SMF "themes" for color-vision deficient?

[Boo Radley]

While goofing around with SMF on a website I "own" I came across something which prompts this post/question.  In the Admin section of SMF there are a couple of options for allowing members to choose their own forum "themes" but I can easily imagine implementing such a feature would cause extra work for mods and others since we all wouldn't be on the same page.

This has never been too irksome for me but when I look at the icons for topics 3 of them are indistinguishable:



The little thingie on "topics you've posted in" sorta gets lost when I'm trying to skim down the list but I often remember which ones those are anyway.


On the test SMF site I set up the default theme (which I may have changed but forget) colors seem to be the same but the icons themselves make the meanings clear:



I looked around a bit on the SMF forums (they use SMF, amazingly enough) but didn't find anything too useful.  I found yet another test for color vision (link below) which was confusing as hell and I scored a 241 or something (0 is the best score):

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

I know this isn't the world's most pressing issue but supposedly 1 in 255 women and 1 in 12 men has some type of color vision deficiency so imagine I'm not the only one here.   

Does AM have an in-house SMF admin who might have a better idea about the "themes" options or other ways to avoid confusing the color-vision deficient?


Bonus question:  Why are the ratios for women and men with color-vision deficiency so different?  

[PeteNYNJ]

Boo

I am so color blind, I never realized there were different colors!  I guess if I look really hard I can see the difference but would never be able to see the color variations by just glancing.

Interesting indeed!

Pete

[Boo Radley]

Boo

I am so color blind, I never realized there were different colors!  ...

I'm confused (so what else is new?) -- you're referring to the topic icons or all colors?   I'm assuming the first since total color blindness is pretty rare.  Um, Pete, until you mentioned it I didn't stop to think the 3 I confuse may be the same colors!  Just doesn't seem likely. 

We first realized my twin and I had problems (with color vision, thank you very much!) while my mother was driving and I asked "Why do they call green lights green when they're really white?"  Thank goodness my bro was there or Mom may have dropped me off at the nearest lunatic asylum.    The only way I can tell what color a traffic light is is by the position.  Now that horizontal lights are replacing vertical ones driving with (or near) me could be hazardous to one's health.  I can see the "white" light but the orange and red look the same. 

[PeteNYNJ]

The three you circled look like the same color to me - but I am not the authority.

I just assumed all the icons on the sight where blue.

If I look - the Hot Topic color looks orange to me and the very hot topic looks green.

All the rest look blue.

[freaky_dream]

I am with peter. The three icons you circled look the almost identical color wise to me and I am not color blind at all. Maybe you need to adjust the gamma on your monitor?

Using the same icons but with slightly varying colors(in light colored pastels to boot!) to distinguish different meaning is bad UI/UX design. That being said I rarely look at the icons since they don't help discussing or reading a topic.

While we are on the topic of usability poz.com's splash page needs a major pruning and redesign. The site takes about 5-7 seconds to load and I am on fios. I can imagine what a pain it would be if I had a slow ass dsl connection or even god forbid dial up. And when it does load up you brain is assaulted by a tidal wave of information, links, and obnoxious animated gif backgrounds(what is this 1997?). And yes I do like to read the articles on poz.com but i find navigating the site a pain much more then it should be. Sorry about going off topic there.

[Ann]

The three circled icons ARE all blue. The difference is that the "normal" icon is plain, the "topic you have posted in" icon has a little tail on it like in a cartoon speech bubble, and the "sticky" topic has a thicker bottom line. To me, the "hot topic" is sorta yellow and the "very hot topic" is pink.

[PeteNYNJ]

See how color blind I am, Ann?

It is a wonder I am not dressed like a clown on most days!

[Ann]

See how color blind I am, Ann?

It is a wonder I am not dressed like a clown on most days!

I know quite a few fishermen who aren't allowed to be skippers because they see red as green. As shipping navigation uses red and green lights, a skipper with this kind of colour blindness could be a disaster in the making! There seems to be a high incidence of colour blindness amongst Manx men - at least I never met so many colour blind people until I moved here to the Rock. My bf is one of them and believe me, he does occasionally resemble a clown.

[Boo Radley]

I am with peter. The three icons you circled look the almost identical color wise to me and I am not color blind at all. Maybe you need to adjust the gamma on your monitor?
...

Um... since my color vision doesn't register red/green correctly adjusting the gamma or anything else on my monitor won't help.  Thus the diagnosis of color-vision deficiency.  I can't make adjustments for differences I don't see. 

They look blue to me too which is why I suspect they are different shades/hues with red and/or green in them.  Maybe it's simply poor UI design but since the other icons appear as different colors (not that I can necessarily name them -- I just see a difference)  I thought there must be a difference between those three. 

Color me wrong since I just red Ann's response.  Poor design it is then.  Nevertheless a change of icons could help others see the distinctions more clearly, which is my point.  Since I can't distinguish differences in many colors I attributed it to my color vision.  Sue me.

[Assurbanipal]

I'm with freaky (Just had to say that  )  The icons don't provide any info that is useful to me.

[leatherman]

The icons don't provide any info that is useful to me.

I'm curious, does anyone really "use" those icons? Do they make navigating the site any easier? I've never paid any notice to them and don't use them. I just go directly to the "unread" page, where my browser shows me the threads I've already visited through the visited link color. Though I post a fair amount, I don't post so much that I don't know the threads I posted in without seeing an icon. Only sometimes do I even notice when someone adds a smiley to their thread title.

And when it does load up you brain is assaulted by a tidal wave of information, links, and obnoxious animated gif backgrounds(what is this 1997?). And yes I do like to read the articles on poz.com but i find navigating the site a pain much more then it should be.

what page are you discussing? I didn't see any animated bckgrnds on poz.com but alot of animated ads. Though I do agree that it's definitely an obnxiously "busy" page and nagivating is a bit convoluted.

[freaky_dream]

Really you didn't see the snow flakes cascading down the background of the front page? They are gone now but they were up all of December and yesterday ahem... Poz.com always puts up some annoying animated gif background for a corresponding holiday(fireworks for the 4th etc). It's nice to be festive and all but it's kind of tacky nowadays to do something like that. I am fine with holiday theming as long as it doesn't hit you over the head with kitchiness.

[leatherman]

Poz.com always puts up some annoying animated gif background for a corresponding holiday(fireworks for the 4th etc). It's nice to be festive and all but it's kind of tacky nowadays to do something like that.

no  maybe my damned IE browser is broke. or maybe I have some setting turned off. I'll have to check cause I've never seen that sort of thing in years at poz.com. (only because my one of my other hats is "computertutor", perhaps download and run Spybot to insure that you don't have any malware running.)

I like that kind of stuff though. I like festive 

[Basquo]

Really you didn't see the snow flakes cascading down the background of the front page? They are gone now but they were up all of December and yesterday ahem... Poz.com always puts up some annoying animated gif background for a corresponding holiday(fireworks for the 4th etc). It's nice to be festive and all but it's kind of tacky nowadays to do something like that. I am fine with holiday theming as long as it doesn't hit you over the head with kitchiness.

I've never seen any of that and I've visited from this laptop, my partner's, 4 work PC's and a couple of pubic ones, too.

You guys see snowflakes and fireworks?

edited: ipendejo yo! Take the "L" ot of "public" and it's "pubic"!

[PeteNYNJ]

I've never seen the snowflakes or fireworks either.  I do think the website is mess though. 

[bocker3]

I DID see the snowflakes last month -- only on the POZ homepage -- it would be all over my screen at first, then when the page fully loaded, they were only on the sides.
They were there -- I swear!  I don't drink and even saw them before I took my Atripla -- so it ain't no Sustiva vision..... 

Mike

[freaky_dream]

I've never seen any of that and I've visited from this laptop, my partner's, 4 work PC's and a couple of pubic ones, too.

You guys see snowflakes and fireworks?

edited: ipendejo yo! Take the "L" ot of "public" and it's "pubic"!

Hmm pubic pc's... Guess it depends on which browser you are using. I only use firefox and they always show up for me, you guys must be using internet exploder. At least bocker's with me on this one.

[skeebo1969]

   I had snowflakes on my also.  (edited to add) WTF is my also? LMAO!~

[leatherman]

Guess it depends on which browser you are using. I only use firefox and they always show up for me, you guys must be using internet exploder.

never had that stuff show up on my FireFox or Chrome. 
(as the ComputerTutor, I have 5 different PCs and run all sorts of browsers to test that kind of stuff)
maybe i just don't go to the poz.com front page enough though.

I want the festive webpages too, dang it!
Somebody remember to tell me next time, so I can experience the "magic" too!

[bocker3]

Hmm pubic pc's... Guess it depends on which browser you are using. I only use firefox and they always show up for me, you guys must be using internet exploder. At least bocker's with me on this one.

I use IE, so it's probably not the browser.

Mike

[Boo Radley]

I know quite a few fishermen who aren't allowed to be skippers because they see red as green.

There are many jobs color-vision deficient people can't hold -- like electrician, airplane pilot, cable technician, etc.   Any job in which colors are integral to performing are out.  I think men with specific types of deficiency are useful in some jobs, like spotting camouflage against the natural background (there aren't too many openings for those).  Some times I've been able to find an item lost on the ground when others couldn't see it.  More often I can't find stuff --  if I'm not within a few feet of the excreting party dog poop against grass is often invisible... until I step in it.  I've been tempted to put blue food coloring in my dogs' food so I can always be a responsible scooper but somehow can't bring myself to do it.

... There seems to be a high incidence of colour blindness amongst Manx men - at least I never met so many colour blind people until I moved here to the Rock. ...

Most color blind people inherit the trait so Manx may have a larger number of genetically related inhabitants, not to say inbred.   Color blindness is a sex-linked trait determined by the Y chromosome.  Since males are XY and females YY  many more males inherit the trait since females are less likely to have 2 defective Ys.    Hemophilia is sex-linked as well -- the majority of hemophiliacs are males.

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I use firefox almost exclusively & remember snowflakes on poz.com but they weren't intrusive or bothersome.  The rest of the stuff is like most sites these days but at least I don't have to wait for an advertisement to play before I can read the article or view the video.   Of course 1/3 of poz is an advertisement but that's another matter.