I can see how that makes a difference for reading novels & coding, but for forums, no, I disagree with the application. Forums are generally themed for the product, and generally products in the Battlescape genre are light text on a dark background.
Examples:
But I am an artist, and think a forum theme should reflect the aesthetic of the game. I certainly haven’t done any extensive testing…
I don’t like to use one set of credentials everywhere. Also I definitely don’t want to support the idea that Facebook could be a trusted party.
Personally I’d always rather use per-site login details.
Not enough contrast there for me.
If you feel like trying something else: https://studiostyl.es/schemes/monokai
I find it most natural reading off paper and most novels are printed on tainted paper, perfect black-on-white is better IMO than white-on-black, black on some sort of gray could even be better. Space game websites have a long tradition for being presented white-on-black. I do find that reading a long patch note on the ED website imprints some lines in my vision and the interlace lines make it even worse.
As for Visual Studio, I find it a lot easier to spend 10 hours a day with black-on-white than white-on-black. One surprising thing about Visual Studio for Windows is that the default theme was defaulted to dark, while Visual Studio for Desktop still uses the light theme.
Reader shouldn’t be aware of the color scheme on a website, once he does become consciously aware of it, it’s probably a problem. I used to prefer white-on-black, yet years passed and now it’s too painful in most cases.
Can’t believe I didn’t use this as an example forum:
http://newforums.gearboxsoftware.com/
@hrobertson this looks like it’s in monokai, or some variation thereof.
@cybercritic I agree to a point. I prefer black-on-white over white-on-black, but what I would hope to see is something like in the link above: light-grey-on-dark-grey. It doesn’t strain the eyes, and it fits thematically. My opinion, though.
And here I was expecting to be nominated. I guess I’ve really been slacking off lately, huh?
For what, being the most annoying thing on this forum? lol. 
I think for forums form-follows-function should be given! Just to m4k3 1t l00k s0 k3wl, I’d never give up an quantum of readability. But it’s your game. IMHO, making the forums bright was one of the best public visible steps inovae took.
Meh.
Me loves our old dark theme. But I-Novae decides. They should look at gearbox for form though. That’s really a good example.
It’s the default theme … I don’t think they cared. We said that we want the dark theme when the new forum came online, now it just came up again.
Forums are just like everything else that you read, be it novels or code: they shouldn’t make the eyes tired. However you’re right to point out that forums, being one of the direct representation of the product, should also be themed accordingly. That’s certainly the biggest challenge.
A few years ago I had a quick introduction from a scientist on how human brain can interpret colors differently according to the surroundings and the context.
Some very light grey will become darker if there is more light on it. Something like this:
Now maybe some of the keen eyes can still notice the small difference of the patchwork in the shade and the “real” square of light grey.
And this is only when working on the grey scale. This can get a lot more complicated when mixing colors. The scientific guy showed us something similar to Keith’s “stackexchange” post: text colored differently and with some different grey backgrounds.
We had to answer on a paper (to avoid group directions and influence) on what we fought was the easiest / worst set to read. The result gave some major trends but no “unanimous” preference, out of the 20-ish people that attended the course.
Long story short, the grey scale is easy to optimize (books are best examples) but colors are not, because of the great variance in people’s perception and design / artistic choices.
Most annoying on this forum for me is not being able to change my email address. It was migrated over from the old forums and is no longer valid.
Also I’d really like to be able to link this existing account to my Google account, that’s not possible either as far as I can tell.
I’m working on that at the moment.
And again I have been logged out for no reason…
and again it is required, to change the form before clicking login…
Any update on that?
Still working on it
