Guild Wars 2

After reading a couple of sentences my eyes start burning from the bright white light of the background. Please ArenaNet, make the background of the forum dark gray so we can read more conviniently! It’s a forum and people tend to write a lot and read a lot. I know that it might not match the style of the website, but in my opinion, that’s not so important.

Thanks!

I agree, the forums could use a makeover. They just look….sterile

Anything else Anet should change based on your personal opinion?

Rustypipes.6238:

Anything else Anet should change based on your personal opinion?

Personal opinion? I think a lot of people have to wear sunglasses in order to read things on this forum…

I would be unable to read the forums at all if the background were dark gray. My eyes are not that good anymore. Maybe a pale sky blue would be OK.

Mythbuster challenge: Guild wars 2 forums can cause Blindness – Will they be up to the challenge?

Or alternate color schemes.

Books are white(almost all of them), magazines are white( almost all of them). HELL paper is white(…. almost all of them). WTF you saying? Since you were a kid you read on white stuff, why you complain now??

On a mac you can press command + option + control + 8 at the same time and it will invert all the colors on your screen (white becomes black, violet becomes yellow, red becomes green, etc.)
This changes gw2 forums from black text on white to white text on black. Much easier on the eyes
Press that same key combo again to revert back to normal

edit: several of those symbols didn’t appear… so words instead!

Mystic.5934:

On a mac you can press command + option + control + 8 at the same time and it will invert all the colors on your screen (white becomes black, violet becomes yellow, red becomes green, etc.)
This changes gw2 forums from black text on white to white text on black. Much easier on the eyes
Press that same key combo again to revert back to normal

edit: several of those symbols didn’t appear… so words instead!

i dont know if i can command + option + control + put on the sunglasses and smile all at the same time

The sale is over now, but keep a look out for these:
http://www.woot.com/plus/gunnar-gaming-glasses-1

Also for when you aren’t gaming, this free program is really nice. It adjusts the temperature of your monitor to match the time of day:
http://stereopsis.com/flux/

Yeah, the forums should probably be a bit gentler and you shouldn’t need to buy special glasses to read them without burning your eyes, but if you spend a lot of time on the computer then they really help all around. I have a pair at work and and at home.

@Dimm, books, magazines and paper aren’t backlit by LEDs. Staring at bright monitors for prolonged periods of time does have physical side effects. This is a pretty well-known thing. He isn’t making it up.

this is not the best solution but it will work

step one: install the grease monkey extension to either firefox or chrome
step two go to the main page of this forum and click the greasemonkey icon and click new user script.
in the window that popus up name it ForumBG changer (so what ever actually)
and in the includes box remove what is there and replace it with

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/*

click ok
it will probably come up and ask you to choose a text editor just navigate to notepad (usually c:\windows\notepad.exe in XP or C:\Windows\System32\Notepad.exe in win7)
it should open notepad and fill in something like this

// UserScript
// @name fbg2
// @namespace https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum
// @include https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum
// @include https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/*
// @version 1
// /UserScript

after that simply paste

(function() {
document.getElementById(‘content’).style.backgroundColor=“#808080”;
})();

then save and close notepad and reload this site

I will explain what this does exactly as to show that it is safe and not an attempt to do anything bad

grease monkey is an addon that allows your browser to run extra javascript on a page
the page is specified by the include statement in the file so in this case it is only going to effect the guild wars 2 forums

the javascript we are running (document.getElementById(‘content’).style.backgroundColor=“#808080”;) breaks down as follows
“Document” <— this tells javascript to look at the page that is open
“getElementById(’’content”) <— this says to examine something and find a part with an id that matches the part in the parentheses in this case “content”

now that it has found the part that we are looking for it needs to know what to do with it

so first we go to the style of it with “style” then to the backgroundcolor portion of the style and lastly we tell it to make what ever it was equal our new color

with this you can change the color to anything you like by changing “#808080” to the hex value of the color you want.

you will notice that Anet built the buttons with white backgrounds to match the site so they now stand out a bit but if you truely are having issues with the white background this will help

turn the brightness down on your screen

Dimm.8702:

Books are white(almost all of them), magazines are white( almost all of them). HELL paper is white(…. almost all of them). WTF you saying? Since you were a kid you read on white stuff, why you complain now??

This made no sense^

There is a difference between pages/books when comparing them to an electronic device (Monitor) that outputs light thus further intensifying the white background.

It really does get annoying after while especially with LED monitors.

They should allow a darker background.

Also don’t say turn down the screen brightness, why do all that every time you visit one website like this forum? Most forums have a darker color tone for this reason alone.

There are a lot of browser extensions that will help with eyesight issues. If you struggle with black text on white, I’m amazed that you haven’t found one yet.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The GW2 website and forums follow our color and design principles, so there isn’t much that we could be doing without changing a lot of things around.

Thanks for your feedback.

Look, I’m all for sticking to design and color schemes, its just the forums are really, really bland. Other than names and the very top of the forums, everything is solid black/white. Would it be possible for more themes to be made to accompany this as the default?

Angelus.1042:

Dimm.8702:

Books are white(almost all of them), magazines are white( almost all of them). HELL paper is white(…. almost all of them). WTF you saying? Since you were a kid you read on white stuff, why you complain now??

This made no sense^

There is a difference between pages/books when comparing them to an electronic device (Monitor) that outputs light thus further intensifying the white background.

It really does get annoying after while especially with LED monitors.

They should allow a darker background.

Also don’t say turn down the screen brightness, why do all that every time you visit one website like this forum? Most forums have a darker color tone for this reason alone.

Then your monitor simply isn’t properly calibrated or there’s no other light in your room which is very bad for the eyes anyway.
Also, just because you mainly hang out in gaming forums, this doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone. I actually like the white background because my boss doesn’t notice when I’m in the forums at work :p Most professional sites are also white.
I don’t mind if they add themes, but don’t always assume your personal preferences are the optimum for everybody. And as others aleady stated, it’s easy to change the style with browser extensions.

White is fine. I used to have some pretty rough migraines but couldn’t spend time away from the computer. Flux helped me out a lot.

http://stereopsis.com/flux/

Just lower the brightness of your screen. You’ll do fine.

Having to lower your brightness just to use these forums is silly don`t you think?
Second you use anything else, have to reset it again.

Solution:
If you use Firefox, grab the addon Stylish.
Then install the colour scheme from here: http://userstyles.org/styles/76247/dark-gw2-forums

If don`t want to click the link (it`s safe, i use it) once Stylish installed, bottom left of Firefox, click the Stylish icon & setting “Find more styles for this site” with the forum page open.

Enjoy!

Fishbait.6723:

Then install the colour scheme from here: http://userstyles.org/styles/76247/dark-gw2-forums

Thanks for that link!
I did not even need to install stylish, it also works just with having greasemonkey installed.

Fishbait.6723:

Having to lower your brightness just to use these forums is silly don`t you think?
Second you use anything else, have to reset it again.

Solution:
If you use Firefox, grab the addon Stylish.
Then install the colour scheme from here: http://userstyles.org/styles/76247/dark-gw2-forums

If don`t want to click the link (it`s safe, i use it) once Stylish installed, bottom left of Firefox, click the Stylish icon & setting “Find more styles for this site” with the forum page open.

Enjoy!

That’s what I would say also!
I’m using this style also, and working an improved style based this one. eg. using other, shadowless font, gray divider lines at topic lists instead of the white ones.
I don’t understand disinterests about that important question, I hate the white and very bright backgrounds on monitor for reading ever, coz its very annoying. I think using white and very bright backgrounds is a totally misconception from the webpage builders, either forcing all to use it as the only option. They just using it coz thats the modern style nowadays. Shame.
If you want, I publish that style.

I published my firefox stylish addon style: http://userstyles.org/styles/81252/more-gray-plain-font-style

Holynexus.8064:

Just lower the brightness of your screen. You’ll do fine.

my screen is adjusted for games, and every one of the other 20 forums i visit.

plain white is obnoxious. it’s 2013 people, let’s get some options up in here.

OP .. and those that agree with him… i got a question.

What monitor/Tv are u using that could possibly make the white so bright it hurts ur eyes ?

I run a 42" panasonic Plasma for crying out loud ..and im fine with the white background ..granted it has its own auto contrast adjuster that makes the white less in ur face. .but still.
I think ur being to picky ..if a pure white screen is to bright for u ..adjust ur monitor ..thats what those settings are for. Hell u should be able to set presets within ur monitor..do that. turn on auto gamma/contrast adjustment etc.

Why do you care if people adjust their monitor or the website background?

My white is not “so bright that it hurts my eyes” (the OP was probably exaggerating a bit to make his point…) and I do not use any special monitor. It is just white, you know….bright and luminous. I do not want it as a background for anything.

Why would I “adjust my monitor” so that the white light no longer bothers me, only to end up with unwatchable Youtube videos, photos that look like someone forgot to take off the lenscap and a game that appears to be permanently stuck in the middle of a cloudy moonless night?

The smart way is to get rid of the bright white background. The weird way is to turn down the monitor brightness.

ShinraGuardian.8053:

Look, I’m all for sticking to design and color schemes, its just the forums are really, really bland. Other than names and the very top of the forums, everything is solid black/white. Would it be possible for more themes to be made to accompany this as the default?

Being able to choose a different theme (still GW2 ofcourse) would be a good fix for this. I personally don’t have a problem with the colors as they are now, but I can imagine if you do it’s annoying. Lot’s of forums give you theme options, so why not

Regards

Farry.8259:

Rustypipes.6238:

Anything else Anet should change based on your personal opinion?

Personal opinion? I think a lot of people have to wear sunglasses in order to read things on this forum…

I can’t agree with you more. I am thinking of buying a Welding Helmet.

Go configure your screen first :p
I have no problem at all with a to bright white on the screen. So why should they change the color because you have a bad monitor ? It looks like the forum has been designed all around this color, changing it will mess with all the effects (like the moderator’s name design and other things)

Less is more. Black and white are all the colors you need.

I agree im finding the blinding white also gives me eye strain.

I like the style, but I definitely agree the white it too bright. Just dulling it down a little would help, a bit of an off white towards grey or dark orange would help without ruining the whole design.