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New look is a strain on the eyes! RRS feed

  • Question

  • The new look of the forum pages with the light blue is a real strain on the eyes.  I am 66 years old and I find reading these new forums are difficult for someone with vison problems!
    • Moved by Naomi N Sunday, February 19, 2012 6:27 AM Forum's issue (From:Suggestions and Feedback for the Forums)
    Tuesday, February 14, 2012 1:36 PM

Answers

All replies

  • Agree with Richard on the fonts. At a minmum, there should be some alternate themes if this is going to be the standard look now. Having a darker background or even a black background would do wonders on the eyes.

    Boe Prox

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    Wednesday, February 15, 2012 4:06 AM
  • I also have complained already a long while ago, for those forums where that is the fact.

    They asked me to sent an image from my screen and after sending it I got a reply like.

    "We can read it."

    I stopped to be active in the forums where those small and grayed characters are used and I've seen I'm not the only one.

    Sometimes I tell to people that there answer is there but aware of the unreadability of that

     http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winforms/threads  

    The reply I get is than that it is really awfull

    :-)


    Success
    Cor

    Wednesday, February 15, 2012 10:13 AM
  • So the moral of the story is that the people designing the forums looks don't really give a damn how difficult it is for some people to read and that it causes eye strain?

    Thanks, Microsoft.  This shows just how much you care about the people you want to sell your products to!  Some people think the new look with light blue and gray is really cute and if it's hard to read and cause eye strain, the as far as you are concerned that's just "Tough Shit!!"

    Wednesday, February 15, 2012 12:36 PM
  • If you guys use Firefox and dont want to wait for a fix/change, you could try the Plugin "Stylish". It lets you change every websites stylesheet quite easily. You can either code your own style or use styles other users have uploaded.

    I use it to change formating on various news-sites, it works really well.

    Update: There is a black msdn-theme already, but i guess it needs some tweaking:

    cheers, Denniver


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    Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:16 PM
  • So the moral of the story is that the people designing the forums looks don't really give a damn how difficult it is for some people to read and that it causes eye strain?

    Thanks, Microsoft.  This shows just how much you care about the people you want to sell your products to!  Some people think the new look with light blue and gray is really cute and if it's hard to read and cause eye strain, the as far as you are concerned that's just "Tough Shit!!"

    No not Microsoft, it is a very big origanization and most of the guys and girls working there are very devoted to customer expierence. 

    But you are old enough to know that sometimes things don't go as they should go. In my perception is this such an situation.


    Success
    Cor


    • Edited by Cor Ligthert Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:54 PM
    Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:39 PM
  • No not Firefox, with that I've not so nice experiences about being W3C compliant.

    However,  witth Google I get this in the Windows Forms forum

    And with IE I get this

    If you compare that with this forum you see that it looks more that it fullfils the artistic pleasure of the designer than the goal to make it readable for all those who use it.


    Success
    Cor


    • Edited by Cor Ligthert Thursday, February 16, 2012 6:02 PM arstic = artistic
    Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:50 PM
  • >it looks more that it fullfils the arstic pleasure of the designer than the goal to make it readable for all those who use it.

    I'd go for artistic rather than arstic (which is perhaps a deliberate typing error(?!)) but otherwise I agree with you. This seems to be a trend as the new look of GMail also has hard to identify (but no doubt more artistic) icons that still after a couple of months are causing me to waste time.

    I know someone at the local tech university who runs their user interface lab where they bring people off the street with differing levels of computer skills to see how they cope with various companies' web pages. Isn't there such a thing somewhere on the West Coast that MS (and Google) can use?


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    Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:44 PM

  • I'd go for artistic rather than arstic (which is perhaps a deliberate typing error(?!))

    Sorry but it was a typo.

    :-)

    Ogilvy an authority about creating readable text has written some books where this was a main topic. It is not from myself.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy_(businessman)


    Success
    Cor

    Thursday, February 16, 2012 6:08 PM
  • Can't agree more with the others. Its really hard to read the contenets with new look.

    ~ Knowledge Seeker

    Thursday, February 16, 2012 9:48 PM
  • If you want other views, there's the confirmed "magical mistery tour" trick provided by Susan Bradley: Just search a forum with an old-fashioned look (like this one: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/genuinewindows7/threads), go to the top of the page and follow the forums' tree (important!) to the destination you want. Surprise, it will look like the first forum you start from.

    Understanding Windows is like understanding women.

    Thursday, February 16, 2012 10:45 PM
  • Sanmartin, that's amazing. It works great. I forgot what the old look was like.

    Is there a way to get to TechNet forums from there?


    Richard Mueller - MVP Directory Services


    Yes. Here's the trick that works now: remove "technet." from the URL. That gives you the Microsoft branding/style.

    Note that it works currently. (Thanks to Emilio, Molly, AMH, and the rest of the Breakfast Club.)

    Thanks!


    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Experience Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)


    Monday, February 20, 2012 2:19 AM