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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! We're hoping to get feedback from you before rolling it out to everyone permanently. 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, it will take a few minutes to go into effect).

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.

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

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 you may notice, 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).

Thanks so much for your constructive feedback!

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    Some of the graphic elements have become a bit drab and feel like they came out of a cookie cutter site template, but the ill-advised choice of the Lusitana font-face will not be missed!
    – Caleb
    Aug 31, 2018 at 18:24
  • 2
    "I hate new things and want the old one back" grumble grumble. jk
    – fredsbend
    Sep 1, 2018 at 0:58
  • 1
    I dunno. It feels kinda crowded...
    – Mason Wheeler Mod
    Sep 1, 2018 at 14:23
  • @fredsbend, could be worse, could be English.SE. I actually kind of like the new theme. At least it gets rid of the half-attempt at retaining Jin's original design on the footer where half the farm was cut off.
    – Peter Turner Mod
    Sep 7, 2018 at 2:07
  • I like the new font.
    – Dan
    Dec 9, 2018 at 21:11
  • I hate the new font.
    – fredsbend
    Dec 19, 2018 at 23:59
  • I can't read it very easily. Messes with my eyes.
    – fredsbend
    Dec 20, 2018 at 0:01

9 Answers 9

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Georgia was supposed to be a font that worked with these various typefaces well. It's proving to be less than we'd hoped. We're looking at solutions.

Something is very wrong with Greek accents:

Example showing Greek accents

How it should look:

Example showing the same in the old theme

And to confirm that post didn't have some weird non-standard way of encoding Greek in Unicode, here's a sentence I copied out of Accordance just then:

1Tim. 2:8 Βούλομαι οὖν προσεύχεσθαι τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ ἐπαίροντας ὁσίους χεῖρας χωρὶς ὀργῆς καὶ διαλογισμοῦ.

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    Leave to the linguist to find the font issues.
    – fredsbend
    Sep 1, 2018 at 1:00
  • I am not seeing this problem. I don't have Georgia installed and my browser font stack for the new theme is falling through to my default serif font (Liberation Serif) and all looks good. Can you use your browser's inspector to see what font is actually getting applied for you?
    – Caleb
    Sep 1, 2018 at 9:05
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    @Caleb Yes, looks like Georgia is at fault. Removing it and it renders with Times New Roman and it's fine.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 1, 2018 at 12:35
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    Given the state of web font implementations these days, defaulting to a system font that has very limited script support is just asking for trouble — esp across all SE sites. There are plenty of good fonts with huge rages of language support to choose from.
    – Caleb
    Sep 1, 2018 at 12:42
  • @Caleb The best one I’ve found so far, not perfect but good, is the Google font EB Garamond. The problem is that if you use the Google implementation, you have to enable the onum font feature so that you can have text figures. Google moved them off the base setup.
    – tchrist
    Sep 5, 2018 at 4:20
  • @curiousdannii Which browser (and version), and platform are you on? I'm having trouble reproducing this on macOS Mojave and Safari 12. Dec 4, 2018 at 16:51
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    Ok, yeah, looks like Georgia renders super poorly in this case on Chrome on Windows 10. Shoot! Dec 4, 2018 at 17:34
  • Super frustrating since Georgia supports full Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters, but Chrome is messing it up :( Restoring Lusitana for now. Dec 4, 2018 at 17:51
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    @AaronShekey Please don't just put Lusitana back! No one wants it.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Dec 5, 2018 at 1:54
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    @AaronShekey But while Lusitana is the font, can you please bump its size up?
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Dec 5, 2018 at 2:05
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Underlining links with Hebrew is not good:

Example showing am underlined link of Hebrew

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    We'll be looking at links network-wide. From an accessibility standpoint, underlined links are a huge win, but our users just hate them. We'll figure out a way to strike the balance. Sit tight! Dec 4, 2018 at 18:07
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We're looking into a deeper shade and will keep in mind making it distinct from visited link colors.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with how this has come together! So far my one (minor) complaint is:

The standard link color seems too light / bright.

Here's our home page:

Low-contrast standard link color

Links that have been clicked do get a bit darker, as that screenshot shows – I'd love to see that darker shade be the standard color, and then something slightly darker yet be the clicked link color.

The problem is most obvious when the color is lightened further, such as on the Prvileges page:

Privileges that have been gained are tough to read

Can we make this more readable?

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    I'm strongly in favor of very distinct new vs visited link colors.
    – fredsbend
    Sep 1, 2018 at 0:59
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This has been fixed everywhere. There's a weird bug when the images are created causing the alignment to be off... we're trying to figure out what's causing it so we can get it fixed. ~Catija

The baseline for the logo isn't perfectly aligned (see the N):

Example showing the baseline of the Meta site

Like ELU for some reason it's noticably worse on Meta, though it's still a slight issue for the main site logo.

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  • Moreover, the word meta is in the wrong face and the wrong weight. See below.
    – tchrist
    Sep 8, 2018 at 21:00
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Comments will be switched to use a serif font, the way they were.

Having sans serif comments makes the Hebrew hard to read (example from here):

Example showing Hebrew in a sans serif comment

Unlike those at Mi Yodeya, I think it's very likely that the majority of Hebrew reading users of this site are not very familiar with sans serif Hebrew fonts.

The text is also quite small and not well hinted. (Though to be fair, its still small in the old theme.)

We have suggested some fonts previously. I still like Cardo but I haven't tried Crimson Text.

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Badges are a little cramped and off vertical center.

Old theme:

enter image description here

New theme:

enter image description here

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  • Which browser are you using? They're still cramped for me, but not off centre.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 1, 2018 at 1:08
  • Chrome Version 68.0.3440.106 (Official Build) (64-bit) @curiousdannii
    – fredsbend
    Sep 1, 2018 at 1:08
  • Of Chrome? Me too. Weird. Also, just noticed that the badges are different sizes in the main site and Meta!
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 1, 2018 at 1:09
  • @curiousdannii Font maybe? That's client side, usually.
    – fredsbend
    Sep 1, 2018 at 1:11
  • @curiousdannii Oh, that old theme picture is meta, while the new theme pic is main.
    – fredsbend
    Sep 1, 2018 at 1:12
  • I meant right now with the new theme, they have different sizes.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 1, 2018 at 1:13
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    Network-wide we'll be revisiting the sizes of these glyphs after the new themes launch everywhere. Some themes have bigger badges than others and it's causing display issues between themes, this one included. Thanks for reporting! It'll get fixed when we refactor how badges are displayed. Dec 4, 2018 at 18:09
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Logo on meta in wrong font

On Meta, the meta part of the logo is in the wrong typeface and at the wrong weight. It no longer corresponds to the Christianity part.

Here’s the original:

original meta logo

And here’s the new version:

new meta logo

Both are using Caslon for the small caps, but only the original continues to use Caslon for the “meta” part, which is using the semibold font in that typeface.

But the new version switches horses mid-race and suddenly dives into Times. It also changes the weighting to a full bold from the original semibold.

This looks quite inauthentic in many ways, just one of which is the mismatch of the small cap ᴛ in Christianity and the lowercase t in the new meta. Those don’t go together. The serifs are wrong on the Times version: look at the one at the top left of the m in meta: it just does not go with Caslon.

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  • This seems to have been fixed when the text alignment was fixed.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Oct 10, 2018 at 4:22
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Misaligned baseline on answers

When there’s an answer, the entire new heavyweight box is on the wrong baseline. Here’s how it used to look:

old answer alignment

And here’s how it looks now:

new answer misalignment

Both the 5 score and the word answers in the middle section are now on a misaligned baseline compared with the votes and views to either side of it.

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  • Hmm, I would have called that by design. It adds a third dimension.
    – fredsbend
    Sep 18, 2018 at 17:13
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The red link in the text box at the top of the screen used to make sense when we had lots of reddish links:

Old site with lots of red links

But now I think it's the only red link on the main site:

New site with one red link

Is this intentional? It seems like it should be consistent with other links.

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    I might be okay with that being the one red link on the page ;-)
    – Caleb
    Sep 1, 2018 at 9:12
  • @Caleb is correct... this is actually intentional.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Sep 6, 2018 at 2:50
  • @Catija Should it get underlines like the other links?
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 6, 2018 at 3:00
  • @curiousdannii it seems that we only underline links in the body of posts/comments, so ... no? I'm guessing not.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Sep 6, 2018 at 3:01

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