Colours are terrible.

[#1]

Quote from: Ianwild

If anyone has any 'quick win' suggestions, as well as the new themes, please do shout up. Personally speaking my design skills are the worst in the world, but I agree that it's the amount of white makes things seem too bright, and I think if there was a quick answer to that we could perhaps just do it, as I can't see anyone objecting if a minor change for a positive impact.

I'd not seen the progs on this thread (these forums move too quickly for me to keep up, lately!) but replied to Kelly's post asking for people's ideas for a possible "new look" in the thread at http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?topic=367.msg3614#msg3614 .
I've only done some possible layouts for the main index page (fairly time-consuming to figure out the layout from a css-based original) but there are quite a few colour combinations in the 12 sets.
Somewhat mixed reception so far 😕 but the layouts do largely dispense with the "sea of white" (though different forum-width parameters are offered for comparison).
Regards,
Penny.

[#2]

Seems a shame that this topic seems split between 2 threads now - the Left Hand Menu one seems to have gravitated towards grappling with the same colour problem.
Despite the sterling efforts of Penny and others (thanks!) I find that all of the suggested revised layouts still have too many bits of text in colours that are too pale for quick browsing. Could I make a plea for a scheme where all the pale text is made several shades darker? Reverting to how the forums used to be would be fine with me - I would much rather be able to skim through to pick out what I want than have to squint at pretty headings and links to work out whats there first. The text colour seems a vital detail to get right, the other stuff about background colours and separating lines etc seem more of an aesthetic thing to me, so is something we will never all agree on probably, but can we at least have text that is readable without users having to resort to tweaking monitors and settings or using schemes or software to change the appearance? Sorry if I'm missing something thats obvious to everyone else but I can't see why the original thrust of this thread (which was basically lots of people requesting for all the pale pink bits to be made darker) was either too difficult to achieve or has become lost in a quest to change other things which probably aren't so important?

[#3]

Quote from: chesterfield

http://www.smfhacks.com/smf-theme-generator.html Hope that helps

Yep that really helped -- just accepting the defaults on the linked page and creating a new style.css for Opera has made it 70% more readable.
Now to experiment and change these vile colours ...
Thanks chesterfield
paul

[#4]

Quote from: Gilby

Seems a shame that this topic seems split between 2 threads now - the Left Hand Menu one seems to have gravitated towards grappling with the same colour problem.

I'm sure if you asked a Mod nicely they could use all their nice new SMF powers to do some robust cutting and splitting of the thread 
Ian

[#5]

Mitch has done some tweaking of the current style to address some of the concerns.
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?topic=464.0
Let us know on that thread what you think.