Hi, here is some feedback on the new style:
- on the home page, everything is in the same colour, and it's hard to distinguish anything (I cleared the cache so I don't think I'm missing anything, but it feels like it);
- the project list, IRC info and Patreon link on the top right take a lot of the width of the page, and leave empty spaces to the right of the thread list. Could it be moved horizontally at the top of the page, so there is more space horizontally for the posts ?
- I believe the project list is on the home page to help find new projects we don't know, but since there is only new project every few month wouldn't it be better to save some space and have some sort of featured project at the top for a few days when there is a new project ? (Like the "[Notice] Surfing with style" message).
- A small detail, the "Welcome to Handmade Network." text contains 3 paragraphs each one of 1 sentence. And at the size of my navigator window, each sentence takes 2 lines, with only a word on the second line so it doesn't look great;
- I like the more compact thread list on the home page, could it show more threads, or have some sort of page system ? The reason is, I use it to see what's new on the forum, and at the moment, if I come after a few days, there is no enough entries to catch up to what I last saw. I usually only log in when I want to reply to something, so the "unread post" feature is not that useful to me;
- On the home page in the post list:
--- the date is shown twice;
--- is the date even really needed in that list ? And the name ? Avatar only ?;
--- I liked the "Project name > Forum name > Thread title" better than the way it is now;
--- A background that alternate between each post would help distinguish the different posts;
- In the forums, the difference in the background colour between posts is not big enough;
- It's more of a feature request, but I would like an option to hide signatures and bio, and display smaller avatars in the forums;

mrmixer
I liked the "Project name > Forum name > Thread title" better than the way it is now;

Seconded. The design is going in some interesting direction, but projects are what we're here for. I don't think about them anymore when I read the home feed, and we can't have that.

One example: Reading "Forum: MotionBox" feels like MotionBox was demoted. And someone new won't immediately know it's a project.

mrmixer
-- A background that alternate between each post would help distinguish the different posts;
- In the forums, the difference in the background colour between posts is not big enough;

Yeah it's all same-y. I had liked the contrast you provided by white boxes against redish background so my eyes knows where to rest.

additionally in the home page post list I would like the "new post" marker to come back.

Any way to change it back to a black text on white background style? This color scheme hurts my eyes!

richtw
Any way to change it back to a black text on white background style? This color scheme hurts my eyes!

I disabled the white color scheme for the moment, although with the number of complaints I'm seeing I might have to reinstate it anyway and just deal with keeping two themes up to date. (To be clear, it was going to come back before launch, I might just have to bring it back earlier now).

mrmixer
- I like the more compact thread list on the home page, could it show more threads, or have some sort of page system ? The reason is, I use it to see what's new on the forum, and at the moment, if I come after a few days, there is no enough entries to catch up to what I last saw. I usually only log in when I want to reply to something, so the "unread post" feature is not that useful to me;

This is now done

abnercoimbre

mrmixer
-- A background that alternate between each post would help distinguish the different posts;
- In the forums, the difference in the background colour between posts is not big enough;

Yeah it's all same-y. I had liked the contrast you provided by white boxes against redish background so my eyes knows where to rest.

The design is going to get simpler before it gets more complex; I need to boil it down to the core aspects and get rid of cruft / unnecessary HTML/CSS to try to get the repaint time down, and then proceed back to a more complex design more carefully.

In my opinion, the new home page design is a step in the wrong direction. It's slower and harder to find new posts since the last visit.

- I think the layout in two columns doesn't work well, it's (a little) harder to keep track of what I've already looked at.
- Only showing 3 posts than a link to the forums saying "x more recently": I don't know what "recently" means (a day ? a week ?), I don't know if I already read the rest of those posts, and if I follow the link I arrive in the forum and have to search in the sub forums where the new posts are.
- The problem of grouping post by project is that it's no longer possible to just scroll down (and use the page feature you just had) to view all new posts since your last visit.

On another note, I find the light theme too bright and not contrasted enough (harder to see the separation between posts than in the dark theme).

I'm with mrmixer on this. Keeping posts chronologically is simpler mental model - find first post you have already have read and you can stop scanning for new posts. But now you need to remember for each project what have you read before. Also - yesterday Handmade Hero project was on right side, now it is on left side. Confusing.

If you want to keep new home page design, maybe having additional page where you can list all posts chronologically would be ok solution (and rss feed :)

Also having only 1 recent post for some projects, but 3 for other kind of looks disorganized. Maybe always show latest 3 posts for each project?

And for contrast comment - look at bottom links (Main Page, Project Index, ... ) that text is hard to read due to bad contrast.

I'm on both sides with this one, as a front landing page I actually do like this new layout where its easier to see what projects are active, but I would like to have access to old chronological list, maybe make the forum button go to that page instead?

I would like to throw my two cents in as well. I'm not a fan of the new two column view. I think I like the project grouping feature and will just need more time to get used to it, but there is a chance I will sometimes miss the chronological system, so I can't say for sure on that one.

- Maybe instead of a multi-column system, just slim it down to one project per column
- Definitely keep it sorted by project.
- Also maybe only preview the last two comments per project, this would allow more projects viable on the front page.
For example it might look something like this:

4coder
-------
Forum X -> Thread Y by person Z @ 12:00
"Preview of what person Z said..."

Forum I -> Thread J by person K @ 11:00
"Preview of what person K said..."

Handmade Hero
--------------
Forum X -> Thread Y by person Z @ 11:30
"Preview of what person Z said..."

Forum I -> Thread J by person K @ 11:00
"Preview of what person K said..."

.
.
.

And then If Person K said something on a Handmade Hero forum then it would change to

Handmade Hero
--------------
Forum I -> Thread J by person K @ 12:15
"Preview of what person K said..."

Forum X -> Thread Y by person Z @ 11:30
"Preview of what person Z said..."

4coder
-------
Forum X -> Thread Y by person Z @ 12:00
"Preview of what person Z said..."

Forum I -> Thread J by person K @ 11:00
"Preview of what person K said..."

.
.
.

The people have spoken, and...

One-column mixed-project view is back, at /feed. There's a prominent link at the top of the home page for the lazy.

The home page is now also the landing page for new visitors, and I want to prioritize showing projects as sub-communities with their own activity, and not overload the page with a ton of heterogeneous information. I'm fairly certain that I want it to stay similar to how it is now, delta a couple changes to make before it's finalized (among which is that it should poll projects with recent activity and show a few posts from each instead of just polling the latest 30 posts and _then_ organizing them into projects).

Light theme was dimmed a bit. Still lots of work to do there and on dark theme.

More visually interesting background will return as soon as I figure out what the hell looks good. Old one was a bit garish.

Nice! Thanks.

Btw https://handmade.network/static/light/empty-avatar.svg avatar is broken. It is not a valid SVG file.

Thanks.

- I think there is a problem with the "Reply to thread" link at the bottom pages (at least in the dark theme, Firefox 50.0.2): image.
- On the homepage and handmade.network/feed in the thread preview the links don't link, they show only the text (maybe this is intended).
- Would it be possible on someone's profile page to see more (all the) posts of that person? And later have some way of sorting it by project/forum/sub-forum ?

The "Log in to reply" link a the bottom of the page is barely visible on the light theme.