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We rolled out the new site theme for TeX. It is now live.

What new theme?

If you're like, "What the heck are you talking about?", then you should read the Meta Stack Exchange post entitled Rollout of new network site themes (and maybe the posts it links to for the full background).

Your help needed

You are one of the first sites to get a new, unified theme. I previously posted the designs for theme in meta. The feedback given to that post was considered prior to rolling out the theme. Please help us look for issues/bugs and post the details (including images where needed) as an answer below.

If you have concerns or issues regarding the left nav then this Meta Stack Exchange post is the right place for feedback. If you have issues with any functionality that is unrelated to the new theme, then please post a new question.

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  • 62
    As far as I can see, NONE of our suggestion has been taken into consideration.
    – egreg
    Aug 9, 2018 at 16:17
  • 8
    badge completion indicator should be darker. I barely see the progress.
    – naphaneal
    Aug 9, 2018 at 16:32
  • 40
    The new site is absolutely awful.
    – Alan Munn
    Aug 9, 2018 at 16:42
  • 11
    Looks as if StackExchange is over the hill.
    – AlexG
    Aug 9, 2018 at 18:14
  • 15
    If I knew this existed I wouldn't have ranted in chat about how the new site looks. Is it too late to propose the following changes to the new site design: revert every change made from the previous (yes, I read the other posts about the redesign beforehand)
    – Skillmon
    Aug 9, 2018 at 18:25
  • 35
    "You are one of the first sites to get a new, unified theme": Please, don't spread the infection any further... Aug 9, 2018 at 18:30
  • 43
    It has to be said the new theme is pretty bad, the only part of the screen of interest, the central part with the posts is squeezed into a narrow band, the left sidebar is far too wide and so almost entirely a waste of space and the right side bar with occasionally useful links is far too prominent. this is supposed to be a forum about typesetting and it looks like a complete design disaster. Aug 9, 2018 at 20:15
  • 7
    This “question” does not show up on the front page of tex.meta.stackexchange.com (probably because it's so heavily downvoted) and it does not show up in the “Featured on Meta” sidebar (only the “TUGboat open-access survey” question shows up), so it is very hard to get to this one unless one knows it's there. Aug 10, 2018 at 20:01
  • 5
    @ShreevatsaR A combined consequence of the ugly new theme and some rules of SE.
    – egreg
    Aug 10, 2018 at 20:50
  • 3
    @ShreevatsaR I've made a new Meta question containing a link which can be upvoted and serve as a proxy. tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7820
    – Alan Munn
    Aug 10, 2018 at 21:27
  • 29
    This community almost never downvotes threads when the score is already negative (the score usually stops at -1), so I believe this is a good indicator of how upset TeX.sx is with the Powers That Be. Aug 12, 2018 at 13:47
  • 11
    Despite all, required reading.
    – Raphael
    Aug 13, 2018 at 13:23
  • 10
    It should be written very huge on the top of page that users of this site do not represent the design used here, which is a complete disaster as David said..
    – Sigur
    Aug 13, 2018 at 17:00
  • 4
    The redesign is an unmitigated disaster. You have here a large community who cares deeply about design: Take their advice seriously.
    – mforbes
    Aug 21, 2018 at 7:43
  • Joe, I appreciate SE and I know you are trying to keep your codebase under control across a growing family of sites. I just want to let you know that, even though I'm not a major user here, I still miss the old background image behind the header. The new one is very stark compared to what I remember of the old. Is there any way to bring the old header graphics back, even if the rest doesn't change? Thanks in advance for your time and consideration!
    – cxw
    Dec 10, 2018 at 15:44

38 Answers 38

79

None of our suggestions in New TeX site theme coming soon has been taken into consideration. None. You could have simply avoided asking about the changes and deploy them without notice.

Alternatively, the Meta post about the site change might have been:

Dear users of TeX.StackExchange, in a few days our sites will become all the same as Stack Overflow, because we like that site's design. Best.

I dislike the new design with all my heart.

At least, could you make the code display as before? Now it's too tight and the coloring is awful.

Previous and current

enter image description here enter image description here

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  • 27
    I wholeheartedly agree.
    – Mico
    Aug 9, 2018 at 20:53
  • @egreg Something from a few minutes has changed: the color of the code. The bracket have the same color of the command and not red.
    – Sebastiano
    Aug 10, 2018 at 22:35
  • This is fixed. Check it out and let us know if there are any additional issues.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 13, 2018 at 17:03
  • 7
    @JoeFriend Yes, that's fixed. But about the part you marked status-completed in tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7748/4427 you ignored essentially all of my suggestion, so status-declined would suit better. My request here has essentially nothing to do with the site design, for which the staff ignored every suggestion from users: only a few cosmetic ones were implemented, about colors; everything that characterized the site's design has been removed.
    – egreg
    Aug 13, 2018 at 17:10
  • 1
    @egreg Sorry. I applied status-complete to the wrong part of your answer. I've corrected that.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 13, 2018 at 17:59
62

There is a lot of real anger about the changes here, and I think it's important to convey why this is. I'm going to try to do that from my own point of view: as a moderator, I'm not at all happy with the way things have been handled by the Powers That Be. (I think Rollout of new network site themes sums it up pretty well.)

We (the 'TeX-sx community') have always known that StackOverflow support the site for their own reasons, most likely as promotion for the 'main site' (StackOverflow itself). There's always been reasonable concern about the 'community building' statements from the Powers: at best these ideas are usually poorly handled. (For an example of this, see Community effort in fixing the double backslashes issue: many hours of effort by a small number of active users were needed to fix a problem introduced by the Power that could have been fixed easily by them, and which fundamentally broke 1000s of answers.)

It's quite clear that the TeX site falls into the 'Cadillac' set of network sites: we got set up several years ago and got a lot of design support when we graduated. So any design changes were always likely to be risky (detrimental) from a 'site improvement' sense: the old design wasn't broken. At the same time, I think most users can see that the network staff do have a complex task supporting the 'back end' of all of the sites, and can accept that some change will happen. What it needs to be is properly explained, proportionate and actually informed by user opinion.

The changes that have been made have been 'sold' as 'improvements for the network as a whole'. However, the reality is that there's nothing here for us or I suspect many other longer-established sites. Features that are useful for the main site or one or two other very large ones (SuperUser, ServerFault) don't make any positive contribution if you have under 100 questions per day. The Powers might imagine users using lots of network sites, but I doubt I'm alone in visiting basically just (this) one in any regular sense.

There are two fundamental problems with the changes. The first is the 'big picture': the three-column layout that uses up a lot of the screen space for 'filler'. I suspect that this makes sense if you are using a massive desktop monitor as one of a two- or three-screen setup, with your web browser maximised: in other words, the set up of a professional programmer using StackOverflow. I'm however not like that: I'm writing this on a 13" laptop with my browser window about 2/3 of the screen width. (I've disabled the left sidebar, too, precisely because the design doesn't work.) The fact that this change has been made and not rolled back quickly shows a total lack of real engagement with users. Telling us 'this will help you' is a non-answer to the criticism: the new 'features' we are being told we'll get are totally useless, at least as currently described.

The second aspect is the smaller changes to design. There's a suggestion that these are needed to bring the 'back end' of sites into line, but they feel arbitrary and poorly implemented. For example, there are no obvious technical reasons why we have to loose custom graphics for voting buttons. I can think of only two reasons for this. The first is that StackOverflow wants to make the sites look more similar for advertising reasons. The second is that newer sites won't be getting custom graphics for resource reasons, so those of us who already have them loose out as 'it has to be fair'. Crucially, neither of these is anything to do with the community on this site. If there are things that have to be done for management reasons, including balancing resource usage, then tell people: the network is full of people with a technical background, for goodness sake. (See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/312404 for another place that things feel entirely arbitrary, from a non-TeX site.)

A boycott has been raised, and some people will doubtless walk away, primarily because of the completely tone-deaf approach of the Powers That Be here. (It shows yet again that all of the 'community building' stuff is so much guff.) I'm not about to walk away, but as a community we are lucky that there is TeX beyond TeX-sx: we do have an international user group, people with server experience, etc. So if some sense of listening doesn't happen, I would not be surprised if a truly 'community owned' Q&A were to be established. I'd certainly register for such a site.

So what should StackOverflow do? I think you need to roll back the changes (network-wide), and think about what message you are actually trying to put across. If you really believe in community building, then listen to users. Moreover, if there are corporate reasons that some changes have to happen, then front-up and say that: we can understand 'The company has to balance its books, and this will help by ....'. The design changes should have been made step-wise over a period, not all in one go with both layout and resources changing. The key is to actually show you are listening, and to recognise that each site is independent (see for example https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/312406 pointing more-or-less exactly that for another site).

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  • "each site is independent" -- I think this is a fundamental point on contention. I have advocated for the opposite myself, in fact. Few SE sites actually stand alone, in the sense that their scope does not intersect with any other SE site. I can only guess at SE's stance here, but the idea of people being "on the network" as opposed to "on multiples sites" has been getting more prominent over the years (despite the focus definitely being on Stack Overflow). Now, that doesn't have to do anything with designs, per se, but hints at different mindsets.
    – Raphael
    Aug 14, 2018 at 16:00
  • 8
    @Raphael I was thinking specifically of 'community': things like the 'regulars', moderation approach, internal conventions, etc. All of the network sites rely on volunteer contributions, and particularly for regular 'authors', some sense the site(s) being their 'local' is I think important. As I've said, I can see why the Powers want more sense of 'StackOverflow network', but that's not the same as it being good for any particular site.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Aug 14, 2018 at 16:47
  • 8
    thanks for mentioning the backslash mess and the effort it took to fix it. (i'm still not sure we got absolutely everything fixed.) a lot of people have come to depend on this site for accurate and useful information, offered with a welcoming vibe. things that detract from that could well turn the community against it, which would be a great shame. Aug 14, 2018 at 17:32
  • 2
    I see that Shog9 has confirmed in meta.stackexchange.com/a/314128/150061 that the 'big picture' changes are about how the staff want to address the need to have a saleable 'product': 'Teams' is currently the big idea, and it 'needs' the left bar.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Aug 15, 2018 at 5:28
  • 2
    While there have been complaints about the usability effects from other communities as well, my feeling from looking at the other site meta announcements is that these discussions were not as fierce and persistent as on this site. I'm wondering if that has to do with the demographics on other sites when it comes to 'power users' or just people with larger screens. I normally view this site in full screen on a 1920 by 1080 screen and have not really noticed and adverse effect, but when I resize my window I can certainly see what others are complaining about.
    – moewe
    Aug 15, 2018 at 7:25
  • 3
    Another point is probably that people on this site are more passionate about design and typography and that the theme change really did not work very well for our overall look especially compared to what we had before. All the blue just did not fit in, boxes appeared where they were absent before, the serif/sans serif combo looks off now ... Looking at meta.stackexchange.com/q/312365 almost all themes but ours and Mi Yodea actually look kind of OK with blue boxes and sans serif. And the Mi Yodea theme has not been rolled out yet ...
    – moewe
    Aug 15, 2018 at 7:37
  • 9
    Finally, I personally am unhappy with how the feedback to tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7743/35864 was handled. While the suggestions were quickly acknowledged we did not hear back about the progress on those issues. Then the theme was rolled out without warning and while the background issue and the link colours in the right sidebar were addressed, most other things were not and some things actually got worse (the initial background colour) than the mock-up screenshots shown in the announcements. That certainly did not make me feel that my feedback was valued.
    – moewe
    Aug 15, 2018 at 7:48
  • 8
    @moewe I hope it's come across in my answer that I can live with the 'small' design changes, certainly if we get some sense of the clashing elements getting settled. As you say, it's the handling of feedback and lack of a sense of listening that's a problem. And the 'responsive' layout is truly dreadful on a smaller screen unless one disables the left bar.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Aug 15, 2018 at 8:15
  • 4
    @moewe I think it's also notable that we are one of the 'Cadillac' sites: we had one of the best/most complete designs. So the changes 'hurt' us more than a lot of other places. I wonder how e.g. Photography and UX will react when they get it!
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Aug 15, 2018 at 8:20
  • 1
    Yes, the 'Cadillac' thing is something I only started to realise when this whole re-theming thing started. We were indeed extremely lucky to have such a nice design that was thought through and designed with community feedback. I guess theme-wise (not sidebar/usability-wise) UX and Photo should be fine, blue would fit their colour schemes (maybe not so much on Photo which is more black/grey than blue) and they are sans-serif only. Photo has bracketed tags, not sure if they attach as much sentimental value to those as we do with { ... }, UX has boxed tags.
    – moewe
    Aug 15, 2018 at 8:37
  • ... Our theme was special insofar as that it did not really work with blue and the new sans-serif elements. The boxes and losing nice customisations for tags and upvote buttons (which I can accept but not really understand, your two hypotheses about the why have occurred to me as well) did the rest.
    – moewe
    Aug 15, 2018 at 8:38
  • @moewe The Photo site has a custom top area that shows 'Picture of the Day': pretty important for them, and they presumably will loose that ... On the UX site, I was thinking more about how they'll view the three-column layout!
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Aug 15, 2018 at 8:46
  • They have found a way to preserve that photo.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5714. I guess outrage would have been there had they lost it.
    – moewe
    Aug 15, 2018 at 8:47
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    @moewe And this outrages me: why could we preserve no feature that made our site unique?
    – egreg
    Aug 15, 2018 at 9:36
  • 5
    I use a 12.5" laptop. I consider this large. My last was 11.6". I never use any windows full screen. Of course, I've disabled the left side bar because it just doesn't work. Now it is 2 clicks to view Questions rather than 1. The design has exaggerated all the very worst elements of the previous design, which already contain far too much wasted space, Even the warm colour scheme would be better jettisoned, in my opinion if we can't have a consistent palette. If we must have bright blue and violent astroturf green, better a theme to contain them. Never thought I'd get this mad about a website.
    – cfr
    Aug 16, 2018 at 2:37
53

Width of main content

enter image description here

Added .gif by @Milo

enter image description here

I realise the middle section is just the boring bit where the users chat about their interests and the sidebars are the interesting places where stackexchange can insert revenue earning links, but really is it too much to ask that a question and answer site leaves more room for the questions and answers?

The image shown is with the browser not full screen but not at a particularly unusual width, full screen the question/answer posts are still cramped with space lost to the more or less useless left bar and apparently completely dead space to the left of the left sidebar

enter image description here

I've just focused on the column layout here but other aspects mentioned in other answers such as colouring, and ugly boxing make the site a lot less pleasant to use than it was previously.

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  • 2
    I agree the middle column in the first screenshot is uncomfortably narrow. But if I make my browser window a bit smaller the right bar disappears and I get ~110 characters. If I expand the window to match the second screenshot, I get ~110 characters again. I've read 50-75 is ideal for readers, so the middle column seems a bit big. Of course that rule of thumb might not hold when the page has some code or an image. Maybe it would help to show something other than the question lists to illustrate your concern? Aug 9, 2018 at 23:46
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    @JonEricson you can make the window different sizes, but it's your css and it's making the columns that size in that window. Given that nearly all posts in the centre have code or an image it is simply too narrow even at full screen. If you drag the window wider and narrower it's clearly visible that the sidebar widths are preserved until the last minute (when as you say it does drop the right bar) but the central content is distorted, this is just prioritizing things in completely the wrong order, you should fix an optimum width for the main content and preserve that as far as possible Aug 9, 2018 at 23:58
  • 21
    @JonEricson I'm not going to constantly adjust window widths for SE. I have multiple tabs open always with different sites. I expect sites to adjust to the window width available, because I can't set the width separately for each tab, even if I had the time to do it. I'm using a laptop screen and I have a small laptop. Space is at a premium and at least 50% of the space in your tabs is empty. 'It looks fine if you fiddle to get exactly the right pixel dimensions each time you visit the site' is, frankly, laughably weak. The only thing I want to do when I visit TeX SE now is stop looking at it.
    – cfr
    Aug 10, 2018 at 14:49
  • 12
    @JonEricson On every site across the Stack Exchange network this complaint is brought up. Even sites notorious for narrow columns like (say) medium.com, have at least 75 characters for their text as you make window narrower, while here on TeX.SE we see fewer than 60 characters. Try it yourself: starting with a wide window, make it narrower until the right-bar disappears, then slightly wider so that it appears again: you'll see something like i.stack.imgur.com/Jc29t.png or i.stack.imgur.com/CNxD6.png or i.stack.imgur.com/0eTAh.png — too narrow columns for the main text. Aug 10, 2018 at 20:30
  • 20
    @JonEricson really the site is unusable with medium width windows (across the whole network) you need to back this out until you come up with behaviours that preserves the main content width and shrinks or drops the sidebars as required. The code block styling and ugly boxes can be improved again over time, but you need to make the site usable first. Aug 10, 2018 at 20:45
  • 9
    Indeed, as @DavidCarlisle says the main content has to be the priority. Notably, on the mobile version of the site, it's only the main content that gets served, with no sidebars at all!
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Aug 12, 2018 at 7:41
  • 6
    @JonEricson Actually, as your comment started with “I agree the middle column in the first screenshot is uncomfortably narrow”, then shouldn't that be fixed? The fact that things are better at narrower or wider window widths doesn't change the fact that things need to be fixed for this width too. (The fix would be simple too; it's just a matter of increasing the minimum width at which the right bar appears… so the only reason for leaving it this way is that you indeed think it's better to have the right bar at this width, but you yourself said you don't think that. So it's puzzling.) Aug 12, 2018 at 20:36
  • 2
    @DavidCarlisle Thanks for the feedback. Responsiveness is a work in progress. The vast majority of users currently use the sites in view ports as large or larger than our max size. Even with the left nav pinned, the max size increase is not a problem for these users. With the left nav unpinned the max size is the same as before the change. Of course, for the percentage of folks who use a smaller window are impacted (some for the good, some not). This is a balancing act and is a work in progress. Hiding the left nav and right side bar more aggressively is something we are looking into.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 13, 2018 at 18:35
  • 13
    @JoeFriend sorry that really is not an acceptable response. Even at full screen the central content is too narrow and preserving the sidebars at the cost of distorting the posted content is frankly an insult to those of us who have freely given thousands of hours of our time to supporting this network. Please see our site mod Joseph's summary just posted. You should back this change out now and come back with a usable design when you have one. Aug 14, 2018 at 9:48
  • 3
    @JoeFriend I'm using the site (with the left bar enabled) in full size on a wide monitor and the large right side bar simply looks unbalanced and odd. I have reduced it with some css to 20%. Aug 14, 2018 at 10:14
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    @Joefriend li do realise that the company needs income but if you can't scale them you need to drop them or move them before the main content becomes unusable. You manage on mobile so a normal desktop window should not be a problem. Otherwise our most viewed meta answer is going to be telling people how to scale the right bar. If you do it you retain control which to be honest is better for everyone than lots of incompatible customisations floating around Aug 14, 2018 at 17:08
  • 15
    @JoeFriend apart from any technical issues, this rollout has been a public relations disaster for the company. Yes you need to sell advertising space, but there used to be a conceit that the network was about building communities and communities offering self help. But the communities feel (and have been) ignored insulted and belittled in this whole process. Aug 14, 2018 at 18:01
  • 2
    @JoeFriend Well I can't stand this width. Which means that I will either scale it with css or shrink the window so that the right bar collapse. Both gives a much better usability. Aug 14, 2018 at 20:33
  • 6
    @JoeFriend note my comments were not aimed at you personally but just using your Id to @ ping "the company", so I think it only fair if I link here to Shog9's helpful response in the linked chat site But the fact remains that the default three column layout is not usable and people will either be forced to use user scripts to over-ride it, or some will leave the site, both of which are unfortunate. Aug 16, 2018 at 11:40
  • 2
    @JoeFriend There's been some confusion: the feedback here is not about full window size, where as you say, things are indeed fine. The feedback is specifically about the minimum possible width of the main content area, at certain window sizes. Specifically, if I visit tex.stackexchange.com in an incognito window, then the main div (<div id="mainbar">) has width 726px (or 728px) in a full-size window, which is perfectly fine! But as you start making the window narrower, its width reaches a minimum of 443 px, which is unreasonably narrow. The complaint is about the 443, not the 726. Aug 18, 2018 at 16:16
46

Boycott this site until and unless the old look is restored! If it's not restored, let's say goodbye and good luck to this site entirely.

Why do I say this? It's because I suspect that the only way that the powers that be will ever respect and listen to our views is if we -- and especially the most active users -- state unequivocally that we refuse to go along with the awful changes that have been foisted on us.

I hereby announce that starting immediately, I will no longer contribute any answers, not respond to queries, not issue any welcome messages to new users, and not provide any other forms of input to TeX.SE until the site's old look is either fully or at least mostly restored. For the next week or so, I will stop by maybe once a day, to check if the old look has been restored. That's all I will do. If in a week or so nothing positive has happened, I will ask the admins to delete all of my 5000+ answers, to delete all of my comments on other postings, and to strike all of the 30,000+ votes I've cast of other folks' answers.

What's so special about me, you may ask? Not that much, in many ways. For what it may be worth, though, I've been quite active on this site for more than 7 years, and I recently became the user with the fifth-highest rep point total on TeX.SE. Once in a while, I happen to get a sappy message of praise from the powers that be, about how very much my contributions are valued. Well, let's see if this official valuation is sufficiently sincere to make the powers that be show even a tiny bit of regard for my opinions.

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  • 42
    Alternatively, and perhaps more productively, could TUG host its own version (like MathOverflow)? Since all the answers are CC licensed they can be moved, and since the base of highly skilled TeX users is quite small, moving the site might actually be something that could be carried off.
    – Alan Munn
    Aug 9, 2018 at 21:51
  • 17
    @AlanMunn - Your suggestion is inspired! Moving all of TeX.SE's contents to a place hosted by TUG sounds very much like the thing to do.
    – Mico
    Aug 9, 2018 at 22:00
  • 34
    @JonEricson I think SE underestimates the value of unique site designs to user engagement and sense of community. And some of the new features are probably of lesser value to sites like our which get on the order of 75 questions per day. If many of our high rep users were to leave and move to an independent site, the SE site quality would definitely decline. Unlike other sites, there aren't a vast number of people with equal skills to replace them. So it's not just that it "feels like" you're not listening. You're not really listening.
    – Alan Munn
    Aug 9, 2018 at 22:16
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    @JonEricson but even if you make all the sites similar (which i can see has some merit from the organisation side) there is no need to make them all unpleasant to use: the amount of space given to questions and answers compared to the more or less pointless left sidebar and at best secondary information in the right sidebar makes no sense, and if you don't use the browser full screen it gets worse as you shrink the main content while preserving the right sidebar Aug 9, 2018 at 22:25
  • 16
    @JonEricson "best for the entire network" sounds all warm and fuzzy and something we're supposed to care about (kind of like "best for society"), but it's not. What's good for the entire network is what's good for SE as a company. Of course we don't deny that SE has been a useful resource to most of us, but please don't try to sell "good for the whole network" as something other than an business concern.
    – Alan Munn
    Aug 9, 2018 at 22:34
  • 11
    @JonEricson - So here we have the official confirmation: The pointless left-hand bar is here to stay. No regard whatsoever for the opinions of real contributors. The thing that matters -- the only thing that matters -- is that you guys can move on to 'phase III of custom question lists'. The fact that pretty much nobody on TeX.SE has any hankering for such lists is of simply no importance.
    – Mico
    Aug 9, 2018 at 22:46
  • 25
    @JonEricson look at the comments and answers in this post, they are not mostly complaining about change (which is how you are trivializing them as people just used to what they had) they are complaining that the new design is simply awful and has a massive, negative, impact on the usability of the site. Aug 10, 2018 at 7:01
  • 15
    @JonEricson - I stand by my initial evaluation: You guys are grotesquely self-centered and arrogant. If actual users bother to make good, cogent arguments against the new, awful design, these efforts are doomed to having no effect whatsoever. At most, these arguments will be “considered” [!]. The only action that has any chance at all of getting your attention is we threaten to vote with our feet, i.e., to turn our backs on you and your colleagues. That’s what I’m fully prepared to do.
    – Mico
    Aug 10, 2018 at 13:06
  • 24
    @JonEricson Maybe I'm unashamed if saying that people come to the site because they'll find answers by me or David or Mico or the other top users. Are you sure the site will stay the same if we leave? It's been a good time, perhaps it's the moment to go somewhere else. You've been basically saying: “You guys are right, but nobody can do anything about the problem, because it's already been decided upon”.
    – egreg
    Aug 10, 2018 at 14:44
  • 13
    I should say, @JonEricson, that I'm not threatening anything. I'm just reporting a psychological fact. That is, I have just found I don't want to spend time on the site. I want to stop looking at it. It is glarey and icky and it bothers my eyes. It is harder to read and unimportant elements jump out of the screen, with hardly any space for interesting content. It doesn't engage. As I say, these are just observations and just mine. People differ. But I don't think you need boycotters to see reduced engagement, fewer answers, less traffic. The site sucks.
    – cfr
    Aug 10, 2018 at 15:03
  • 11
    @JonEricson "But the 100 or so sites with no design right now will benefit tremendously." Seriously, no. Plain text with ASCII art instead of imgur images to show the issues is a better design than this. No design is better than this. I have one question: If TeX.SX doesn't change back again, please optimize the site to be usable with Lynx. This way everyone could enjoy the looks of it. (This is meant completely serious, Lynx display is a better design than this.)
    – Skillmon
    Aug 10, 2018 at 17:29
  • 12
    @JonEricson - You wrote yesterday, "it makes me sad that several people have decided that boycotting the site will hurt us back. It's counterproductive to the discussion and makes it a lot easier for designers and developers to just ignore your concerns." What's really saddening is that your designers and developers have chosen to blatantly and consistently ignore our concerns all along. Let's not pretend otherwise. Users contemplating a boycott of TeX.SE is not the cause of, but merely the pained reaction to, the already-taken decision by the powers-that-be to ignore our views.
    – Mico
    Aug 10, 2018 at 18:49
  • 18
    I think instead of boycotting, I'll just stop. Even when defending these choices, the attitude is pathetic. I really don't understand where this high horse comes from. You SE folks are riding a little pony and without the users you are bunch of nerds trying to teach us how to socialize.
    – percusse
    Aug 11, 2018 at 15:33
  • 12
    @JonEricson Hi, I am just passing by just to remember the Powers That Be that you completely ignored the backslash issue. A lot of users (from high ranked to newbies) have devoted a significant part of their online times to manually fix the codes in thousands and thousands of questions and answers solely caused by SE. I am sorry, Powers That Be. Do not give us the usual we are listening answer because we all know, from past interactions, that you are not. Not in the slightest. Aug 12, 2018 at 14:10
  • 11
    @JonEricson Well, you're clearly still ignoring your userbase, so why are you doing it if not to pursue revenue? By the language and voting in this thread you'd think this is [meta.sf] or Mathematics Meta, but no, you've managed to quasi-unanimously tick off mild-mannered TeX.SE in an unprecedented way. I'm impressed and saddened. Aug 12, 2018 at 22:16
40

The background image

See the original discussion about the background image (from New TeX site theme coming soon)

There was some discussion about the placement of the background picture in the site mockups. In the mockups, the header design was squeezed into the right hand corner. This made it difficult to recognise the writing/symbols because they were very small.

This size issue has been addressed in the latest redesign, and the header image has been made bigger and placed more centrally. However, in its current form, it's actually impossible to recognise the writing/symbols because they have nearly all been partially cut off.

The new site

enter image description here

Compare it to the original site - where the writing/symbols are not cut off.

enter image description here

The new site design has a thinner header than before. Trying to squeeze the old design into this space seems unsatisfactory because elements get cut off. So perhaps a new design is needed for the header?

Note that when @samcarter brought up the issue of the header being too small, the redesigns that were proposed did not involve elements being partially cut off.

For example, see this proposal below, which re-positions the elements and removes the dark shaded triangle. The original purpose of the dark shaded triangle was to emphasise the {TeX} logo, but it feels out of place once the {TeX} logo is no longer on top of it.

One of the proposals by @samcarter (see the original discussion)

enter image description here

3
  • Trying out a new header in production. Lemme know if this is any better! Should be a lot more clear. Aug 15, 2018 at 22:04
  • @AaronShekey It is certainly better now. However, the old header was a collection of showcases and felt like it. With the newer and smaller layout the one line of examples with roughly the same baseline does not feel like a collection any more. My eyes are more drawn to it thinking the background is telling me something important ... I can see that it would be hard to get back the "collectio vibe" and at the same time preserve the size of the elements so they are recognisable in the smaller space, but maybe there is an adequate solution ...
    – moewe
    Aug 16, 2018 at 5:23
  • @moewe maybe we can improve this, see tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7781/… Aug 18, 2018 at 12:52
35

Note: I had to upvote Mico's answer, he has a point. And actually, SE should be damn happy that this all happened after TUG AGM (TeX Users Group Annual General Meeting). If the timing was slightly different, you would very likely be mentioned there and it would not be a nice mention.

Just to make things clear, regular participants to TUG meetings have TeX.SE reputations (and ranks): 673k (rank 1), 461k (rank 2), 194k (rank 8 + mod), 175k (rank 12), 68k, 57k, 38k etc. You are ignoring these peoples' opinions, and note that these people gather at TUG meetings because they are of the most important developers in the current TeX world.

Honestly, as a member of TUG and a participant in the AGM, I would have proposed to the TUG Board to look into options how to migrate content from TeX.SE to a TUG hosted website. And the reason is not this particular change in design; it's the long-standing policy of ignoring sites' beautiful looks. I understand that SE becomes an internet Titanic, but maybe this is just another reason why to quit it before it sanks.

32

Tag curly brackets

I would love for the tags to get back their curly brackets, but I fear that has been struck down finally (I'll still try though).

Tag colours

The blue of the tags just does not fit well to the rest of the colour scheme. Would it be possible to find more suitable colours for them?

Post-owner box colour

The box of the question owner is also blue, again not fitting the rest of the colour scheme

screenshot of a question with the question owner box in blue

4
  • 3
    Tag colors have been addressed and should go live with the next build Aug 10, 2018 at 16:51
  • 9
    @AaronShekey That is good to hear. Please do look into the question owner box as well, it would look odd if it were the last thing to stay blue around here. It is kind of hard to tell between my eyes and my monitor but a few other elements seem to be on the bluer side of grey as well.
    – moewe
    Aug 10, 2018 at 20:15
  • 3
    The post owner box now inherits from the theme's primary color. I've marked this as status-completed Aug 15, 2018 at 22:07
  • @AaronShekey Very good, thank you. I noticed that the post owner box and the tag boxes are in slightly different shades, though. Is that intentional? The upper part of the box around the avatar picture on the user page is still bluish: tex.stackexchange.com/users/4427/egreg
    – moewe
    Aug 16, 2018 at 4:38
26

Code highlighting colours

I'm happy to see that the final theme turned out less blue than I feared.

The code highlighting is blue, however, and I would love to see it back in its older, warmer colours

screenshot of https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/444016/35864 showing code hgighlighting in blue

5
  • 10
    Also the leading in code is too tight.
    – egreg
    Aug 9, 2018 at 20:54
  • @egreg Probably safer to add a new answer about that so it doesn't get lost.
    – moewe
    Aug 9, 2018 at 20:56
  • 4
    It is also in my answer.
    – egreg
    Aug 9, 2018 at 21:01
  • 8
    although the blue code highlighting is different from black, it's harder to distinguish the difference between these two colors. the brighter highlighting was designed that way for a purpose -- to make certain features able to be distinguished very easily. that has been lost. Aug 10, 2018 at 13:13
  • 3
    This has been merged and will go live with a fresh build. Aug 10, 2018 at 20:16
26

Don't forget to install our favorite Stackexchange AOL toolbar and SE! Messenger

enter image description here

5
  • 6
    Even they figured out back then that left column is not a good idea for a column design
    – percusse
    Aug 10, 2018 at 23:03
  • 2
    Did you notice how they combined serif and sans-serif fonts? Yahoo!
    – percusse
    Aug 10, 2018 at 23:08
  • 2
    (Yes I know they are trying to make it look like Facebook,yes well done, yes you must be right, yes I'm going to a Starbucks in shame)
    – percusse
    Aug 11, 2018 at 0:00
  • 2
    (Yes also LinkedIn, yes snappy columns are not good but they use it so it must be good yes)
    – percusse
    Aug 11, 2018 at 0:03
  • 2
    YAHOO! PREFERS VISA Aug 13, 2018 at 15:11
22

Boxes around everything

Is it necessary to draw hard borders boxes around everything? In most places it isn't very intrusive but particularly bad looks:

enter image description here

(I'm not speaking of the red box I drew to make it clear what I meant)

4
  • 1
    See tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7814 for a way to remove these borders.
    – Milo
    Aug 10, 2018 at 13:26
  • 2
    @Milo I saw it in chat, but thanks anyway (also in the name of future visitors).
    – Skillmon
    Aug 10, 2018 at 13:30
  • 16
    This is basically the first mistake every beginner site designer does. These guys host the most prolific coders on SO. Just amazing that they learn nothing from them.
    – percusse
    Aug 10, 2018 at 22:47
  • 7
    I'm wondering why this bit of navigation has to be realised with ugly boxes while other parts happily use the much less intrusive, less annoying and less ugly tabs.
    – moewe
    Aug 11, 2018 at 8:53
21

Too many different colour shades

I think there are too many different colour shades. Take for example this small part of the site:

enter image description here

It includes 3 different shades of red. The colour of the TeX logo is much brighter and the colours of the upvoted question button and the "Ask Question" button look like they ought to be the same but are slightly different - this looks odd!


Using a colour picker tool, I get the following colours for the elements:

  • the TeX logo: 194/73/74
  • Ask Question button: 159/57/61
  • Upvoted button: 153/71/68
7
  • All three of those elements are colored with the exact same color value (#B6514E). So, I think there is something of an optical illusion happening for you. Let me know if I'm missing something.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 9, 2018 at 18:28
  • 12
    @JoeFriend I added the colour codes I get with a colour picker tool - I really don't think they are the same. Aug 9, 2018 at 19:23
  • 6
    @JoeFriend I just inspected the .svg file of the TeX logo: The colour used there seems to be c2494a and not B6514E... Aug 9, 2018 at 19:33
  • I didn't look directly at the assets or code, just measured the color on my screen. I'll check with design.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 9, 2018 at 19:47
  • @JoeFriend Thanks for having a look into this! Something related: Is the TeX image from the old design still downloadable somewhere? The one seen in this image: i.stack.imgur.com/xqKX6.png Aug 9, 2018 at 19:56
  • 3
    The color of the logo has been addressed, but the upvote arrows are generated programmatically based on CSS filters. They're not perfect, but they aren't too far away from our primary red highlight color. These will improve once we no longer rely on image-based sprites. For technical reasons, we'll have to wait to get the upvoted buttons the exact same shade of red. Aug 10, 2018 at 16:54
  • @AaronShekey Thanks for the feedback! Good to hear the logo will be fixed. The arrows are indeed not far off. Aug 10, 2018 at 18:15
20

Badges on meta

On meta the badge seem to be missing a bit on the left

screenshot of a user profile on meta, the circular badges all miss a bit on the left

1
  • 3
    This has been fixed and should go live in the next build Aug 10, 2018 at 16:55
18

On narrow screens, the content area is very small, on top of the site it's as low as 23%, after scrolling down it goes to 44%. That's way too low.

Either make the sidebars shrinkable or make them collapse much sooner.

17

The background colour of the content area

In the site mockup that was posted in New TeX site theme coming soon, the background colour of the content area was the familiar warm colour it has always been.

The original mockup - posted by @JoeFriend

enter image description here

But, in the new site, this has been changed to white...

The new site

enter image description here

Judging by the reaction Making the white background less white is getting in the post Make TeX.SX look nice again!, it seems a lot of users much prefer the warm look of the original site design.

In fact, this change to a white background has arguably made the blue tags stick out more, which is what the Tag colours post by @moewe is addressing.

Was it intentional to change this from what was being proposed to us? Because we were never consulted on this particular change.

1
  • 1
    This has been addressed and should go live in our next build Aug 10, 2018 at 16:49
15

Inconsistent square boxes?

Perhaps this is a bug? In the site mockup posted in New TeX site theme coming soon, the boxes around 'answers' had rounded edges which matched the design of the other boxed elements.

The original mockup - posted by @JoeFriend

enter image description here

But in the new site, these boxes now have sharp corners?

The new site

enter image description here

Was it intentional to change this? I notice all other boxed elements have remained the same from the mockup.

Following the update (11th August 2018)

The boxes around answers are still inconsistent. On the 'Questions' page, the boxes have been changed to have rounded edges:

enter image description here

But, on the 'Home' page, they have square edges:

enter image description here

I'm guessing this is just a bug.

4
  • 2
    This has been addressed and should go live in the next build Aug 10, 2018 at 16:55
  • 4
    @AaronShekey Thanks for addressing this but just to make you aware there are still some bugs. See my update to the post.
    – Milo
    Aug 11, 2018 at 14:35
  • 3
    @Milo This is now fixed for both Home and Questions.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 14, 2018 at 16:55
  • 1
    Apart from the non-rounded corners that have been fixed meanwhile, I don’t understand why the numbers and text in the three boxes don’t align vertically. “votes“ and “views” are always a bit shifted to the top in comparison with “answers” and this is even more so when there is a border around the answers box. I just discovered this today and the more often I see this, the less I like it. Aug 22, 2018 at 19:29
15

We are working on addressing this issue. It is covered here: Can we show new/anonymous users more Q&A?

Unregistered vistors view

Picture worth a thousand words:

enter image description here

The issues:

  1. IT'S ALL BLACK! If I came to a site with this amount of black, I would frighten away! The middle black thing is so dominant that you barely see anything else. Maybe it's the intent, to separate this message from the site's contents, but the cost is huge. Also, before the site title was large, now it's small, so the {TeX} logo is not even dominant to the page. This all seems very confusing and unwelcoming. **Maybe even simply reducing the main black message to the central column would lessen the blackness of this page, see below. Anyway, changing the colour would be the best.

  2. There is three black blocks and three things to close: Code of Conduct, Sign in, Cookies+Privacy+ToS. I don't think anyone is gonna read any of the messages anyway. I believe that Code of Conduct should be merged into the middle or the bottom stuff, certainly for users who happen to see all three messages.

  3. Please unify the link style here.

enter image description here

2
  • +1, but I don't know whether I agree on the code of conduct thing, because I think this is the place for "temporary"/update messages. However, the whole picture just doesn't work.
    – TeXnician
    Aug 16, 2018 at 9:45
  • 10
    Question is whether unregistered visitors need to see the Code of Conduct message anyway. I assume it becomes more relevant once you actually contribute or sign in ...
    – moewe
    Aug 16, 2018 at 9:53
14

Fonts on meta

While the main site retained its serifs in titles, the meta site did not. It has sans serif titles. I'm not sure if that is intentional, but this certainly takes away from the "meta is greyscaled main" effect.

1
  • 4
    This has been addressed and should go live with our next build. Aug 10, 2018 at 16:49
14

Question titles

The new titles look like they're squeezed to half there natural width. Perhaps it's just me, but it looks odd.

3
  • Any chance you can post an image of the issue. I'm not seeing it, but could be looking in the wrong place.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 13, 2018 at 18:40
  • @JoeFriend I can't see it anymore, too, as I've changed it in my userContent.css. The font the default is using just looks very narrow and is too small. I've changed it to 16px DejaVu Serif.
    – Skillmon
    Aug 13, 2018 at 19:12
  • This should be 'fixed' now with the question titles switching over to sans serif in the light of tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7803/35864
    – moewe
    Aug 16, 2018 at 15:36
13

Recreating the stylograph pen

I would like it to be restored the stylograph pen to which I was fond and gave a touch of class and elegance, and to eliminate the classic triangle.

1
  • 3
    While I completely agree with you that restoring the vote buttons would be great, the powers have rejected this before, because it's one of the things everyone loved…
    – TeXnician
    Aug 12, 2018 at 12:22
13

Make "Disable Responsiveness" global and persistent

By chance (and not because it was communicated in any way) I found the "Disable Responsiveness" button at the bottom of the page

enter image description here

  • It would be nice if this would automatically apply to the whole network and one wouldn't need to press it on each site and meta site separately.

  • It would also be nice to have this as option in one user preferences. Currently the setting is lost every time the browser cookies are cleared.

1
  • 4
    Thanks for this. Though disabling it does not, sadly, do all that much about the restricted space available for content generally. I don't understand the sense in which the new design is 'responsive' anyhow. Responsive to what exactly? Seems highly unresponsive to me.
    – cfr
    Aug 14, 2018 at 0:40
13

Links are hard to notice

Due to the relative dark colour, links are hard to notice in posts and comments.

Here is a hidden object game for you. Who can find the link?

enter image description here

6
  • 3
    I must say that the underlining on meta makes links really easy to find, maybe that could be an option here that does not depart too far from the current colour scheme.
    – moewe
    Aug 11, 2018 at 16:17
  • @moewe That is a great idea! Aug 11, 2018 at 16:45
  • 2
    We've added underlines on all post links. I think it'll really help, especially with themes that have a primary color that doesn't differ too much from the main text color. This'll go out in the next build. Aug 16, 2018 at 22:09
  • @AaronShekey Thanks for adding the underlines. They are a great feature, but I also see underlined links in the tag boxes (e.g. your status-completed badge in this post). For them (tag boxes), this seems quite redundant.
    – TeXnician
    Aug 17, 2018 at 17:06
  • 1
    That follow up fix is on its way. :) Aug 17, 2018 at 17:07
  • 1
    @AaronShekey Thanks a lot! Aug 17, 2018 at 20:31
12

Please make old TeX logo and voting icons available for download

This way people can modify the site with the help of user scripts etc. to fit their taste.


Update:

The images can be found at

3
11

Comment field glow on Meta

While I can live with the blue highlighting of a currently selected text input box on the main site, on Meta the box gets highlighted with a red border with green (or blue?) glow. Please change this and while you're at it, perhaps also change the blue from the main site and other input boxes to something warmer.

1
  • 1
    A fix for this has merged and should go out in the next build. Aug 10, 2018 at 16:40
11

Highlight colour in tool bar

The orange highlight colour when hovering with the mouse over one of the elements in the post tool bar seems out of place. Can it be replaced with the red TeX.SE color?

enter image description here

11

Consider the following with compositing (normal display):

screenshot

and without compositing:

screenshot

What do you see?

I see four large astroturf-green boxes on a beige-brown background and a black navigation bar. The background is mostly empty, but there's some stuff which might be meaningful, but is obviously of relatively little importance.

The page is trying to tell me something about or with the bright green boxes. Aside from suggesting what colour scheme I should avoid at all costs, it isn't clear what this message is. Nothing else leaps out: nothing interesting, engaging or intriguing.

The boxes a bit glarey, so the page bothers my eyes a bit, though I realise they must be very, very important to the site. Far more important than anything else. That's a bit weird and there's the glare, so I really just want to leave now or, if at all possible, sooner.

I don't know if this is the message SE wants me to find here. Perhaps it is. But that is the message the site currently sends, and that message dominates everything else, even though I don't know what it is.

But I'm gone by now, of course, to somewhere with a more comfortable feel to it which offers something intriguing, engaging or interesting to explore or read or do.

Welcome to the world wide web.

8
  • Something is odd about the "votes" column in the screenshot, it is not coloured for me. And the site seems to be weirdly transparent...
    – moewe
    Aug 14, 2018 at 4:48
  • @moewe The transparency might be the result of a compositor at work (on my Linux machine unfocused windows also show some transparency).
    – TeXnician
    Aug 14, 2018 at 6:40
  • @TeXnician That might well be it. In that case I feel the screenshot might be a bit unfair, since the site can't control the content behind it, which seems to add a few odd visual effects here (the mentioned votes column, the barely visible text behind, the colour scheme probably also suffers from the transparency my first impression was that things are darker than on my screen).
    – moewe
    Aug 14, 2018 at 6:57
  • 2
    Well, the votes column looks like normal white for me (being used to compositors), but the overall impression that the green boxes are pretty dominant is shown in the picture (in my opinion).
    – TeXnician
    Aug 14, 2018 at 7:14
  • 5
    It is kinda weird they draw your eye to the answered questions, rather than ones you've tagged interest in or that are unanswered. Aug 14, 2018 at 22:37
  • @moewe I've added a screenshot with compositing turned off. However, compositing is extremely common, so the view with it is relevant, although the shot provides what is admittedly only the display with one particular compositor and set of configuration options. I don't think it makes much difference, except the one without hurts my eyes more.
    – cfr
    Aug 15, 2018 at 2:07
  • 1
    @AzorAhai Yes. And that a question is answered is way more important that what the question is. So, even if I'm looking for answers rather than questions to answer, it is still very odd.
    – cfr
    Aug 15, 2018 at 2:08
  • 1
    A fortnight already and this isn't even tagged 'declined'.
    – cfr
    Aug 28, 2018 at 0:14
10

The only buttons that bring you back to the "home" place are in the left column, whereas all people work with is in the main column (well, do you still consider it "main"?)

Please, add some way in the main column to navigate back to tex.stackexchange.com when you are viewing a question. Before, there was no need to navigate away from the central column, and that was actually a nice feature.

enter image description here

5
  • 3
    Well, they have one way: gh with keyboard shortcuts enabled.
    – TeXnician
    Aug 13, 2018 at 11:01
  • Also, the menu hidden behind the SE logo in the top-right.
    – Raphael
    Aug 13, 2018 at 13:10
  • @Raphael That's still away from the main column, though. I'm surprised by this. I thought if anything a new design would aim to make it easy to navigate back, which has always been annoyingly slow-going on SE. But no, they actually managed to make it even harder.
    – cfr
    Aug 14, 2018 at 0:42
  • @cfr Myself, I don't usually navigate "back" to the main page. For literal "back", I'd use browser functions. For "larger" jumps, I'm happy with the top-right drop-down; it's a default place to go to, no matter whether I want to go to main, meta, or another site. Plus, it sticks with me when I scroll so it's always there when I need it. (A huge part of why I think the left bar is mostly useless is that I almost never use those links, including Home.)
    – Raphael
    Aug 14, 2018 at 6:33
  • 2
    @Raphael I want the view I got from the 'Questions' tab at the top, which now in the list. I can't access that directly from the right menu. It makes it 2 clicks not 1. I hardly ever view the home page with 'Top Questions'. I always want 'Questions'.
    – cfr
    Aug 15, 2018 at 1:41
10

Colour of "cancel" button

The blue colour of the "cancel" button seems odd (now that we finally god rid of all the other blue elements - thank a lot for the update!). I suggest to make it black or gray.

enter image description here

6
  • Don't you find the green boxes worse? The blue was bad, but the green is horrible.
    – cfr
    Aug 11, 2018 at 23:13
  • 2
    @cfr Sorry, I don't think I can follow. Which green boxes? Aug 12, 2018 at 10:28
  • I mean the ones indicating an accepted answer. For me, at least, they dominate the page in lists of questions.
    – cfr
    Aug 12, 2018 at 12:59
  • @cfr Ah, yes. I found the colour too ugly so I changed it to something a bit more tuned down. tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/7813/36296 Aug 12, 2018 at 13:04
  • 1
    This button is now inheriting the proper theme color Aug 15, 2018 at 22:09
  • @AaronShekey Thanks a lot for fixing this! Aug 16, 2018 at 10:14
9

Reviewing the Low Quality Posts with Google Crome on Wimdows 10 I get this:

enter image description here

But if I shift the bar to make the other options on the top right appear, I get this:

enter image description here

The text of the post is shifted but the buttons don't show up.

7
  • 1
    Do you see this on the completed review item? I'm having a hard time reproducing since y'all keep the queues pretty clean. ;-) Aug 13, 2018 at 19:28
  • @JonEricson I saw it when it still was in the queue, thanks.
    – CarLaTeX
    Aug 13, 2018 at 19:32
  • Ok. I'll see if I can reproduce in a dev environment so I don't have to sit on review. :-) Aug 13, 2018 at 19:35
  • I can't reproduce on dev and it doesn't seem like the problem is on the close queue for me. Are you seeing it on the close vote queue? Aug 13, 2018 at 21:35
  • @JonEricson I hid the left navigation. With it hidden, the close vote queue is OK. Now I re-enable it, I'll answer you as soon as there's something in the queue.
    – CarLaTeX
    Aug 14, 2018 at 5:59
  • @JonEricson The close vote queue works, even with the left navigation enabled.
    – CarLaTeX
    Aug 14, 2018 at 6:32
  • @JonEricson I got the same problem on the Review Reopen Votes, but only in IE, Crome is OK,
    – CarLaTeX
    Aug 16, 2018 at 5:36
9

Title background

We asked about this before, but you seem to have missed that one (it got marked as almost a month ago, but nothing happened), so I repost the request here:

Please, do something about the title background. It does not make any sense as it is now. To make clear what I mean, here is a high contrast version of the spot:

enter image description here

It used to be well thought and well designed, now it is not. I see two options:

  1. Ask the community for new ideas on how this should look like. However, seeing how you ignore people's opinions, I'm not sure they will be willing to pu any effort into this.

  2. Remove the thing altogether, as zero quality is more than negative quality.

8
  • 1
    "nothing happened" is not fair. Compared to the mockup they changed the size (which is good) by cropping the image which now shows the empty space between the two lines so none of the nice elements is really visible any more (not good). But I'm not complaining, this leaves more room to add ducks. Aug 13, 2018 at 10:33
  • 6
    Assuming that cropping only occurs at pixel boarders, they had 282 possibilities to crop the image and still managed to find the worst possible place. That's quite an achievement! Aug 13, 2018 at 10:48
  • Take a look at the version that is live now. Please provide your feedback. Thanks.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 15, 2018 at 23:34
  • 2
    @JoeFriend Looks better, thanks.
    – yo'
    Aug 16, 2018 at 9:00
  • @JoeFriend I think it looks better than before (with most things being cut off), but it has significantly lost its feel. The old background was clearly a collection of showcases, but the new one looks more ordered and aligned and does not give of this "collection vibe", it comes over as more dominant now ...
    – moewe
    Aug 16, 2018 at 9:48
  • 7
    @JoeFriend The new background is really a big improvement! Thanks a lot for listening to our feedback! Proposal: Once the whole new site roll-out and bug fixes settle down, would it be possible to make a contest and see what suggestions our tex.se community has for background images and if you like what we come up with, you could use it as background image? [I don't propose this to add ducks(*), I think this could be a good way to restore some bonds between our community and the design -- (* at least not too many :)] Aug 16, 2018 at 10:26
  • 4
    @samcarter Yes that's something we would be willing to work with the community on.
    – Joe Friend
    Aug 16, 2018 at 14:25
  • 1
    @JoeFriend Good to hear! Aug 16, 2018 at 14:31
8

Hide tag-excerpt in the active question list

Please hide the tag excerpt on the active question tab of a tag, e.g. https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/biblatex?sort=active

These information are accessible via the tag-info tab. Maybe the current behaviour is good for new users, but once a user has a certain amount of reputation or a badge for this tag, it seems like a waste of space to display it every single time.

enter image description here

3
  • 4
    The "Learn more ..." link leads to the same tag wiki site as the "Info" button in the "Info/New/Frequent/Votes/Active/Unanswered" navigation that seems a bit redundant as well. Plus I believe that the big "Watch Tag" and "Ignore Tag" buttons a just a tad too large.
    – moewe
    Aug 12, 2018 at 12:34
  • 2
    The matter of wasted space by tag info and this entire block has also been brought up at math.meta.stackexchange.com/a/28851
    – moewe
    Aug 12, 2018 at 12:36
  • @moewe Interesting thread! Thanks for the link. Aug 12, 2018 at 12:41

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