We're in the midst of revamping our jcink site onto a custom skin. Over the last week or so I have been exceptionally nosey and visited a LOT of other sites. It's got me thinking as to what elements I like (12px and above fonts) and what drives me crazy (retina burning contrast colours I'm looking at you). My tastes have come a long way from geocities sites... What do you specifically look for in a skin? What attracts and repels you at first glance? I know I'm talking about forum skins specifically but I think a lot of this translates to sites in general. So, please feel free to wade in folks!
I highly recommend setting font size with em instead of px or pt, so that they're relative to the user's default instead of a set size. People have so many different screen sizes, it's easy to make something that looks good on your laptop, but it's microscopic on someone's dual screen 24" desktop set up. And mobile skin. This is something I'm slowly poking at for my site, but the Nova 2 cms doesn't make this easy. Duke Nova Forever is coming, and that's supposed to be easier to skin (I actually have an early preview release installed in a sandbox, but haven't been able to poke at the skinning yet), but there's no set release date for it yet.
That's excellent advice and I shall definitely implement it. JCINK comes with an automatic mobile skin of sorts which takes a great deal of the pressure off users. Best of luck skinning in nova! I found it to be a laborious process when I gave it a go.
I honestly don't know what anyone was thinking when they set up the skins the way they did for Nova. Holy Marinara. I have started hacking away at modifying a skin, but ug, I get so frustrated when I do it that I just can't keep focused. I need to set aside time to see what it looks like on the preview release for 3, but the developer is saying the skinning should be settled for now.
If it is difficult to read you're already losing, most of anyone's players are coming to the site to read and write, you make that difficult for them in anyway and you're going to lose folks. There has been a trend for borderless, bright-white and fiddly.. they might seem stylish but honestly the majority of them actually make it harder for players to play. So yeah, golden rule is always going to be "is this easy to play on", everything else has to take a backseat to that surely?
I hate crazy fonts that make me squint to read, and I'm also not a fan of the current fade in jcink skins where you have a huge, permanent nav block on the left for the chatbox, and then the rest of the forum you have to scroll back and forth to read anything because it's crammed onto the ride side of the screen. I prefer jcink skins where the cbox is either embedded in top or bottom, or works on a toggle-switch because I want lots of clear, uncluttered space for the actual content.
the default Font size of a site is crucial as has been said. Too small (as is the case with many Jcink sites) and that is a huge turnoff. Image pop ups when your mouse moves over them (again Jcink) is so distracting. Having the chat window still visible when posting in threads is another horrible distraction. Too dark a theme, oh and on some sites I've visited, you cannot edit your post once submitted. Like what?
I cannot stand hover anything, or miniprofiles with lots of mandatory gif fields. Definitely code your text with em instead of px. I've been doing it with my new skins and it has made a world of difference!
Minimal hover, easy to read contrast, I like both dark and light skins but if I could only pick one I would prefer light. I need a mobile version (I am almost always mobile with brief periods on laptop). Font size is a big factor for me, I hate having to balloon out a site to be able to read anything.
Haha! I have a list of things I hate(maybe dislike is a less harsh word), which I did the same as you. I took a look around, saw what was trendy, cried a little bit, and then tossed all that aside. I am pretty sure when you put trendy next to how I designed my site, Marked is set apart from the rest. 1. I HATE hover sidebars. Especially now that I have a larger monitor and everything is either crammed to the left or the sidebar is off to the left and the forum in the center. It is also a horrible distraction for me. My solution: regular sidebar that is only visible on the index page and the cbox is at the bottom of every page - I even put a sticky button to jump down the cbox if scrolling is tedious. 2. I don't like dark dark sights. My eyes literally can't handle looking at a dark screen with bright white text (because HELLO contrast) or very subtle text that fades into the darkness. UGH My solution: I do like darker themes and ideas so we do have a darker textured background but our forum area stands out against it and is definitely the focus with a lighter background. Nor is it true white or glaring. 3. Ratio charts. They are a waste of space to me. I'd much rather feature other content related to the site. 4. Small font, glaring font, poor contrast font, too big font (like unnecessarily large headers...waste of space and creates a LOT of scrolling.) 5. Hard to navigate. No need to be creative with titling forums and categories or creating fancy menus. Be simple and straight forward, you cannot fail with this because no one gets lost.
I do a lot of browsing and posting from mobile, so mobile accessibility in a skin is super important to me. No hover elements! Including dropdowns—these should be click-to-activate—and especially miniprofiles. Collapsible sidebar, if there is one Font sizes 12px and higher. (And I second the advice to use "em" instead of pixels! I personally prefer "rem", which scales relative to the root element.) Good color choice and contrast
