Is this the final design?

[Geraint]

While I appreciate the efforts to improve the site, I agree with most of what is said above.  I have a headache from just trying to navigate from page to page on the site. 

I find sites with dark or black backgrounds painful to look at and extremely difficult to read.  And should the scheme spread to the rest of the page, I would find it nearly impossible to write here at all.

Edit:  The dark blue background makes it no easier for me either.
Second Edit:  In fact, it's worse because it makes the black background display ads even more garish than they were.

[King Serperior]

Okay, it took some time, but now I am getting that queasy feeling that everyone else is getting.  I think I will log for a few minutes and get my equilibrium back again.

[oceanspool]

Just to add to the I-feel-queasy-too reports. The black makes the rest of the screen look funny even when I've scrolled down so it's off the page - it's making my eyes go funny D:

[Dale]

I'm appreciative that there have been hours of work gone into the new look but can we have a choice between the old and the new, please?. The new makes me want to adjust something because, well, it's a strain to have to look at the writing. I tried turning the thing off. I know I'm OCD for not liking changes but it isn't simply my inability to cope with a change. Oh God everythings gone black now. Black/ dark is just a strain to look at and I won't be using the Shoutbox so a toggle on/off would be very neat for those who do or don't want to see it. I miss seeing the cheery Hello Lock and seeing the cats properly too. Sorry.

[Gadifriald]

With IE on fullscreen with a 21 inch monitor I can scroll down to hide the top bar without running into the bottom one. Fullscreen and scrolling to hide might help some folks! But the top and bottom should really match the gentle blue and white and gray of the rest of E for eye comfort!

[Vekseid]

Yikes, I haven't even gotten to fixing the tags yet : /

Is the current setup better for people?

[Izu]

Me personally - main content is too bright of a blue-green-cyanic (the #eff)... but I can continue whining about it all forever... sorry...

edit: but yeah, thanks a lot for removing the complete blackness...

[King Serperior]

The blue is soooo much better.  Thanks, Veks   ;D

[Chrystal]

That's better...

Had me seriously worried for a minute though when it went REALLY wierd!

[Vekseid]

Me personally - main content is too bright of a blue-green-cyanic (the #eff)... but I can continue whining about it all forever... sorry...

edit: but yeah, thanks a lot for removing the complete blackness...

Unfortunately the styling for the forum in general is a complete mess, as far as smf goes.

[Geraint]

Yikes, I haven't even gotten to fixing the tags yet : /

Is the current setup better for people?

For me, not much.  I find any dark background with bright type hard to read, and the blue surrounding them makes the black background display ads  (especially the bright Mortal Combat one) even more painful to the eyes

[Gadifriald]

Lightening the background for the banners would be good! The black background makes them hard to read.

[Kye]

I'm having the same issue as Geraint. It's the dark background and light text.

[Mithlomwen]

I'm having the same issue as Geraint. It's the dark background and light text.

Same for me. 

It's hard for my eyes to adjust.  Reading the dark colors makes it hard to look down and read the lighter colors of the main forum.  It makes me dizzy, and I can already feel a headache coming on from my eyes trying to adjust to the stark difference in colors.

[mia h]

The change of layout is a bit jarring and might take some getting used to. When SB is closed it feels in the way, but when it's open it takes up so much real estate that you can't see anything of the thread, so the choice is use SB or the thread you can't use both. And if you can't use the thread and SB together do they really belong on the same page?
Of course you could just ignore all that, leave it a few a days and I probably won't even notice SB is there anymore  ;D

[BeckyAnnn]

Yikes, I haven't even gotten to fixing the tags yet : /

Is the current setup better for people?

Marginally

[Beguile's Mistress]

It's still like walking from a dark room into light or from a room with lights into the dark.  It takes too much time for the eyes to adjust and getting hit in the face with it every time you refresh or open a tab is jarring.  The top is just not esthetically pleasing at all.  The format including the SB was so much better as it unified the pages rather than disrupting them.

And now that everyone is experimenting with their own colored fonts and using bold lettering it's even worse.

[Bloodied Porcelain]

My suggestion honestly, would be to just add a tab at the top that leads to the full page shoutbox, rather than putting it in the header of the site itself. That way nothing huge in the layout needs to be messed with and the nice, streamlined set up people are used to can stay. There's less chance of distraction for those of us with ADD who will constantly be glancing up and wondering what people are saying when we should be reading/writing for our games, etc.

[Aislinn]

I do appreciate the effort that is going into returning the shoutbox feature to the site even though I'm not a user of it.

There are some people that have physical issues to where they are very sensitive to visual stimuli. "Getting used to it" isn't in the cards for members like this, including me. I have every confidence that Veks is working really hard to make sure all of these concerns are addressed.  ;D

[RainThunderwolf]

I don't like the fact that i can't close the shoutbox. I'm not interested in it, will never have a need for it. The flow of the design is jarring.

Edited:

I tried scrolling down to hide most of this horror and click on a link to show new replies and the new page scrolls back up so it takes up half my screen again. That's just for a list of replies. I tested it on threads and I it takes up half the screen there too. I think saying that I hate it would be an understatement. The design shouldn't make the users have to do more work.

+ 1

[Bloodied Porcelain]

Also... it took a little bit longer for me to start feeling queasy this time, but it still happened. =/

[Vekseid]

Shift+reload?

Won't deny that the css of this place is a mess.

[oceanspool]

Still not a fan overall, but thanks so much for getting rid of the black! My eyes feel better already and it's much less jarring.

Having said that, would it be possible to have an option to customise it and change back to the old setting? I find the massive block of colour at the top very distracting, and the old setting worked very well in that it didn't draw attention and was purely functional.

[Vekseid]

If someone wants to hack together a better .css file feel free, can include multiples too. As long as people aren't bleeding out though I need to get down to fixing other things : /

[Beorning]

Regarding this new design: with all due respect, Vekseid, it's catastrophic  :-(

The previous layout was very good. Now, it's... a mess. Please, let's go back to the previous one!!! I'm begging you...

I can supply some screeshots to show how this new layout looks on my screen. I can barely navigate it...  :-(