Movies & TV updated site theme is ready for testing!

Question

As part of implementing the new unified themes across the network, we're gradually rolling out updated site themes for each site. As of today, we have enabled your updated site theme for testing.

If you can't see it right now, that's by design! This is a very early test implementation of your design and we need your help finding issues with it before we make it live for everyone permanently. So, keep in mind, there will be things that need fixing! We'll address those things as we can.

If you'd like to review it, here's how:

How do I enable it?

Click here and check the "Beta test new themes" option. This will turn on the new theme for all sites that have one in testing, including this one. Here's more info on how to opt in. You can uncheck the box to revert to the older theme until the site is live for everyone. Note, while turning it on is immediate, it will take a few minutes to revert to the old view - but it will go through!

What type of feedback do we need?

On this post: Bugs related to this site's design elements

Please help us look for issues/bugs related to the theme design and how we have mapped the old theme to the new. This needs to be done within the limits of the new unified theme.

This could include colors of sections of the design or text, problems with JavaScript add-ons (if applicable), the logo or top banner appearance or other artwork.

You can also feel free to ask questions about the new layout if you're unsure how to navigate it.

On Meta Stack Exchange: General concerns about left nav or theming

There are some things that are definitely changing everywhere and can't really be adjusted on a per-site basis. A few of them include:

• Top banner is shorter in height, so some artwork has to be adjusted along with some logos.
• Left Navigation is active everywhere (but can be collapsed into a menu by visiting your site preferences - instructions here).
• Responsive layout is active, which lets the site adjust as browser widths change - no side scrolling (some pages haven't been updated, yet, though). For now, if you prefer the scrolling, you can disable this by clicking the "disable responsiveness" link in the footer.
• Many site elements including tags and voting arrows are standardized across the network.
• Link underlining is active. In an effort to make links more visible, they are now being underlined.

If you have concerns or issues regarding the left nav or the overall approach we are taking to theming, then this Meta Stack Exchange post is the right place for feedback.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some unique design elements like voting arrows and tags that are being standardized in this process. Keeping these custom elements makes our ability to maintain the sites too complex and, while we're very sad to see them go, we're in a difficult position of needing to make the site designs work together so that we can continue to address feature requests and bugs that will make your Q&A experience better. This is addressed in a Meta Stack Exchange post if you want more detail.

What new themes?

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). To follow along with the rollout of these new themes, go here.

Thanks so much for your constructive feedback!

Oh, Who am I?

If you don't know me, I'm one of the Community Managers here at Stack Exchange. I'm here to listen to your input and convey it to our Design team for responses and fixes to bugs. I'll do my best to respond to your concerns and explain whether changes we've made are bugs that can be changed or if they're by design and why.

Answer 1

Movie reel is so so so tiny that it's difficult to even understand what is there, compared to before when it used to be the main part of the site design:

Older design:

Newer design:

Now it's stressful to identify what is even there and also most movie reel slots are lost now, they used to be 17 of them and now 9.

Even there is space to have all 17 there and potential for little zoom-in and maybe lighter shade of orange will help.

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Update: here is the updated header:

Personally it looks jumbled-up messy and downright weirdly uncomfortable to look at. We did got movie-reel back on the cost of loosing logo visibility. And most shots are repetitive and the chopped one are looking so bad, even Paulie_D made a way way way better looking version in comment:

Answer 2

I was quite confident that our site wouldn't be hit too much by the untheming process, primarily because our old top-bar image already fit perfectly into the new top-bar. But...apparently that was just wishful thinking. Given that the new top-bar would perfectly take our existing film strip, the current miniature image crammed into the right corner seems...less than optimal.

I would implore the design team to please give this a reconsideration. That image is the identifying element of our site and to have it treated seemingly hastily like that is really unfortunate and just makes one feel sad.

I can understand when you have to cut it to the width of the page contents, but even then that's a ton of space to fill. I could also understand when you don't want it under the logo, for which solutions exist, too, like toning the contrast down in that area or making it a little shorter. But really, it does not have to be that tiny, especially since there is already a multitude of sites that have a much bigger background image in the top-bar, one that even extends into the logo in certain conditions.

At the very least, I would expect some sound reasoning for why it has to be this tiny image that deliberately eschews from using the free space it has, given how much consideration went into the original conception of this design.

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UPDATE: The new version is to me somewhat of an improvement and might be a move into the right direction. I do like how the scene images scroll along under the logo when you resize the window, as it adds to the film strip feel. However, there are still some problems with this iteration:

• The color around the logo as well as the overall colour impression of the whole top-bar is quite a bit too dark. That's probably because the actual background colour is below the film strip (and partly also because some of the transparency seems to have gone lost in the film strip image), which the logo is a part of now. However, this colour change is quite a deviation from the site's colour palette as originally conceived. All in all it makes it a little more drab than the bright orange-red it was originally.

• The logo looks a little crammed into the film strip and lacks some breathing room. This might be helped by leaving a little bit more room to the sides around the logo. I think for this a good compromise might be to extend it just far enough so that the left side starts at the content (and symmetrically for the right side). Since the film strip itself is fixated at the left window border, this would avoid the small image fragments left and right of the logo as soon as the window is small enough for the left side-bar to touch the window border, thus producing the best result in the most reliable case (and giving a little more breathing room for the logo in the rest of the cases):

  

Answer 3

Are we going to lose colours from our colour scheme too?

Movies & TV colour scheme:

But we are losing all the blue.

Blue footer is removed and help page sidebar lost it's unique colour sceheme and now it's generic yellow:

Old:

New:

Answer 4

The vote buttons seem to have been recoloured from their intial cyan-blue colour (left) to the site's red-orange (right):

This removes a little bit of variation from the colour scheme and seems to directly contradict the design for the site's colour scheme as originally conceived.

I know the buttons can't have a custom shape anymore (and they really didn't before anyway), but they seem to be freely colourable still. Therefore, and given how much consideration went into the original design process, I would at least like to hear some sound reasoning for this change in colour scheming. Do those buttons have to have the same colour as other buttons?

Answer 5

bug status-completed

The new ask button in the upper right corner of an individual question page seems to cause rather odd intra-word breaks in the question title, for example on this question:

Answer 6

status-completed

Mobile site top bar is design-less:

Just a shouting plain logo with bright orange/red and without moviereel.

But some other site's are better in this context, like worldbuilding:

This one is soothing to eye and have site design too.

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Update: it's been resolved I guess?

But more disappointed :'(

Answer 7

Well, for something positive, it seems the design unification fixed this long-standing bug. So that's something.

Answer 8

bug

tools page new tag section is broken:

It's crossing the margin line:

Answer 9

bug status-bydesign The vertical line has appeared yet again.

When we disable left navigation bar, this line appears on the left and right sides everywhere.

On the home page

Answer 10

status-completed

Copyright text colour is so light:

That's it's hard to read but previously it was more readable:

side by side:

Answer 11

I'll be honest, I wasn't at all broken up by the movie reel being shrunk down and moved to the side. But the way it's been put back is terrible. First, it cuts off Citizen Kane which is considered by many to be the best movie ever made. I'd think we'd want to keep that one visible. Second, it appears to repeat, but doesn't. It looks like it was chopped up into overlapping pieces and reassembled haphazardly. Is there a reason it was done this way?