We've been sitting on this for a while, so I should just let everyone use it.

If you go to "User Control Panel" -> "Board Prefernces" and set your board theme to "Techious New (Test 1)". We are testing a couple of new themes for the forum. One in white(ish) and one in black(ish).
The white one is currently up and I would like your thoughts for tweaks before finishing the black one off.

So yeah, turn it on, have a play and let me know how I can tweak it.

Thanks

Known issues:

• No link to VAT from anywhere else other than the main page. I will edit this in once the tests are over, but I see little point tweaking it just to get erased for the next test
• User name colours look wrong - I'll fix this once we go live with the new site.

Signature fonts and some others seem to be a bit pale. Along with some of the names. Other than that it doesn't seem too bad. Personally though I'm waiting to see what the dark theme looks like.

The new theme is nice. Reading Gold Member names is a little difficult for me personally (might be my monitor settings though) but it doesn't matter as I can see avatars perfectly (hence I question all the b*tching about my name when it became black). I personally think it's an improvement over the old theme and am interested in this "black theme" you are doing.
Do make sure though that you keep the old Techious theme and this one available for people to have if they dislike the "black theme" or whichever becomes the official one (call the old Techious theme "Techious Classic" perhaps?) so they can change it to suit their needs and don't come b*tching/whining to you
When is this "black theme" due?

The new theme is quite nice, but as I use it more I find myself preferring the look and feel of the old theme.
I don't think the contrast between the foreground text and post background is high enough on the new theme.
Gold member names are very difficult to read (on this monitor at work and on my monitor at home).

Also: on the VAT page it is more difficult to clearly see the topics that have been updated compared to the old theme where the big tick is very noticeable.

I've tweaked the colours and created a new version (called Techious New (Test 2) and there is also a Test 2a with other slight tweaks.) So thoughts on that, the VAT will be fixed once we are finalised, I don't want to change too much thatll be removed with each new test.

Also I've created a Techious New Black (Test 2). This is an example for the site in black, apart from the background stripes which are wrong and will be fixed once the rest is finalised.

More feedback (and thanks for testing! (the five of you running Techious New Test 1) (and to Nick who helped make the black theme))

Haven't noticed the difference with Test 1 and Test 2 for the White scheme. Blue and White go better together than Orange and White in my opinion so I prefer Test 1/2 to Test 2a.

Prefer the White scheme to the Black scheme (seems much cleaner in my opinion). Didn't notice again the difference between Black 1 and Black 2.

I am not too keen on the darker scheme unfortunately. On the dark scheme I also could not notice any difference between Test2 and Test2a.

So far not liking the new themes in general sorry have switched back to original.

and why is this, feedback as to what would make it better would be useful.

I think the diagonal lines need to go, and the contrast between the background and foreground colours needs to be better. At the moment it's just a little uneasy on the eye.

The dark theme although I know Nick probably spent quite some time on it, has some rough edges on the images. Also is it me or is it a mass invert of the original images and colours?

But was it improved between the two versions? Personally I don't find this version uneasy but perhaps that is just me.

And yes it pretty much was an inverse, mainly to make those who see a white page and complain that their eyes are burning a bit happier.