Usability: Too many borders

[ruemere]

Problem:
There are too many borders (posting form, counting from within text box toward top of the page I can see 15 borders: 5 white/grey line type, 2 grey/black non-line, 8 yellow line type) in current EnWorld layout.

Impact:
The page readibility is severely hindered because eyes tend to follow straight lines instead of text. Basically, rule #1 of layouting is to avoid making division lines too prominent. And right now, their colors, positioning and sheer number is way too big.

Compare (number of horizontal lines from top to bottom):
http://www.mozdev.org/ - number of borders top to bottom: 7, of which only 4 are of higher visibility

http://www.mozilla.org/ - 9 total, 3 highly visible

http://www.enworld.org/ - 17 total, 17 highly visible

THIS submit form - 38 total, 38 highly visible

http://www.zeldman.com/ - 6 highly visible


regards,
Ruemere

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by ruemere

Problem:
There are too many borders (posting form, counting from within text box toward top of the page I can see 15 borders: 5 white/grey line type, 2 grey/black non-line, 8 yellow line type) in current EnWorld layout.

Impact:
The page readibility is severely hindered because eyes tend to follow straight lines instead of text. Basically, rule #1 of layouting is to avoid making division lines too prominent. And right now, their colors, positioning and sheer number is way too big.

Compare (number of horizontal lines from top to bottom):
http://www.mozdev.org/ - number of borders top to bottom: 7, of which only 4 are of higher visibility

http://www.mozilla.org/ - 9 total, 3 highly visible

http://www.enworld.org/ - 17 total, 17 highly visible

THIS submit form - 38 total, 38 highly visible

http://www.zeldman.com/ - 6 highly visible


regards,
Ruemere

I don't have the time to rebuild vbulletin's basic skin - yet. The use of tables for layout is excessive throughout the vbulletin linked pages but rebuilding the templates will require about 60 to 80 hours I don't have.

[Nifft]

Originally Posted by ruemere

There are too many borders (posting form, counting from within text box toward top of the page I can see 15 borders: 5 white/grey line type, 2 grey/black non-line, 8 yellow line type) in current EnWorld layout.

If you trim the margins and eliminate the .tborder elements, it gets a lot more usable IMHO:





(Of course, I also change min-width, because the site looks fine without it.)

Cheers, -- N