While we wait for the developers to come up with a blue style, anyone who would prefer a more readable colour scheme, closely resembling the old site, with a more compact (less scrolling) design, you might want to consider adding the "Stylish" add-on to your browser:
https://userstyles.org/

and then try out this theme:
https://userstyles.org/styles/129214/airliners-net

Only tested on desktop so not sure how well it will work on tablets or phones.

Thanks. It does help alot with text since it makes the background darker and the text is white. It also throws the margins of of the messages all the way out to the left and right .. and once you scroll down the ads appear and cover the messages ..

jaybird wrote:

Thanks. It does help alot with text since it makes the background darker and the text is white. It also throws the margins of of the messages all the way out to the left and right .. and once you scroll down the ads appear and cover the messages ..

If you don't like the margins being stretched out to the edges, edit the style in Stylish and remove the section:

#airliners-body-container > div.container {
padding-left: 0;
padding-right: 0;
}

As I said on the Stylish website, I've not been able to test it with ads because, even though I have no ad-blocker installed, and have reverted my hosts file, I can't seem to get any ads to display on a.net, even though I can see plenty of ads on other websites.

I have no idea why but I have never seen ads on a.net. Maybe I was a really good boy in another life

speedbored wrote:

While we wait for the developers to come up with a blue style, anyone who would prefer a more readable colour scheme, closely resembling the old site, with a more compact (less scrolling) design, you might want to consider adding the "Stylish" add-on to your browser:
https://userstyles.org/

and then try out this theme:
https://userstyles.org/styles/129214/airliners-net

Only tested on desktop so not sure how well it will work on tablets or phones.

You've singlehandedly done more than the back end folks...I hope they pay you!

Very nice, I much prefer this design. I have commented out the section you indicated to make sure the text does not extend all the way to the left edge of the screen. I am showing vertical ads on the left and the right, and they do not cover any website text. Before I commented out the section, the vertical ads were covering the forum text. Just FYI. It works nicely. Thank you,

This just made my day. Seriously - thank you for developing this awesome work-around to bring some semblance of usability and familiarity back to this site! Awesome job!

Wow, thank you so much !!!!!!

Thank you, speedbored, thank you so much for taking care about compiling this.

As a side note, it is wotrh to be mentioned that some users may opt not to install userstyle standalone application, but rather add script management extention right into their browser (e.g. Tampermonkey) and then add the airliners.net style tweak as a script.

I have updated the style on userstyles now to allow selection (see drop-downs at top right of the page) of whether or not to stretch the width to fill the window and there's a second option that users might also find very useful:
https://userstyles.org/styles/129214/airliners-net

diverted wrote:

You've singlehandedly done more than the back end folks...I hope they pay you!

Considering they paid $17 for the new forums, the odds are slim...

Speedbored, this is excellent work. Too bad the exodus means it'll probably go unappreciated.

Cheers
A

Agreed, it works for me on a pretty old version of Firefox. The color scheme is much easier on the eyes, and most of the useless white space is removed. Thanks, speedbored!

This absolutely made my day. I can enjoy the site again. Thank you very much, sir.

I thank you very much for this excellent tool! Scarcely will the final DM version of airliners.net work any better! I've tested your style sheet (sort of) in resolutions from 1080 to 4k and it works perfectly! The list of threads is more compact, there is much less wasted space. When zooming in or out, the wordwrap works without any flaws - which can't even be said about the vast majority of professional and commercial web sites.

Another 'well done and thank you' Speedbored! Am teetering on the verge of joining the flow of departures myself but really appreciate your interim solution while we see what else unfolds.

Updated version has been uploaded with a few tweaks and first attempt at improving the photo details page.

Amazing! Thanks!

That said, I don't like the frame-- header takes up too much permanent room.

And I also would go for even higher contrast.

But other than that, the whitespace recovery.... thanks so much!

speedbored wrote:

Updated version has been uploaded with a few tweaks and first attempt at improving the photo details page.

One tweak could be to change the background color of quoted text? The new a.net 2.0 has quotes in a different background color and I found that to be a good change. Just a suggestion, thanks again for the great work!

ssteve wrote:

That said, I don't like the frame-- header takes up too much permanent room.

I've made a change so that this is now optional.

ssteve wrote:

And I also would go for even higher contrast.

Done. Your comment made me realise that I mixed up two of the original a.net colours. Looks even more like the old a.net now

Revelation wrote:

One tweak could be to change the background color of quoted text?

Done. Can't decide which I prefer so I've made that optional too.

Great! Thanks!

Now I wonder if there is any way to make the text of those people using bbcode to set their color to #000000 not black on dark blue?

speedbored wrote:

ssteve wrote:

That said, I don't like the frame-- header takes up too much permanent room.

I've made a change so that this is now optional.

As much as I love the queen of the skies, I also feel it takes up too much space, especially since most of us have acquired 'landscape mode' monitors since the 1990s so vertical space is more precious.

speedbored wrote:

Revelation wrote:

One tweak could be to change the background color of quoted text?

Done. Can't decide which I prefer so I've made that optional too.

Thanks! For what it's worth, I prefer the blue to the grey.

I think DM should make this theme be the default for all non-mobile devices.

I can see how the white space is useful for touch screens but it's a terrible waste of space on laptops/desktops.

The denser layout on laptops/desktops allows us to see more content in one screen, which means chances are greater that people will get more use out of the forum.

Thanks again, speedbored!

DM/a.net should pay you as a design consultant!

One tiny aside: seems I have to allow cloudflare.com through adblock/noscript for aspects of the theme to be applied?

Speedbored -- you said you made a number of features optional -- exactly how are those options controlled? Can't seem to find a way to set the options in Opera. Is there a way to do it other than editing the .css style file? Thanks again!

I figured out how to set the options -- you need to choose your preferences on some dropdown menus on the userstyles.org site on the page where you download the style, before you download the style. Previously I was thinking it was something in my browser's own UI that I could find and edit.

SpeckSpot wrote:

I figured out how to set the options -- you need to choose your preferences on some dropdown menus on the userstyles.org site on the page where you download the style, before you download the style. Previously I was thinking it was something in my browser's own UI that I could find and edit.

Yes, the easiest way is to just go back to userstyles, select your new options and do an update. Otherwise, as you say, you will need to edit the CSS in Stylish. And, as I say on the userstyles page, it is not the cleanest/tidiest css at the moment - I just wanted to make it work and will tidy it up / do the job properly if DM take too long to sort out a proper more acceptable style.

If this doesn't get you on my RR list then nothing will.

Oh wait, hang on.....

Great job speedbored! Thank you very much for massively improving something that DM screwed up so graciously...

Fantastic job Johan...err...speedbored!!!

I have it installed on both Firefox for desktop and mobile, and I can't say enough good things about it. My first thought when I saw the Queen of the Skies banner appear with everything in legacy blue was "Finally back home." It actually put a smile on my face.

Glad to be able to wake up from that nightmare.

andrej wrote:

Great job speedbored! Thank you very much for massively improving something that DM screwed up so graciously...

Gratuitously?

The ironic thing here is that the *forum* backend migration seems to be working mostly fine, but they must've spent zero time looking at the readability of the result. I don't mean to trivialize things, but it's like they got the hard part accomplished but spent approximately zero time actually trying to use the forum.

(I star forum, because I haven't really looked at the photo library migration in any depth, but again, it seems like they got the hard stuff done there. I can't say whether they also spent zero time trying to use the result, though.)

Updated release now available - includes similar changes to the photo search and results pages. Also had to make a few changes because the developers have renamed a few things.

Still got far too much whitespace in the search criteria box (especially advanced search) but there are so many uniquely named/positioned objects in there that it would just take far too long . Maybe one rainy day ...

Let me know if you spot anything I have missed or broken.

KFLLCFII wrote:

I have it installed on ... mobile

That's good to know - wasn't sure whether it would work on mobile as all of my mobile devices have been "improved" (hacked) to pretend to be desktops.

Thank you very, very much, dear speedbored. This color scheme is much more friendly for the eyes.

It's horrifying to see how simple Devoid Media could have averted all this trouble.

David

ssteve wrote:

andrej wrote:

Great job speedbored! Thank you very much for massively improving something that DM screwed up so graciously...

Gratuitously?

The ironic thing here is that the *forum* backend migration seems to be working mostly fine, but they must've spent zero time looking at the readability of the result. I don't mean to trivialize things, but it's like they got the hard part accomplished but spent approximately zero time actually trying to use the forum.

(I star forum, because I haven't really looked at the photo library migration in any depth, but again, it seems like they got the hard stuff done there. I can't say whether they also spent zero time trying to use the result, though.)

That's essentially my impression as well. Anyone with any idea of how the old site worked would understand what a f***ing pain in the arse the migration must have been. That large swathes of data weren't utterly obliterated in the transition is a minor miracle.

But any alpha/beta testing had to have been cursory at best. I used to run and/or mod a couple of large forums a few years ago, and when we were planning any changes, they were sandboxed and alpha tested by staff (crew, in a.net parlance) before being opened to a limited beta for users - usually with a couple of hundred spots filled by a 'first come, first served' signup process. We would really try to break stuff in beta (and obviously accept UX/UI suggestions) before rolling out.

That's part of the reason I didn't just pitch a fit and leave when this disaster was first unveiled, like so many others did. I know the effort that must have been involved, having done similar stuff or been part of testing for similar stuff in the past. OTOH, I don't think I have ever experienced a cock up of this magnitude...

ssteve wrote:

andrej wrote:

Great job speedbored! Thank you very much for massively improving something that DM screwed up so graciously...

Gratuitously?

The ironic thing here is that the *forum* backend migration seems to be working mostly fine, but they must've spent zero time looking at the readability of the result. I don't mean to trivialize things, but it's like they got the hard part accomplished but spent approximately zero time actually trying to use the forum.

(I star forum, because I haven't really looked at the photo library migration in any depth, but again, it seems like they got the hard stuff done there. I can't say whether they also spent zero time trying to use the result, though.)

Sorry to say, but the forum (in its updated state) was/is unreadable. If you are conducting change to something (for better or worse), look at all aspects. I have been on this site long enough to see previous changes and most of the time people bitched and moaned and left. Traffic on the site declined and after some time it has re-surged (albeit not to its former highs). Some members left (few that have contributed quite worthy information) and I fear that we may see that again.

I will give you one thing thou and that's migration seems to have worked fine (one of the few positives).

Cheers,

Andrej

As DM seem to be taking a long time to come up with their "darker theme" (and I suspect that it will still include lots and lots of whitespace) , I might try to find a couple of hours to look at some of the pages I haven't changed yet.

My list of possibles includes:
Forum FAQs
Forum Search
Photo Albums
Photo Index
Report a Post
The Team
User Avatar
User Profile
User Settings

I'm sure there are others, especially photographer specific pages. Anyone got any pages they would really like to see "reverted"?

KFLLCFII wrote:

Fantastic job Johan...err...speedbored!!!

I have it installed on both Firefox for desktop and mobile, and I can't say enough good things about it. My first thought when I saw the Queen of the Skies banner appear with everything in legacy blue was "Finally back home." It actually put a smile on my face.

Glad to be able to wake up from that nightmare.

Is there a way to add this to Safari, or Chrome for iOS? I can't tolerate looking at this site on my mobile devices (iPad or iPhone 6+) any longer unless I get the add-on view to work.

EA CO AS wrote:

KFLLCFII wrote:

Is there a way to add this to Safari, or Chrome for iOS? I can't tolerate looking at this site on my mobile devices (iPad or iPhone 6+) any longer unless I get the add-on view to work.

The first link of the first post -- https://userstyles.org/ -- says it supports Safari and Chrome, have you given it a go?

I'd give it a try but I don't have an iOS device (just a macbook...).

Just visit this page, click the 1st link in the first post, on the resulting page follow the link for your browser and follow its instructions for installing the plugin, then visit the 2nd link in the first post and install speedbored's a.net style.

Revelation wrote:

EA CO AS wrote:

KFLLCFII wrote:

Is there a way to add this to Safari, or Chrome for iOS? I can't tolerate looking at this site on my mobile devices (iPad or iPhone 6+) any longer unless I get the add-on view to work.

The first link of the first post -- https://userstyles.org/ -- says it supports Safari and Chrome, have you given it a go?

I'd give it a try but I don't have an iOS device (just a macbook...).

Just visit this page, click the 1st link in the first post, on the resulting page follow the link for your browser and follow its instructions for installing the plugin, then visit the 2nd link in the first post and install speedbored's a.net style.

No luck so far, unfortunately. There's no option to install the userstyle plugin.

EA CO AS wrote:

No luck so far, unfortunately. There's no option to install the userstyle plugin.

It looks like apple have changed the address of their extensions store and the userstyles website hasn't been updated.

Try here:https://extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.sobolev.stylish-5555L95H45

speedbored wrote:

EA CO AS wrote:

No luck so far, unfortunately. There's no option to install the userstyle plugin.

It looks like apple have changed the address of their extensions store and the userstyles website hasn't been updated.

Try here:https://extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.sobolev.stylish-5555L95H45

Thanks, but it looks like this won't work for iOS Safari, just the desktop/laptop versions.

OMG it's like an eyegasm! THIS is what I thought a revamped a.net forum would be like. Installed on Chrome for Mac OS and works like a charm.

speedbored wrote:

As DM seem to be taking a long time to come up with their "darker theme" (and I suspect that it will still include lots and lots of whitespace) , I might try to find a couple of hours to look at some of the pages I haven't changed yet.
I'm sure there are others, especially photographer specific pages. Anyone got any pages they would really like to see "reverted"?

The only one I've used that are problematic are the ones related to changing settings. But when I know I'm doing this, I just use the Sylish icon to disable your changes temporarily and then it's at least usable. And I don't do it often enough to make it seem justified to ask you to tweak these screens.

einsteinboricua wrote:

OMG it's like an eyegasm! THIS is what I thought a revamped a.net forum would be like. Installed on Chrome for Mac OS and works like a charm.

Indeed.

I just did Firefox on Android and it's working like a charm there as well.

The counter on userstyles.org only showed around 130 downloads.

I think we need to keep spreading the word.

Revelation wrote:

I think we need to keep spreading the word.

Yes. Unfortunately, not that many people visit the site-related forum but I don't want to start a thread in Civ-Av as it's not really the right place for it.

Thanks a lot for the style, it makes the site a bit more bearable...

Not sure if it is doable, but I have a small suggestion:
Could the top picture stay at the top of the page and not stay constantly displayed ?
As it is, there is no way for me to see a picture posted in a forum on 11" or 13" screens, because the beautiful 747 is always on top of it.
The old design had this: the 747 was displayed on the top of the page, and would stay there when scrolling down (so it would get of the screen quickly).

Do not get me wrong, I like the 747 picture, but it currently restricts the view area permanently.

Theseus wrote:

Do not get me wrong, I like the 747 picture, but it currently restricts the view area permanently.

If you can live without the 747, on the userstyles.org page there are some drop-down option menus you can select before you download the style, and one of them will disable the 'queen of the skies' 747 picture, so try changing the drop-down and re-installing the style.

speedbored wrote:

Revelation wrote:

I think we need to keep spreading the word.

Yes. Unfortunately, not that many people visit the site-related forum but I don't want to start a thread in Civ-Av as it's not really the right place for it.

I put a pointer to this thread on non-av, and that's about as far as I think we can go.

Theseus wrote:

Not sure if it is doable, but I have a small suggestion:
Could the top picture stay at the top of the page and not stay constantly displayed ?
As it is, there is no way for me to see a picture posted in a forum on 11" or 13" screens, because the beautiful 747 is always on top of it.
The old design had this: the 747 was displayed on the top of the page, and would stay there when scrolling down (so it would get of the screen quickly).
Do not get me wrong, I like the 747 picture, but it currently restricts the view area permanently.

Sorry but I can't control how the panels behave, only what they look like, so I can't make the panel with the 747 scroll. I could move the image down onto the menu bar for the forums, which does scroll, but then there would be no 747 on any of the non-forum pages.

As Revelation says, there is an option to go without the 747. Maybe I'll look at making a smaller logo an option sometime.

Absolutely brilliant Speedbored, thanks very much!

I think I'll keep this on even when DM finally get their arses in gear and sort the mongrel they have created out.

Only change I made was to delete the 747 header as it is too big and the corresponding white space and things look superb.

Once again, thanks! You may have just saved a.net

Wow!!! Thank you for doing and sharing this. This is so much better than the way the new A.net looks. My eyes already feel much better.

A few minor changes have been made to the style to fix a couple of things, and because of some minor changes the developers have made.

speedbored wrote:

A few minor changes have been made to the style to fix a couple of things, and because of some minor changes the developers have made.

So do we have to reinstall it each time you make a tweak?

scbriml wrote:

So do we have to reinstall it each time you make a tweak?

No. I'll post every time I make a change but it's entirely up to you if/when you want to run an update.

Unless there's a change that you particularly want, or DM have made changes that break the new style and require me to do a significant update of object names, then feel free to ignore me.