I switched over to Dark Fantasy yesterday. It isn't very dark, but it is easy on the eyes. The big thing is just the process of adjusting to something different. Probably won't even notice the change in another week......

Make sure you refresh your browser at least twice to ensure you are seeing the latest colors/graphics. I've notice that when I make changes to the style, I don't see the updates come through until I hit refresh 2-3 times.

The current version of "DarkFantasy" that is up right now is considerably darker than the original that I downloaded, but not as dark as our beloved "Dark Imperial" style. I've come to like the new style quite a bit though.

Deactivated "Dark Imperial".

Anyone who has not specifically selected any style should now be on DarkFantasy. I will hold off on deleting the old style until everyone has a chance to test the new one.

BTW, I still think the User Control Panel button needs to be made more obvious under the new theme - call it "Preferences", or something that's more clear as to what it is.

"UCP" is just pretty cryptic, IMHO.

Also, I'd just remind people to be careful choosing font colors under the new theme, especially keeping in mind how text colors will look in a 'quoting' box.

I think this post here will pretty clearly illustrate what I'm getting at...

At the bottom of the main page where it shows 'who's on line' has some of them disappearing.




All the 'bots' were invisible and could be seen only by trying to 'copy the line'.
Probably due to their being in a shade of light blue that doesn't show up. I could see them before. I knew something was there as the comma's were at the end of the 'bot' lines with large space inbetween.

IJBall: I changed it to "Settings". "Preferences" was too long for the button. Refresh broweser a couple times if you don't see it.

Dragonlady: the bots didn't go invisible- it's just that the default font color for bots happens to be very faint against the backdrop. Can't figure out how to change bot font color, but I'll keep looking.

I know that, just thought it wierd to see my name followed by a large space, a comma and then another online player. I can just barely make out the pink now for the bots. At least it lets you know something is there.

Cool! Much better. Thanks for that.

Yea I like the new look....

I quite like the new look too

Oooh... nice.

This is definitely among the prettiest forums I've ever seen. Seriously. At any rate it's very high up there -- I'd have to think back to all the forums I've seen if I wanted to make a real comparison. (Of course, to be fair: the vast majority of hosts don't put a great deal of effort into beautifying their forums, as you've obviously done here.) Really: a lot of excellent work went into this. From the papyrus background to the mottled (rather than solid) grey of the message windows. Nice.

BW: Who does the graphic work for these forums and for Eschalon? Whoever does the graphics & color selection is really quite good at it.

I'd never have thought this combination of light greys and very pale light blues of the text edit box . . . under medium blue text . . . would actually look good. Very strange, because they sort of clash with the surrounding background colors -- particularly the papyrus -- yet... I actually like it. Weird.

I don't think the light yellow for the links quite works for me against the light grey, but it does against the darker colors, and I suspect the css files won't allow you to discriminate. And anyway... the rest is quite good.

Finally: No, no, this is perfect. See: the bots are supposed to blend in with the background. It's what they do. They come in unseen. Nobody knows they're here. After all: they're bots. They're not like us humans. They're special.

EDIT: Back to the colors: BW: How about, instead of light yellow for the links, going for red? I think that might work better, all around.

By the way, I noticed that we lost the "mark topics read" button in the change over. It was handy for clearing the new post marks in the help sections without having to open each post.

Overall, looks good to me. I notice that "View active topics" still doesn't work properly, though. It stopped working some months ago; I was hoping the update would fix it, but apparently not! Can anything be done about that?

View Active Topics seems to be working now.