The index page could be better but overall I think the design is pretty clean and readable. Have you ever seen a typical forum, without Ad BlocK? 
Most buttons on the forum are links styled as buttons anyway. It makes sense for mobile devices so they are clearer tap targets. I think there is a good balance between such buttons and links.
I think the design does a good job of using a very clear, contrasted, cherry colour large buttons for the most imporant actions : New Reply, New Topic.
Green buttons are secondary actions, or just less visually strong thant- the cherry ones.
Better yet, I used "holllow" buttons to distinguish the main action, from the secondary one. Eg. "Post Reply" / "Preview Post".
One issue is that actual form buttons are not styled the same way on iOS, they have some kind of gradient and look really ugly, haven't looked into it yet.
Frankly what surprised me the most is that I haven't seen a single comment about the post buttons I thought people would complain about them. I used a text label for the most important action: "Reply", and a highly recognizable icon for "Like / Love" (+1). The two other icons can be figured out by clicking.
The forum uses some ideas from iOS9, and some ideas from material design (semi-flat). So I didn't take the visual simplicity too far.
I think I did a pretty darn good job for a programmer with no formal training in graphic design. =)
The ONE thing I really don't like, is the look of the Categories. They're not buttons anyways they are just links that look like "tags".
And hide the categories, one of the main navigation elements in a dropdown where many users will miss it? Makes no sense.
I like how you casually put down my work as aesthetic instead of being functional. =) Your post is pretty hilarious to be honest. Much of the work I did, creating a completely unique, and new theme for MyBB, is not called aesthetic freedom, it's called *design*. Design takes in account usability. Readability of the page is helped with contrast, alignment, etc. Contrast of size between important and secondary buttons, contrast of colour,etc. Repetition of shapes, and elements throughout the pages. I think I did a pretty good job with the colour scheme that is consistent between index, forum, and thread views.
The index page is probably the hardest one to get right, I'll go back to it once in a while. I think it looks decent right now and is pretty functional =)
I think I also did a pretty sweet job making the forum scale down all the way down to 480px phones.
And on my iPad 3rd gen simply switching between portrait and landscape switches the thread view between the "classic" (authors by the side), and "vertical" (author info in between posts). Pretty neat!
Most buttons on the forum are links styled as buttons anyway. It makes sense for mobile devices so they are clearer tap targets. I think there is a good balance between such buttons and links.
I think the design does a good job of using a very clear, contrasted, cherry colour large buttons for the most imporant actions : New Reply, New Topic.
Green buttons are secondary actions, or just less visually strong thant- the cherry ones.
Better yet, I used "holllow" buttons to distinguish the main action, from the secondary one. Eg. "Post Reply" / "Preview Post".
One issue is that actual form buttons are not styled the same way on iOS, they have some kind of gradient and look really ugly, haven't looked into it yet.
Frankly what surprised me the most is that I haven't seen a single comment about the post buttons
I thought people would complain about them. I used a text label for the most important action: "Reply", and a highly recognizable icon for "Like / Love" (+1). The two other icons can be figured out by clicking.The forum uses some ideas from iOS9, and some ideas from material design (semi-flat). So I didn't take the visual simplicity too far.
I think I did a pretty darn good job for a programmer with no formal training in graphic design. =)
The ONE thing I really don't like, is the look of the Categories. They're not buttons anyways they are just links that look like "tags".
vix86 Wrote:(...) if most people used the "recent topics" to find the new posts then one suggestion might be to move the sub-forum buttons/links into an accordion/expandable style menu. This will decrease the number of buttons visible but still leave them easily accessible
And hide the categories, one of the main navigation elements in a dropdown where many users will miss it? Makes no sense.
vix86 Wrote:So there is a lot of room for aesthetic freedom in what you (ファブリス) decide to do
I like how you casually put down my work as aesthetic instead of being functional. =) Your post is pretty hilarious to be honest. Much of the work I did, creating a completely unique, and new theme for MyBB, is not called aesthetic freedom, it's called *design*. Design takes in account usability. Readability of the page is helped with contrast, alignment, etc. Contrast of size between important and secondary buttons, contrast of colour,etc. Repetition of shapes, and elements throughout the pages. I think I did a pretty good job with the colour scheme that is consistent between index, forum, and thread views.
The index page is probably the hardest one to get right, I'll go back to it once in a while. I think it looks decent right now and is pretty functional =)
I think I also did a pretty sweet job making the forum scale down all the way down to 480px phones.
And on my iPad 3rd gen simply switching between portrait and landscape switches the thread view between the "classic" (authors by the side), and "vertical" (author info in between posts). Pretty neat!