and think that there were good things about it in dark mode on my phone, but have switched back to classic for the time being after not being able to set the header font size in the new skin.
posted by cgk at 5:49 PM on October 4, 2014

Finally looking at the site on a Windows 8 laptop; it's 2 years old and doesn't have the highest-res screen. As someone said above, the font looked terrible until I turned on DirectWrite in Opera and Chrome (now enabled by default in Chrome, but some sites look crap with it - guess those are the dinosaurs now). I'm glad you're putting in a font size picker because the site looks pretty good if I zoom out one level, but I still find the font a little heavy in dark mode. Another suggestion is to change the formatting buttons below the comment box - they look quite small in comparison with the new expansiveness of the site (oddly, they also get messed up when I zoom out). And one small bug (?) is the titles on the category pages in Metatalk are a blue color that is hard to read in Dark mode. (The category pages in AskMe, for example, have the same colors as the main page).

Anyway, this whole redesign and implementation is really a tour de force, that of the almost 1200 comments in this thread, most are positive or constructive about details on all sorts of platforms and browsers (I love MeFi for the minutiae) is pretty amazing.
posted by bluefly at 6:19 PM on October 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

I like this because now when my snassy 11-year-old daughter supposes, "Oh, are you Filtering again??" I can give her a peek at the screen and she knows it's not MetaFilter, because no blue or green background.

A++ would filter again
posted by jeoc at 6:44 PM on October 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

Another suggestion is to change the formatting buttons below the comment box

Yep, they're tiny and blurry in the new design and it's on the to-do list to fix them up soon.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:33 PM on October 4, 2014

Oh wow, I'm late to the party on this. Being only an occasional MeTa reader and lately browsing the site on mobile, I didn't even realize this was going on until this morning. It looks great! Really fantastic work by all involved parties!

There are aspects I could quibble about, but in most cases it really just boils down to matters of personal preference. On the whole, I think the redesign does a great job of modernizing the look of the site while retaining the spirit of Mefi (which surely must have been the source of a lot of work, planning, anguish, etc.).

The mobile layout in particular is wonderful. Love, love love the green accent color. I missed the more yellowish color for about 30 seconds, and then that feeling evaporated. And thanks so much for including the Dark Mode. Speaking for me personally, without the deep background colors it just doesn't feel like MetaFilter. I'd have adjusted to it (or used something like GreaseMonkey to compensate), but I'm glad I don't have to.

Thanks sincerely to Matt, the Mefi team, and the community of posters/commenters that have made MetaFilter a daily source of enjoyment for a ridiculously long time. Long may Mefi reign!
posted by kryptondog at 9:21 AM on October 5, 2014 [3 favorites]

Money losing bug: deck ads don't display anymore even though I've whitelisted metafilter in ad-block.
posted by double block and bleed at 2:56 PM on October 5, 2014

I see deck ads in both desktop and mobile, so it might be just you, double block and bleed.
posted by rtha at 3:23 PM on October 5, 2014

I've had them crap out on me randomly. It stinks because it blocks the page load finishing while it chokes on loading the ad.

Also, if you're a member and you don't have the ads enabled you're actually missing out. I see all kinds of great stuff that I might not have found out about any other way.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:56 PM on October 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

I generally like the Deck ads just fine but there have been random times this past week or two that their server appears to be non-functional leading to non-page loads. Maybe worth trying to make that part of the page load last/later?
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 5:21 PM on October 5, 2014

It looks like maybe extra padding or an extra line break is being inserted before a <blockquote> and it's taking three carriage returns after closing the tag to get two line breaks.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:15 PM on October 5, 2014

it might be just you, double block and bleed.

It so often is.
posted by double block and bleed at 4:27 AM on October 6, 2014

I like the modern theme in dark mode on my PC (Win7, Chrome 37.0.2062.124 m, 27" HD monitor), and I wanted to like it on my Nexus 7 (Chrome Beta), where I do most of my metafilter reading, but I got an eye strain headache after viewing the site in dark mode on my tablet for about 15 minutes, and had to change back to classic mode. I'm looking forward to having more control over the fonts, which I hope will mitigate that issue.

Register another vote for each of the following:
Fit more text content into the viewport.
Make the autoscrolling menu header disappear when not needed.
Preferring the old yellow link color to the new green color.
Thinking it might have been better to keep the old logos (or slightly modernized versions of them).
Finding it a little unexpected and inconsistent that clicking on the subsite title in the autoscrolling menu header doesn't take me to that subsite's home page.

I also agree with Rhaomi w/r/t wondering whether defaulting to the white view for new visitors will be the best way to keep them from bouncing. Perhaps modernizing the theme and keeping the unique (classic) color scheme w/ dark mode as the default would be a better choice. The modernized theme might make the site appear more trustworthy to new visitors, while keeping the unique color scheme(s) could contribute to strengthening / maintaining the Metafilter brand. I think it's definitely something that's worth running some good A/B tests on.

And, to round it out, I'd like to give you all kudos for an excellent redesign and rollout. The only deal-breaker for me (so far) is the issue with the fonts on my tablet. The other things I mentioned are all more in the 'nice-to-have' category. Well done!
posted by syzygy at 5:47 AM on October 6, 2014

It makes me a little sad that the grandfathered-in custom CSS on certain users' profiles isn't showing up with the new theme, eg: ThePinkSuperhero, 31d1 (soothing after #FF66CC), Gator.... Those were like MeFi easter eggs!

(I'm really digging that old-skool tilde-expansion thing, though, as you can see!)
posted by Westringia F. at 10:29 AM on October 6, 2014 [9 favorites]

iPhone 4S user here (been waiting a week to let things sink in):

Can we get rid of the Metafilter banner at the top? Wastes a TON of space for no reason on mobile.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 11:17 AM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure this is something you can do anything about, but when I'm logged out and on portrait view (on an iPhone 5s, if it matters), the ads on individual post pages are wider than the text area. This means that as I scroll up and down, the text area bounces back and forth unless I'm careful to scroll perfectly vertically; and if I accidentally pan the viewport to the right and cut off the text at the left, the browser thinks I'm trying to swipe-navigate back when I try to pan left again to get the text re-centered. Is it possible to keep the ads no wider than the text, or is this a retraining-myself-to-scroll-better situation?
posted by dorque at 1:18 PM on October 6, 2014

I can't duplicate that problem anywhere on an iPhone, dorque. Can you send a specific URL where you're seeing that poblem? And are you using Safari or something else?
posted by pb (staff) at 1:31 PM on October 6, 2014

Hmm, it happens to me on just about every post, but currently for instance there's this one; here's a screenshot showing the ad wider than the text, which allows the text to get cut off at the left. And yep, stock Safari browser.
posted by dorque at 2:33 PM on October 6, 2014

Followup: I can fix it by pinch-zooming out, in which case the ad image is still wider than the text but at least not wider than my screen any more; but I have to do it on every pageload, it doesn't persist.
posted by dorque at 2:37 PM on October 6, 2014

Thanks for the extra info. I do see it now with image ads—not with text ads. I'll see if we can fix that up.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:52 PM on October 6, 2014

First I want to say that I'm loving this redesign. Congratulations to everyone on their hard work - it's better in so many ways.

That said, I am also having a hard time with the font size and line spacing on desktop. I've always been of the opinion that ideal type size and line spacing is really dependent on what kind of user behavior you're expecting. For example, Medium's really large type and generous line spacing feels nice because the thing you're usually doing on Medium is straight reading of a single piece. Giving the words a lot of room to breathe in that context makes sense. The flipside of this is the greater information density of Wikipedia (other design issues aside), which feels appropriate because Wikipedia is dominated by the scan->read->scan->read type of behavior. I mean, just imagine how annoying it would be if Wikipedia used type as big as Medium.

The way I use Metafilter is more of the scan->read->scan style than straight reading and with this in mind I think the words are being given a little too much room to breath.

Once again, though, really loving everything else.
posted by Defenestrator at 10:08 PM on October 6, 2014 [5 favorites]

Here's a style I made and am using that changes the typefaces from Source Sans Pro to Open Sans and Montserrat to Signika, as well as adding scanlines back into the header, removing the custom highlight colours, and reducing line spacing issues. I think it noticeably improves readability. You will need to download and install the new typefaces (links are provided) or change them in the code to something else.

Applies across all subsites and in both dark and light modes.

Screenshots:
main page in dark mode,
main page in light mode,
comments page in dark mode,
comments page in light mode,
writing this comment :D
posted by Quilford at 11:07 PM on October 6, 2014 [4 favorites]

"Here's a style I made and am using that changes the typefaces from Source Sans Pro to Open Sans and Montserrat to Signika..."

I like that quite a bit. I found that I had to reboot Win 8.1 to get the newly-installed fonts to work. They were there, installed (I double-checked), and I even restarted Chrome, but only after restarting the OS did the changes appear.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:56 AM on October 7, 2014

> The dark mode is pretty cool, but the button was really hard to find and I'd like to have it in the floating menu bar so I can switch at anytime.

Seconding this, sort of: could the dark mode button be in the header and footer of every page, in the "Members" section, perhaps?

Another pony: a preference to toggle the floating bar on/off.
posted by Bangaioh at 6:08 PM on October 7, 2014

This article may possibly shed some light on the janky scrolling some (myself included) see with older iOS versions (assuming you're hooking in to the scroll event for the floating menu bar -- I haven't actually dug into the code).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:21 PM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Logged in on a fresh machine and it immediately went to the old style. Thanks for that!
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:59 PM on October 8, 2014

We made some changes to the fixed header today. At desktop width you should see a close icon on the far right. That allows you to remove it and a tab will appear that allows you to bring it back. At mobile width the header will disappear as you scroll down and then appear again if you scroll up. That should help recover some screen space yet have the menu handy if you need it.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:48 PM on October 9, 2014 [18 favorites]

Great improvement!
posted by naju at 5:20 PM on October 9, 2014

That's exactly what I was hoping for. Works perfectly on mobile. Thanks!
posted by whir at 6:01 PM on October 9, 2014

At mobile width the header will disappear as you scroll down and then appear again if you scroll up.

Just as I had suggested -- huzzah!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:02 PM on October 9, 2014

I'm not seeing the 'close header' icon.

Also, it looks like Chat, Labs, and Podcast are gone from the 'More' dropdown?
posted by carsonb at 6:42 PM on October 9, 2014

Header change is marvellous, pb, thank you!
posted by arcticseal at 6:47 PM on October 9, 2014

Hey, you fixed the weird thing that happened when you switch from portrait to landscape and back on the mobile view! Awesome, thank you so much! Now all we need is Dark Mode as a preference and my life will be complete...
posted by Athanassiel at 7:17 PM on October 9, 2014

I'm not seeing the 'close header' icon.

It's available in the fixed menu that shows up when you scroll down the page. It only appears at desktop width—the close icon will not be there on your phone. It's on the far right and looks like an x.

Also, it looks like Chat, Labs, and Podcast are gone from the 'More' dropdown?

Thanks, should be working now.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:31 PM on October 9, 2014

A couple of new header-related bug reports:

In IE11, the tab to bring back the floating header is positioned incorrectly.
Firefox no longer detects and corrects for the floating header when scrolling up or down a page. So after you press Space or PgDn, you sometimes miss a line of text.

The latter one is actually a Firefox bug (and I'll try to file a testcase in Bugzilla tomorrow), but maybe there's a workaround? It was working correctly before today's changes.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:13 PM on October 9, 2014

On my iPad Mini (Safari, iOS8) the header doesn't always appear and when it does the X hovers just below the bar in the right-hand corner.
posted by Kattullus at 2:09 AM on October 10, 2014

Yep, same for me on a mini.
posted by chunking express at 4:46 AM on October 10, 2014

That floating header is now flickering for me on scroll, ironically on every page I've so far visited except the one where I'm now typing this.

For example, if I scroll up an inch, it momentarily appears an inch down and then hops back to the top, so if I keep scrolling it's very flickery.

Chrome (up to date) on Win8.
posted by emilyw at 5:26 AM on October 10, 2014

Very minor issue: when editing text in the comment box (Mac/Safari), selecting and deleting text leaves a horizontal line where the text was. It doesn't seem to cause any problems and disappears when new text is typed, but it's a noticeable oddity.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:42 AM on October 10, 2014

I know it's been brought up a few times but I can't find here if it's been addressed or not. I'm getting a rotational bug on my phone and I'd classify it as a moderate level of annoyance.

This is what it looks like:

Scrolling through a thread, la, la, la.
Rotate the phone to landscape, lose my place.
Rotate back, everything goes all wonky.
posted by phunniemee at 6:54 AM on October 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the bug reports everyone. We're looking into the IE and iOS icon position problems. The Firefox Page Down problem isn't trivial to fix so we're giving that some more thought.

emilyw, I think we fixed up the Chrome/Win 8 flicker.

Dip Flash, not sure there's a fix for that line in the textarea. It sounds like it might be something at the browser level.

Which version of Android and which browser are you using, phunniemee?
posted by pb (staff) at 11:28 AM on October 10, 2014

That would be helpful probably, right? I'm on Android 4.4.4 and the latest update of Chrome.
posted by phunniemee at 11:36 AM on October 10, 2014

Same problem as phunniemeee, also Android 4.4.4 and current Chrome.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:44 AM on October 10, 2014

I had the floating header issue on Chrome/Win 7 and it is now fixed.
posted by ajryan at 1:00 PM on October 10, 2014

I'm delighted by the option to hide the floating bar. Makes paging down much better. Thanks!

On Safari 7.1 on Mac OS 10.9.5, I am seeing some positioning oddness with the buttons to hide and show it though. The X floats below the bar, and when the bar is hidden, the tab to reveal it also floats below where the bar was, rather than being attached to the top of the screen.
posted by JiBB at 1:16 PM on October 10, 2014

The closing x icon should look better in Safari, on iOS, and in IE11.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:48 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's burgers all the way down.
posted by fleacircus at 5:45 PM on October 10, 2014

The new vanishing title bar makes it impossible to complete a search from the drop down menu (iOS 7, iPhone 4S, safari).
posted by sevenyearlurk at 8:45 PM on October 10, 2014

I have the same problem as phunniemee. I thought it was fixed, but no. I'm on Android 4.4.2 and Chrome 37. Doubletapping mostly restores it to fit in the screen, but it still floats horizontally in a way that it shouldn't and is disconcerting.

I miss the floating header but everyone else seems to have loathed it. Sigh.
posted by Athanassiel at 10:44 PM on October 10, 2014

It's burgers all the way down.

But with just two lines, isn't the header-revealing tab more of a grilled cheese sandwich?

(Also, thanks, pb. It seems to be in the right spot for me now.)
posted by JiBB at 3:07 AM on October 11, 2014

Can I ask if support for Opera on Android is in the plans? The top menus have serious issues - hamburger never closes, user icon never opens (this is Opera 12.10 on Android 4.4.2). I'll live with the classic theme if I have to, should I switch ?
posted by Dr Dracator at 8:03 AM on October 11, 2014

Hitting the space bar while typing is acting like a "page down" command. (This is on a mac/safari; I had to compose this in another program and copy/paste it into the comment box; it was working normally earlier this morning.)
posted by Dip Flash at 8:08 AM on October 11, 2014

I am having the same problem with Mac/Firefox (latest version) - it also doesn't seem to like punctuation, but that may be a side-effect of the page-down effect. It happened in both fanfare and MeTa.
posted by julen at 8:21 AM on October 11, 2014

The problem is the same in firefox (this also needed composing in another window).
posted by Dip Flash at 8:24 AM on October 11, 2014

Ditto re the space bar acting like page-down when trying to type a comment. I'm using my phone for this; it was exhibiting the problem in Firefox on OSX.
posted by rtha at 8:45 AM on October 11, 2014

That should be better now; we just had a bit of code in the wrong place by accident, it sounds like. Anybody still seeing that please do let us know, though.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:05 AM on October 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Seems to be all good for me now.
posted by rtha at 9:20 AM on October 11, 2014

I'll live with the classic theme if I have to, should I switch ?

We'd like to support a wider number of browsers than we do now, definitely. But it could be a while before we get there. If you're getting a better experience with the classic theme I'd go with that. It was honed and tweaked over 15 years. We have just scratched the surface on honing the modern theme and it could be a while before we get to all of the bugs that are in specific browser/OS combos.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:49 AM on October 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

Where is the login link supposed to be in the Modern Theme? I got logged out on my phone (iPhone 4S, version 5.1.1) and when the page re-loaded in Modern, nothing happened when I touched the 'Hamburger' image or the head-silhouette on the right. The 'Skip' button worked, but then I couldn't figure out how to get back up to the top of the page without scrolling all the way back up. I ended up googling 'metafilter login page' and was able to get back to functionality of Classic mode (and out of Panic Flail Mode).

I haven't been testing Modern since the launch, though I have read/skimmed this entire thread, but I don't think I saw any mentions of the hamburger link not working, though I did see it was invisible for some users.
posted by oh yeah! at 1:22 PM on October 11, 2014

Where is the login link supposed to be in the Modern Theme?

Sorry about the trouble. The login link is behind the person icon on the top right. Next time you run into trouble in the modern theme you can quickly switch to the Classic theme at the very bottom of the page. Click 'Skip' and scroll to the very bottom. You should see the link 'Classic Theme'. Click that and you'll get the classic theme.

By the way, there's a 'Posts' button that looks like the 'Skip' button near the bottom of the page. That will take you back to the top of the page.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:21 PM on October 11, 2014

Is this the right place to post bug reports?

Here to report an iPad (mini Retina, iOS 7.2.1) bug:

with either Modern or Plain style, data entry in the comment box is very wonky.

with Safari: space bars I enter are not recognized; autocorrect puts the spaces back in but when I press space to acknowledge the entry box closes, then clears, not having posted.

with Atomic Web 7.0.1:, whether spoofing as mobile Safari or as IE 9. This time I can type in spaces, but when I use MF's link button to enter an URL, as paste ends the entry box closes, then clears, not having posted.

And a question: why is there a unique (and tiny, and ugly) format bar for mobile Safari? With other browsers I see B Ilink flush right at the bottom, same size as text. With mobile Safari, there's a teeny gray bar spanning the entry box, with 25% height letters I can't see.
posted by Jesse the K at 3:25 PM on October 11, 2014

with Safari: space bars I enter are not recognized;

It's checking out ok here. Are you using an external bluetooth keyboard by chance? We've had a few reports that those sometimes behave in odd ways. I don't have Atomic Web handy to test. I'll add that to the list to test.

...why is there a unique (and tiny, and ugly) format bar for mobile Safari?

On the mobile version of the site we have a toolbar that includes common characters for writing HTML: < > and /. Because those characters are often one or two taps away from the main keyboard, having them right there helps quite a bit. iPad folks lobbied to get that toolbar as well. This is what it is supposed to look like.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:54 PM on October 11, 2014

It makes me a little sad that the grandfathered-in custom CSS on certain users' profiles isn't showing up with the new theme, eg: ThePinkSuperhero

Heh, I just now became aware of this when somebody asked if I was sad my profile is no longer pink. Surely this is just another reason for everybody to stick with classic! Be an old fuddy-duddy like me! DOWN WITH CHANGE!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:31 PM on October 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sorry about the trouble. The login link is behind the person icon on the top right.

Behind how? The person icon is just a static image on my phone, nothing happens when I click or swipe it. Or do you mean that's where I should see it when/if it icon & hamburger do start working for me someday?

Next time you run into trouble in the modern theme you can quickly switch to the Classic theme at the very bottom of the page.

Found it! It was so tiny I looked right past it.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:54 PM on October 11, 2014

Or do you mean that's where I should see it when/if it icon & hamburger do start working for me someday?

Yep, exactly. When you tap it a section is supposed to slide in with the log in and sign up links.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:53 PM on October 11, 2014

Bug report: Typing in the search bar on mobile immediately shoots me to the top of the page, with no way to easily recover my spot.

Most updated version of Chrome on Android 4.4.2.
posted by Defenestrator at 8:46 PM on October 11, 2014

On my iPad min (7.1.2) I've had to switch back to the original/classic mode. I'm a heavy tab user, and as I'm reading MeFi, I tend to open links and threads in new tabs. But under the new versions, most of the time (say 80%) I just can't get the link to respond and give me that option. It either does nothing or opens in the existing tab. I should add I usually surf while logged out, at least on my mobile devices.
posted by sardonyx at 9:57 PM on October 11, 2014

Ah, sorry, just realized paleyellowwithorange and MuChao reported similar problems.
posted by sardonyx at 10:03 PM on October 11, 2014

Bug:

In mobile view, I just zoomed in to favorite a MeFi comment, and was bemused to see just the 'r' of the MeFi logo floating above the rest of the page content. This happened upon repeated tests, but only when the title bar was visible when I began to zoom. Couldn't replicate the bug in MeTa.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 4:29 AM on October 12, 2014

Also, this comment box suddenly seems to be much smaller. It only contains space for four lines of text to be visible at a time. That's very un-useful.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 4:32 AM on October 12, 2014

After a few weeks of Modern, two minor complaints:

-the hamburger menu feels unresponsive on my phone, because there is no color change when I tap a menu option. Until the new page loads, I don't know whether anything is happening, or whether I need to tap again.

-on the desktop, I like to scroll down by parking the mouse (trackball) in the vertical scroll bar and left-clicking when I'm ready for the next page. The scrollbar now fades after a while and clicking it does not work; I need to move the mousepointer out of the margin and back to restore the scrollbar (Win7 IE 11, not in Chrome).

Otherwise, I've already forgotten all about the old themes.
posted by bleston hamilton station at 11:21 AM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

> pb

1. I'm always using the OS standard onscreen keyboard (in my case, US-English + emoji)

1.5 I caved and got 8.0, and then tried again. Spaces were behaving correctly, but after around 25 characters, input disappears into an infinite hole (including the home and sleep/wake keys). Twice Safari crashed. That hasn't been happening in other sites.

2. I'm on an iPad mini Retina; could that be why the format bar is so tiny vertically?

3. I tried to take screenshots, but hosting them somewhere and pointing you at them is beyond my skill set anymore. It seems I need to be a beta-tester level to raise an issue, so I will back out. Thank heavens for Plain (where the format bar is also a problem). The work-around is only comment when I have my notebook, and eventually your krewe will be able to fix it. I hope there are enough users with the requisite skillset to debug any problems.

4. Best wishes.
posted by Jesse the K at 3:32 PM on October 13, 2014

Another very, very minor issue. In mobile (iPhone 6, latest iOS update, safari) on the front page clicking the "Recent posts" makes a pulldown menu appear which can't be gotten rid of by clicking anywhere else. You have to reload it or click a link to get it to go away.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:02 PM on October 13, 2014

You have to reload it or click a link to get it to go away.

Or you can click the arrow to close it. We'll look at that.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:57 PM on October 13, 2014

Loving the new header behaviour - lets me take full advantage of the limited height on my iPhone.

Pony request: on iPad, there isn't a way to quickly skip to the end of a post. Any good way to do that?
posted by adrianhon at 3:03 PM on October 14, 2014

Any good way to do that?

Nope, not right now. It's something we're working on.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:40 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

As requested by mathowie I have used the Modern template for a few weeks before commenting. I find it easy to use and intuitive on the desktop, I have only looked at the site on the mobile phone using Modern today and it looks fine. Otherwise I have used the Plain theme on the mobile phone (Android 4.2 default browser) as I have had no issues with it.

My only gripe with the new look so far is the readability of the font on the desktop (using Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer). Being able to set the font size globally and not have to worry about which browser or computer I was using to read the site was a great feature which I miss. If I were on a computer or browser that I did not have administrative privileges on I would see the site according to my preferences, now that is not the case. Restricting the width of the text display is helpful in a world of letterbox shaped monitors, but their native resolution also results in text that is too small for me to comfortably read. I am aware that I can make settings adjustments in the browsers to increase text size, which I will be doing where possible.
posted by asok at 3:07 AM on October 15, 2014

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet but one issue I am having (on firefox, windows 8 desktop) with the header:

when i hit the space bar to go down a full page, it counts the space hidden by the header, which means frequently the next line I want to read ends up underneath the header and I lose my place.

I don't know if this is something I change in my settings where I tell it how far a spacebar should move the page, or if it's something in your settings. I'm guessing mine - if so, any idea what the fix is?
posted by rebent at 5:53 AM on October 15, 2014

I don't know if this is something I change in my settings...

No, it isn't something you can easily change on your end. We've been experimenting with different solutions to this problem but we haven't one that doesn't introduce other problems yet. (The spacebar problems people had a few days ago are related to some test code to fix this problem that made it out to the live site.) For now your best bet is to close the fixed header. Or you can use the MeFi keyboard shortcuts.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:22 AM on October 15, 2014

It's not a bug necessarily, it may be a design decision, but the way some of the menus look on my iPhone 4, iOS 6.1, in the dark theme is sort of ugly - the white box for "my activity", "skip", etc. kind of stands out.

Also, still no "hamburger" on that device, which I'm used to now, but it took me forever to find those drop down menus.

Thanks for making the navigation header auto-hide though, that makes a huge difference.
posted by Rumple at 1:19 PM on October 15, 2014

I still really like Quilford's Stylish style. At first I though I'd use this style as a template to build on myself, but I have come to really like it as is and haven't changed a thing.
I am very happy with this solution and I read that font choice support is coming, which is great as well, but I hope you will continue to evaluate the default fonts as well. I didn't think I was that much of a font-critical person, but the source sans pro font on the desktop (latest osx, non-retina, all browsers) was bad enough for me to want to stop reading the site.
posted by blub at 2:27 AM on October 17, 2014

Just gonna say, after a couple of weeks of using this, I love it, but I really miss the '23 new posts and 106 new comments since you last visited' blurb in the right hand sidebar. Not enough to switch back, but man it'd be good if it was an additional block above/below the dark mode one.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:33 AM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

You have to reload it or click a link to get it to go away.

Or you can click the arrow to close it. We'll look at that.

Ah ha! Now I get it, and it works fine. That's a super minor thing then that I'd suggest changing at some point, because the downward arrow signals "click here to open" and should turn into an upward arrow to signify "click here to close." I wasn't reading the down arrow on the opened list as signifying "click here to close," which is perhaps a failure of imagination on my part but is clearly how I've been trained by user interfaces.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:31 AM on October 17, 2014

Yeah, I agree. I guess for now you could think of it as, "select the currently selected page to close the menu." You don't have to click the arrow necessarily—it could be the words of the top entry too.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:07 AM on October 17, 2014

May I just say thankyou! For making MeMail way more easily seen - I had many messages I hadn't scrolled down far enough to see before but now they are right there and easily accessible, so thanks.
posted by goo at 9:02 PM on October 18, 2014

I hesitate to ask because my ponies don't even get the latch on the gate rattled, but is there any way to include an option on your profile settings to _not_ receive the little red circle "flag" at the top of your page (that has a number) that indicates you have MeMail?

I'm finding it distracting enough to manually go into mail, scroll down to mark as read, even when it reads "1". I realize this is my problem but as it didn't exist in previous incarnation can we at least provide users a way to opt out of it?

I don't want to opt out of MeMail altogether to avoid it that's like killing a gnat with a hammer.

I also realize this is probably a trivial issue from a tech job point of view - however from a *user* pov it is pretty noticeable difference and resides in high priority real estate (upper right-hand area of page).

(Apologies if this has been addressed above.)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:26 PM on October 19, 2014

I wrote: "...as it didn't exist in previous incarnation..."

Correction: Now that I think about it, I think it did, but it was far easier to ignore (at least for me).
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:48 PM on October 19, 2014

Bug report for Modern in the Recent Activity view:

In Professional White, an AskMe comment of my own that has been marked as a "Best Answer" is both outlined in grey, and has a (darker) grey background (the outline indicates the comment is mine, the background indicates it was marked "Best Answer"). However, in Modern, that same comment only shows the outline (e.g. that it's my comment), with no indication that it has been marked "Best Answer".
posted by tocts at 9:16 AM on October 20, 2014

I'm not 100% sure if this is an OS X thing and I've only noticed it on MeFi, but lately I've been having a weird error where if I try and highlight and copy a long paragraph of text --- something where I have to scroll up or down in order to highlight the whole thing --- the site will freeze, the page goes blank, and the scroll bar slowly begins scrolling all the way up to the top of the thread. The only way to fix it is to reload the page, which usually logs me out of the site also.
posted by Diablevert at 10:01 AM on October 20, 2014

For some reason, yesterday my iPod Touch 6G collapsed and I had to reset it. When resetting, it updated the software from iOS 8.0 to the new 8.0.2 (12A405). When it came back, metafilter was back to the classic mode and I had to set it back to Modern. Unfortunately, the collapse of the iPod must have taken some brain cells with it, because I can no longer find the Dark Mode option and I'm stuck being blinded. I apologize unreservedly, but I have not read the entire thread as I'm only human, and have read only the last dozen entries or so in case it's a new problem discussed recently, but I see nobody else with this issue. How do I find the Dark Mode on my iPod again? Btw., I would expect you should be able to turn that on/off in Preferences - it's the natural place - and am a bit disappointed that it's not controllable in the preference panel one would expect. Entirely possible that I'm missing it somewhere though. I've looked carefully now, and can find it nowhere. Any solution? Anyone else having this issue? Thanks!
posted by VikingSword at 10:13 AM on October 20, 2014

VikingSword, click 'Skip' at the top right of the MetaFilter home page. That will take you to the sidebar content and you should see the Dark Mode button.

tocts, your comment that is also a best answer should look better in Recent Activity.

Diablevert, many people have reported scrolling and highlighting problems in iOS8. As far as we know there isn't a way to fix it on our end. We're still looking into it.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:32 AM on October 20, 2014

joseph conrad is fully awesome, we don't have any plans to make hiding the unread count a preference but we appreciate the feedback. If you can run Stylish, this style will remove it for you:

.unread-messages {display: none;}
posted by pb (staff) at 10:36 AM on October 20, 2014

Oh, thank you, pb, that took care of it. Believe it or not, in my desperate flailing, I did once click on 'Skip', but by then I was so frazzled I didn't even notice that it's where that option was hiding.

I still think this should be available in the preference panel *in addition*, because dunces like me - and folk who don't enjoy detective work - should be able to find it easily in the place most likely to be "preferences". The way it could work, is that when you switch, and are in Modern, one of the options appears in the Preference panel of 'Dark Mode' control.

Thank you again!
posted by VikingSword at 10:46 AM on October 20, 2014

Sorry, pb. I had just had it happen again and wanted to mention it before I forgot. Should have searched the thread.
posted by Diablevert at 1:18 PM on October 20, 2014

I'm not 100% sure if this is an OS X thing and I've only noticed it on MeFi, but lately I've been having a weird error where if I try and highlight and copy a long paragraph of text --- something where I have to scroll up or down in order to highlight the whole thing --- the site will freeze, the page goes blank, and the scroll bar slowly begins scrolling all the way up to the top of the thread. The only way to fix it is to reload the page, which usually logs me out of the site also.

Applying today's iOS 8.1 software update seems to fix a number of problems with Safari copy/paste issues (including on Metafilter).
posted by a lungful of dragon at 2:52 PM on October 20, 2014

OH MY GOD I SWITCHED TODAY AND IT'S THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME
posted by The Minotaur at 5:24 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

After about a month of living with the new design, I've switched back to the old one. I don't like the icons or the way the site rearranges itself when I turn my phone from portrait to landscape , I think the green is ugly, it takes noticeably longer to render, and I hate the floating menu bar (as I've hated every floating menu bar ever). The old design, while simple and a little crusty, just works better and looks better for me. I like some of the ideas behind the new design, but overall I find it uglier and more of a pain in the butt to use both on my phone and on my laptop. I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with Classic forever.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:01 PM on October 22, 2014

Just a quick note in case it got lost in the fray -- svg icons on menus are still not appearing on iOS 6 for me (Safari, Chrome, but same renderer so same meat different gravy). Edge case, I know, and weird because SVG is ostensibly supported there, but.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:30 PM on October 22, 2014

Oh and this is so utterly nitpicky as to be ridiculous, but I'll end with a suggestion to simplify your CSS maintenance, so hopefully it won't annoy. I've noticed (modern theme, of course, dark mode) that the contrast between darker elements and the lighter background is less pronounced than that in Metatalk. It's very very very very mildly jarring to my greater sense of wellbeing. Heh.

I suggested this to Matt during the beta phase (but it may have slipped through the cracks, or there may have been a conscious decision not to do so), but if you just used an alpha transparency for the darker shade, like background:rgba(0,0,0,0.1); or something, that single declaration would cover every single instance of those elements on every subsite, and you'd only need to fiddle with it one place, rather than individual hex colors declared on each (a darker grey 3f3f3f , darker blue #045286 , darker green# 284d2c and so on).

Just a suggestion. All browser support alpha, many version backward.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:08 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anyone noticing an annoying white flash when swiping back a page on iOS Safari with the dark theme on? I think it's a temporary hiccup where it reverts to white for a split second.
posted by zamboni at 3:06 PM on October 23, 2014

Yeah, there's a fair bit of the old FOUC (flash of unstyled content) going on here and there, sporadically. I've been trying to figure out why, given how lightweight the actual page content is, so as to offer some suggestions toward fixing it, but without much luck thus far.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:22 PM on October 23, 2014

Clicking on the username in MeFi Labs - Recent YouTube Links in MetaFilter Posts is broken. It points at http://labs.metafilter.com/user/n
posted by unliteral at 9:31 PM on October 23, 2014

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