Look, I don't mind that you have lots of jazzy pictures on a site. If you believe it makes it more appealing with its whizz-bang side bar with the HUGE pictures that are with mapping so you can click them and another page opens up with the info. Fine. Whatever.

But in a normal 'browsing through sites' mood, seriously. The colours on some of these sites were enough to make me cry bloody tears. AND some of them have midget iddy-biddy fonts that made me sit close to the screen and squint. Embarrassing when people are walking past and you're sitting 1 inch away from the screen going "OK..... I think I can see the words "Sawajiri Erika", but I need to cross reference this with spelling, and a screen shot that's zoomed in about 100 times."

Take one site for instance, it looked alright save the MASSIVE banner and the MAZZIVELY silly side bar graphics. WHY THE HECK DO YOU NEED A HUGE PICTURE WITH THE WORDS "Character of the month- undecided" ??? What are you advertising, that undecided won the character of the month? Hmmm... *mental notes to use this name as a character on the next site so she can win COTM every month!* But out of curiosity and habit, I looked at the face claim anyway.

If sitting close to the screen of a computer/television can give you square eyes, then I'm going to look extremely silly when I exit this uni library today.

Oh.

My.

GOSH.

THE FONT! TINY TINY FONT! I COULDN'T EVEN MAKE OUT WHAT HALF THE WRITING WAS! Which isn't so bad, but it was a terrifically bright colour on a gray background. OW. It took me 10 minutes to decipher the codes, before I managed to recognise the word "Miyavi" and went 'feh. No person deserves that torture' and clicked away. And no I'm not referring to the name/person/'actor'/'singer'/guitar player that is Miyavi (PLEASE NOTE THE USE OF DR EVIL QUOTES there). I have unresolved issues with him that will be dealt with next time I go to Japan.

But I digress!
Anyway.................

Another I saw that had a decent plot but the colours were bright/dark and when you're groggy from anti-d's that make you sleep 14 hours a night and still be seriously tired, it's seriously a mind-fark. Black is a terrific colour, I wear it all the time. but combining a bright red and black? Ow........

ANOTHER site that had moving GIFs. Whizz-bang, no? Not when they're so long that they take a million years to load up. Happy Birthday Breed, 100 years old but still young!

Breed's a lot grumpier today than usual. *throws cookies around as penance*

PS, sites that have COTM and Couple-OTM as admin's characters annoy me too. PRETENTIOUS MUCH? Your characters are just THAT great? *sigh*

I'm done. I'm going to buy chocolate and something that will make my brain secrete more Serotonin.

-agrees-

Tiny fonts are the worst part. It's a complete turn off to not be able to read the font on an rpg that you're pondering joining. One site I was on I had to zoom it in 7 times with firefox, I kid you not it was THAT small and it was the RULES as well! >.<

I end up not joining and to the members on the sites. They must have HUGE monitors to be able to view the sites or enjoy ruining their eyes.

I also agree about the MASSIVE BANNERS THAT TAKE FOREVER TO LOAD! It's simple, I don't wait. I leave.

Uck. Tiny fonts suck. And I do like being able to read other people's posts. It may look "prettier" to have bizarre posting rituals, but just as a courtesy for other people, don't do it.

I guess sites that do that are trying to draw a type of person which isn't me. :/

Have you tried setting the preferences on your browser to override that stuff? My browser won't display text as anything smaller than 11pt. Give it a try.

One of them (opera, I think) even has a contrast control, so if something like December just posted was on a site, it would change the text to black on this site, or white when I'm on a site with a dark skin.

LOL December, you're such a sadist...

Is it just me, or is that rant really, really amusing? I enjoyed reading it. :) Thank you, Breed.

I can count on you to accompany me to Japan to annoy the crass out of Miyavi then? ^___^ I'll bring the poking sticks. We need to fix that stupid haircut he's got. looks like trailer trash. ><

>______< DEC MUST DIE!!

lol, actually that made me laugh =3 thanks Dec.

I never thought of that =3 But then I use Firefox, and the settings tend to be lame if you touch them. And IE is the devil, because I'm on my uni net right now and it's just making things worse >.>

^__^ This is what happens when I get in black moods. Chocolate does fix a lot, though it's done nothing for the headache I have...

I post weird. I could link ya to my posts, but I HATE HATE HATE white background sites. They always seem to make the font smaller and the colors brighter. I don't mind other colors as well as gray. Gray is my favorite. And I love the coloring here.

I don't mind tiny font. I don't mind color in the font.

I JUST HATE WHITE BACKGROUNDS! DDDD:<

What? Opera has contrast control? Tell me!

it doesn't have anything for font size >_< Mozilla might....but I hate it. Compared to Opera, it is the devil. Compared to IE...welll....it wins.

There are no words to express my hatred for small fonts.

It's going to have to be one hell of a good site if I'm going to mess with my computer settings in order to adjust for "flaws" such as fonts and colors. -_-

booooy do I have something to show you guys.
CLICKY (screenshot)
I mean, that really, really hurt my eyes! Those bright colors...and then there was a white font on it that was tiny! D: And that header pic was animated and flashed in all the colors of the neon rainbow. I'm sorry I just had to give a link to the screenshot of it! Had to!

Why must people make my eyes bleed? Why??? I mean...the plot of the site may have been actually good, but the look made me run away so fast that I didn't even consider reading the plot. :sweat:

I thought of sherbert and I got hungry. :p

PS: Careful of using screenshots. ;) You don't want to accidentally name a board, you know.

I admit, I'm a graphics whore some of the time. But when it comes to boards, I try to appeal to my more utilitarian sensitivities. Especially, since, as an admin, I'm going to have to read all those 6-page character profiles people come up with, and I don't want my eyeballs to fall bleeding out of my skull while doing so. Pale pale gray instead of white, black on light gray, muted tones with high value contrast, legibility...

I mean, they give classes for developers on website usability. Small fonts and annoying colors are the first thing covered!

...

why are people dumb? *cries on the inside*

yeah I was going to edit it and blacken whole lotta things but then I apparently got lazy. I'm a baaaaad person) Apologies to the board. They didn't have a bad sounding plot. I just recommend they change their layout! Please change it! Please!!!

*claps* Nice rant. :D

As an admin though it is REALLY hard to please people with colours. Layout I get, not too small, not too many pictures, not too busy a main page (wtf does that mean, I have subforums for a reason damn you!) and no stupid deliberate typos.

But colours... damn. I have a green main page, yes green, and its all foresty and s**t, but guests have an obvious option to change skins so we have many skins all all colours (except bright PINK or green, or anything where your eyes will bleed.). In the cbox we have debates about which is the best skin and its funny, because everyone uses something different. Some people need a brighter skin because they hate dark skins late at night, some want darker ones because the bright ones make their eyes hurt. So I give them all, and also members can use our test board to make personal skins so I think I have covered all area's lol.

I officially hate Dec, dude that was cruel. And Temp, that was an awful screen shot... dayum.

Breed, stay away from the serotonin! :p

I was cracking up so much reading that. xD

I hate huge font, and size 0 is ok with me. But size 0 is NOT okay when it's in a flashy alien color and on a white background! Or hiddin within a plethora of colors on a monster sized banner! It ain't fun waiting for a 700x300 poster to load when you could be doing something more interesting.

-Soooooo Agrees!-

I as on a site, the font normaly was size 1. someone posted with size 0, it wa slike i had my eyes pressed agenst the screen to read it!

And it annoyed me even MORE when the character of the month junk, the ADMIN was wnner for both! i wouldent enter myself, i would enter the members, not the admins.

Normal
Posting

I once got banned from a forum (not an RP one) that I modded because I was in charge of making skins, and the admin suddenly decided all skins must have a black background with white text. That gave me horrible headaches because of the contrast. I made a more mellow-colored skin so I could actually, you know, READ the forum, and she flipped out.

Contrast is good, but make it readable. I stick with layouts that have either a light (not white) background and dark or black text, or dark (not black) background with light/white text. And DEFAULT FONT SIZES. Tiny font sucks.