Mother Talkers was running on a creaky old version of our blogging software, so we decided to upgrade it along with a nice little design refresh.
The site functionality shouldn’t be any different than what you’re used to. There may be some weirdness here or there, and if so, please let me know in the comments so we can get it fixed. Hope you like this little bit of change!
Wow!
That was a great way to wake up this morning – thanks for the updated look!
like getting out of the mom jeans! lol
nice job!!
But since you asked
I’d love to be able to click on a user name and see their “page” – that hasn’t worked in a while.
Fixed. n/t
test reply
testing, one two.
test 2
testing, three four
Pretty!
We aren’t going to start using the rec button, though, are we? I hope not!
sorry – I recommended you
I couldn’t resist
But
it keeps defaulting to shrink even though I hit expand…it will expand, but if I navigate away to a different page it’s back to shrink.
I think if you click the “Always” button
Then it will stay expanded as you go from page to page. I did a little test and it seems to work. Make sure it’s the “Always” that’s next to “Hide” not the one at the end.
And I’d also like to see the recommend button disappear I think… I’ve always liked that we don’t do that.
I love the purple on the side. Am still getting used to the orange for the block quote but I think it’s just because it’s so different from grey
thank you
I was seeing the “always” at the end and couldn’t figure out why I kept having to click on expand — there are two “always” boxes — duh! How I missed that, I don’t know, but now I can fix it on DailyKos, too!
thanks!
Duh
Thanks! I, like my good friend Lisa in Austin, only saw one Always button.
Problem.Solved.
Thank you!
Yep, me too – I was getting a bit annoyed taht changing the setting did not work. Helps to tick the correct box – d’uh! Thanks for pointing out there are two – I missed the one in the middle completely!
Very nice
It’s so pretty here!
Replaced dailykos on my google home page.
I’m confused. I scrolled down to the bottom and where my feed for dkos was…gone, but there was mothertalkers!
I don’t know how this happened because I did not change it.
“Have you tried turning it off and on?” Not yet.
By the way, there is a hilarious British comedy(on DVD or instant through Netflix) called the ” I T Crowd” about a computer department. I’ve never laughed so much in my life.
Anyone in IT would love it.
In Google Reader…
I still have separate feeds showing up for DailyKOS and Mothertalkers, but they both contain all the same feed items.
Don’t get me wrong, I love ya both, but I want my DailyKOS and Mothertalkers feeds separate, please.
oh and another thing
Hate to reply to myself but… I checked what’s showing up for the current mothertalkers only feed, and it seems to only go up to April 24.
Yeah, feeds are mixed up
We’ll get that straightened out today.
The feeds stuff has been fixed.
It was messing things up for dailykos, too. It’s better now.
Love it!
It’s so fresh and clean!! I imagine it smells like vanilla and pears!
lol! n/t
asdf
As this change has come about right near Mother’s Day and May Day, the scent is definitely lily of the valley and lilacs.
oh, and here was me
thinking that it was Lily’s bath gel – lilac and lavendar! No, it’s the scent of MT permeating the air!
I like the new font in general
but there are some places (like the diary links in the sidebar) where the combination of the new font and new colors make it a bit harder to tell what’s what, for me at least.
Oh and also
it’s confusing to have the “small print” be the same size as the regular print. I keep thinking there’s one more comment on a thread than there is—it’s the copyright notice.
Me too! n/t
Look at Sister Q’s comment
on the top line- some of the letters are getting truncated. (like the “l” and “k” in “links”) I can see this on some other comments too…
Funny
“links” looks OK to me and I don’t see other truncations. I am running Firefox, what about you?
I still have problems reading the pink-on-red in quotes though.
Firefox also
weird.
Yes, I get that.
Running Google Chrome as my browser, FWIW.
whoa
Some of the writing on the right hand side is light purple! I didn’t comment on this in my earlier comment because I couldn’t see it. And now that I examine the page carefully I see that there appears to be a faint blue or maybe purple background surrounding a white box that contains the text – I hadn’t seen that either, I thought Eliza had just gone with a more minimalist look. Does everyone else see this stuff? I was wondering why you all liked the new design so much, now I realize that I was missing a lot of it.
That does it – I am going to the phone Right Now and making an appointment with the opthamologist.
It’s probably your monitor.
When I started working on the changeover, I couldn’t see a lot of the design, either, until I adjusted my display to turn down the brightness/sharpness/gamma a bit.
nope
That’s the first thing I tried. (Well, the brightness anyway. I don’t know what or where my gamma is.) But I spend a lot of time online and I can’t think of any other websites I have a problem with, just this one.
Refreshing!
It takes getting used to but my very first thought clicking on here this morning was that it felt like a deep, cleansing breath!
surprised me a bit
when I was on late last night and saw posts from December in this pretty new format… eek! reload!
I’m good now. I think my favorite thing is the script font across the graphic. So girly!!
That was moi!
My main contribution to the redesign was that I carefully picked out this font to give the site a more feminine look. You likey?
I do!
and I am so not girly!!!
I like the font
too!
Change is good
This new lighter, brighter look is great! Nice work, people.
except
One thing — the italic font used to note the diaries’ authors is pretty small. If it is hard for me to read (lover of tiny font sizes that I am), then I imagine it might be tough for a lot of people.
Good to know…
Thanks for the feedback!
Yes
It’s hard for my crappy, far sighted, eyes!
Thank you!
The font size is a bit small for me too.
Me too
A bit painful to read.
Agreed
My eye sight isn’t bad, but this font is a little small for me, too.
Props to rs/Ed!
Increased slightly
I’ve bumped up the diary byline text size ever so slightly; please reply if it’s still too small
Thanks for the feedback all!
This is still a work in progress so your impressions are helpful.
Wow! I thought I was
lost when this new look came up. I agree with everyone that it is a nice change. It reminds me of lilac trees with the light purple and green colors. Very spring like.
oh dear
The new look is pretty, I guess, but it’s not very friendly to us more, um, “mature” ladies. My elderly eyes are struggling with the font size, but the main problem is that the text is oddly washed out – the primary font appears more grey than black and it’s no longer crisp and easy to read. Also the light olive green parts fade into the background. I started out this morning on the patio so the combination of outdoor light on a macbook was exacerbating the problem, but even after I moved indoors I’m still finding this very hard to read.
OTOH, I am definitely overdue for new glasses. So I suppose this serves as a useful prompt. Oh, and your ads certainly stand out by contrast with the faded text – is that really what you were going for? :-)
This
Me too. I like it because it looks so nice and light but it’s a little harder to read.
definitely harder to read
I’m also finding the smaller, gray print hard to read, as well as the red/pink quotes mentioned by others.
Thank you
I think it looks very nice…
One comment though is that I am finding the red-on-pink in the block quotes (such as in Elisa’s post on miscarriage up on top right now) difficult to read. Maybe like Lyn, it’s that my eyes are getting too old, I don’t know, but a stronger contrast would be easier for me at least to read.
asdf
I could do without the red. Maybe a bluish teal would be different enough and less garish.
So Light and Airy
I agree – but one thing that is throwing me off is that the Subject font is so much larger than the comment itself. Also, I agree that the grey font is difficult to read – or maybe it’s just that the Subject is in black and larger than the grey font that is making it hard to read. I’m also getting the top line of comments scrunched up into the subject line and I’m using IE.
partly fixed
I’m also getting the top line of comments scrunched up into the subject line and I’m using IE.
This should be sorted now.
Font changes are go
We’ve changed over to sans-serif for the comments, and added some line spacing. Should be easier to read now, do drop a comment if it’s still hard on the eyes.
still faded
I think the eye strain is more due to the indistinct grey color, which doesn’t show up as crisply as text normally does. It’s easier to make out the letters with the larger sans serif font, but it’s still pretty fatiguing to read.
Oddly, the headers are still showing up in a serif font on my page.
It’s not odd…
The headers are still serif on purpose; I thought they ought to look a little different from the body of the comment and parallel the look of the story titles (I’m in no way a designer, mind you, I’m just working from a reference design).
The font color really doesn’t look especially faded or indistinct to me; but then you were the one having trouble seeing the background images, purple text and pastel-teal background in the side menus, weren’t you?
I know you said you tried adjusting your screen first thing, but it really sounds like it’s giving you a washed-out picture.
text for everyone, not just the young
I can see all those things clearly when I tilt my screen at an angle, and even head on I can see them enough to know they are there. These are not positive choices for me since I prefer to sit out on the patio where the light is suboptimal for computer work. But I don’t mind it.
But if you look at the other thread you’ll see I’m far from the only one to have trouble with the grey text. (And I’m now talking about indoors, outdoors I don’t even bother.) I don’t actually care what the site looks like stylistically – all that matters to me is readability. Though I’ve never given this much thought before, I now understand why black text on a white background is standard. I’d like to ask you to reconsider your choice of a paler text, because I feel you’re sacrificing functionality for style.
Much easier!
Thanks!