Of all the visual elements this is probably the most intrusive right now and not terribly useful since you don’t really know anything without a mouseover.
VBulletin had the thread starter and last poster written in text which was much more useful. Is it possible to bring some version of that back and just remove the icons?
If not then I would recommend cutting the frequent poster icons to reduce the clutter and just have two icons for original poster and most recent poster.
Agree that this is"intrusive". Also really annoying. If there has been a “fix” posted, I would like having it posted again – in this thread.
Knowing who started a thread is absolutely key to whether I open it. And if there’s a way to do mouseovers with my iPad, I’ve never learned it. On my desktop computer, using the mouseover with a mouse takes about two seconds for each thread (to stop looking at the thread name, move my mouse over, and center the mouse on the poster icon).
I’m trying not to be judgemental about most aspects of the new software (although this is the least intuitive bulletin board I’ve ever encountered), but I’m really hoping there’s an easier way to see who started a thread.
The only way I know of to do it is through a theme. I don’t think any of the ones we currently have installed will do it.
Yes there is. The Simple Sam’s theme does what OP is asking: Shows the OP and the most recent poster’s user names in plain text, and the time-stamp of both the OP and most recent post. And it omits those frequent poster avatars, which I agree are mainly clutter.
EACH of the themes that I’ve tried so far has something distinctive about it that I liked. But these details mentioned here make the case for me. Sam’s Theme it is.
Be nice if we could get up a discussion of everybody’s most preferred details of each theme, and come up with a new custom theme that combines the most-agreed-upon best details of them all.
ETA: But sorry, I haven’s seen any evidence that any theme provides mouse-over preview. I suspect that there exists no such option in Discourse. Be nice if the Discourse PTB see this (I know they’re watching us!) and decide to create that functionality.
Oh neat! I’ll have to give that a try.
Aaaaannnnd I notice that avatars are now square on SD Light.
Thank you very much. Simple Sam it is then.
Mouseovers are working now, for me at least.
That was just made to work a few hours ago, and apparently only in the Straight Dope custom themes.
This is unfortunate, because Sam’s Simple Theme has some winning arguments to be made in its favor, but it doesn’t do previews (yet).
With Sam’s Theme, the Thread List page contains some critically useful information that is missing from some or all of the other themes: The OP’s user name in plain-text and time stamp of each thread, and the plain-text user name and time-stamp of the most recent post. The row of avatars is missing, but that’s basically just clutter anyway.
ETA: See the two posts just above yours, which agree that this information is a winning argument for Sam’s. Now I’m all conflicted because mouse-overs are also a winning arguments.
I just tried Sam’s Simple Theme and I do like it. I need a Sam’s Simple Dark Theme. With mouseover previews.
We need to have a discussion, for everyone to participate in, where we all discuss our preferences for the themes, and see if we can come to a general consensus over what features we want – and then get TPTB to create One Theme To Rule Them All!
Sometime in the Very Near Future, I intend to create a new thread just for that purpose.
Thanks Senegoid. I tried Sam’s Simple and it does cut the clutter and show the relevant information in text. OTOH it loses the boxes around the posts in the Material Design theme which I also like.
Anyway I like the idea of a One Theme and I will mention these things in the thread you started.
Sam’s Theme also lacks mouse-over previews which the SD themes now have. And Sam’s has an older fugly SDMB banner.
Each of the various themes seems to have something very very nice that the other themes lack. We need one theme to pull together all the best features of all the other themes. That’s why I started the One Theme To Rule Them All thread, where we can discuss all our theme wishes in one place.