# Forum Look



## l008com (Sep 7, 2020)

Generally I like the look and functionality of the forum. But one thing bugs me, the combination of every post having the same background color, and such subtle dividers between each post. Is there a way I can customize my own view to change either of those settings? If every other post in a thread was a light grey, it would make things so much more readable. People's sigs are often closer to the next comment than their own, it just makes it visually hard to read at a glance.


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## olli@ (Sep 7, 2020)

Just my 2 cents … I agree that the look and design of the forum leaves something to be desired.

However, what I find much more annoying is that certain things are completely unreadable when using the “dark” theme. I’m using that themes because it’s much easier on my eyes. For example, things inside `[cmd]` tags (`commands`) are rendered white on light grey. This has been reported by several people in the past, but nobody seems to be able to fix it. (A workaround is to select the text with the mouse, which changes the background to blue, so the text becomes readable.)

It’s true that the dividers between posts could be a little more visually emphasized, so the separation would be better visible. Personally I wouldn’t like to have alternating colors for posts, though. I always find that confusing in other forums that do that.


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## a6h (Sep 7, 2020)

olli@ said:


> For example, things inside `[cmd]` tags ( commands) are rendered white on light grey.


Unfortunately I can't use the dark mode for that very reason.


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## judd (Sep 7, 2020)

I use the dark mode with Chromium, (as I can automatically convert to English) with a program called Dark Reader and the forum is traditionally blank. When I apply Dark Reader, it stays black and is much more pleasant for my damaged eyesight.

Con Dark Reader:





NO Dark Reader:


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## Deleted member 63539 (Sep 7, 2020)

Yeah, Dark Reader, too. But on Firefox.


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## VladiBG (Sep 7, 2020)

You can select different color style from the bottom left in the footer.


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## judd (Sep 7, 2020)

VladiBG said:


> You can select different color style from the bottom left in the footer.



If I already did the tests and I get a result:



Certain words don't look good.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With Dark Reader they look better:


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## l008com (Sep 8, 2020)

VladiBG said:


> You can select different color style from the bottom left in the footer.


Thank you! An actual answer. BlueBSD looks fantastic. They should make a red version of this, it would be a great improvement over the site's default red theme!


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## olli@ (Sep 8, 2020)

VladiBG said:


> You can select different color style from the bottom left in the footer.


Yes, that’s where you can select the “dark” theme. But unfortunately, it exhibits the problem with `[cmd]` tags (`like this`) that I described above.


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## shkhln (Sep 8, 2020)

l008com said:


> They should make a red version of this, it would be a great improvement over the site's default red theme!



Default was exactly like this until somebody broke it…


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## memreflect (Sep 8, 2020)

l008com said:


> Is there a way I can customize my own view to change either of those settings? If every other post in a thread was a light grey, it would make things so much more readable.


Dark Reader is a good general-purpose solution, but the application of tweaks to an already useful site style has its own merits. 

With some knowledge of HTML, CSS, your browser's page inspection tool, and some trial-and-error, you can make what you want happen using the Stylish browser extension.  For example, you can tweak the FreeBSD Dark theme to look like the following image using the CSS below (don't apply it if you're not using the dark theme):






```
/* Fix color of background inside [cmd] tags */
code {
    /* !important is needed here since [cmd]
       uses inline styles */
    padding: 0 !important;
}
code>kbd {
    background-color: #555;
    display: inline-block;
}

/* Customize background and borders of
   every other message
   (i.e. messages 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) */
.message:nth-of-type(2n) {
    background-color: #333;
    border-top-color: #666;
    border-left-color: #777;
    border-right-color: #777;
    border-bottom-color: #888;
}

/* Fix the header colors that don't work well
   with the above customizations */
.message:nth-of-type(2n) header {
    color: #999;
    border-bottom-color: #999;
}
```

Of course, there are still problems with the dark theme involving code highlighting that was designed for a much lighter theme.  If you switch to the dark theme and look at the following, you'll see what I mean:

```
if test x"$enable_foo" = xyes; then
    echo "FOO enabled" >&2
else
    echo "FOO disabled" >&2
fi
```


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## olli@ (Sep 8, 2020)

memreflect said:


> Dark Reader is a good general-purpose solution, but the application of tweaks to an already useful site style has its own merits.
> 
> With some knowledge of HTML, CSS, your browser's page inspection tool, and some trial-and-error, you can make what you want happen using the Stylish browser extension.  For example, you can tweak the FreeBSD Dark theme to look like the following image using the CSS below (don't apply it if you're not using the dark theme):


Yeah … Unfortunately I can install neither a browser extension nor user CSS code, because I don’t have the required privileges on my office machine.

The “dark” theme is just broken and needs a server-side fix. User-side workarounds might work for some, but not for everybody.


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