Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-11.
The thick red menubar has received a certain amount of negative feedback at HN and reddit, e.g.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18195043
Would someone like to experiment with tweaking the layout_2018.css for perhaps a more welcoming color scheme and thinner menu bar (and maybe bump the font sizes a bit -- see
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18193073
)
Erik Huelsmann (@ehuelsmann) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
@dcooper the menu bar is now black, but: there will always be negative comments, no matter what you do.
Should we really act on one or two reddit posts?
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Personally I tended to agree that so much red was a bit jarring, and the Reddit comments confirmed that. If anyone feels very strongly differently about it, ultimately it would have to come up for a CLF vote (in the spirit of Common Lisp -- designed by commitee! Yay!).
Anyway I still think it would be interesting to try to work in the CLTL2 color scheme as suggested by Marco A, assuming it can be done tastefully (although that does have red in it as well -- maybe we could use red in a targeted way for certain text)... Could we get inspiration from the fonts or typography of CLTL2 as well? I wonder how many people would recognize it as CLTL2 if that concerted effort were made?
Administrator (@root) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
I don't have the book on my bookshelf, but do you mean this book cover: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrJ25btsMBbWXUAX0cPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTB0N2Noc21lBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNwaXZz?p=cltl2+the+book&fr2=piv-web&fr=yhs-ddc-linuxmint&hspart=ddc&hsimp=yhs-linuxmint#id=0&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Flars.nocrew.org%2Fcomputers%2Fbooks%2Fbig%2FCommon_Lisp_the_Language_2e.jpg&action=click ?
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Yep, that's the cover which I think Marco was referring to. Can anyone provide an image of the back cover too? I'd be interested in the coloring and typography there. There's not much to go on from the front cover alone...
I think Marco was suggesting making our menu bars the grey color of the background of the cover (I always related that to "Steel," like the name of the author "Steele"). But maybe he meant the page background itself should be that grey color. And I'm not sure what he had in mind for foreground text color.. (Marco? Are you reading this?).
I do think the default site background could do with being something a bit quieter than the almost pure white (252, 252, 252) which it is now...
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
FWIW, here's the back cover of cltl2. Not very exciting but I don't suppose "exciting" is really our goal here.
Now I'm thinking this grey might not be bad for our overall default background. Then what to make the menus? (a darker grey, maybe -- or white, like the barcode background).
Does anybody know what font that is?
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
So depending on the lighting, my Mac's Digital Color Meter is showing anywhere from (135, 135, 120) to (190, 188, 170) for the cover background.
The front cover posted by Erik shows it with more green-blue, at around (160, 176, 172).
My friend's book (he just texted me that back cover pic) may have faded over the years.
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Marco A is showing #9ebcb4 == (158 188 180) which is even more greenish-bluish.
Tim Plotnikov (@tplotnikov) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Here what navbar can be if we use CLtL2 cover color.
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Ok... let's let people digest that for a bit...
Looks good at first glance.
Out of curiosity (if you have a few moments and it's quick to do), how would it look with that grey for the whole background, and something else for the menu bars?
Marco Antoniotti (@mantoniotti) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Hi guys,
I (of course) like it.
I would not do the whole background CLtL2-grey though. I like a white (whitish) background for text.
Maybe the menus and sidebars could be colored.
Marco
Tim Plotnikov (@tplotnikov) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
@dcooper Just to check how it looks
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
@tplotnikov @mantoniotti
Ok then, let's leave the whole-background grey alone for a while (I know it wouldn't be so simple anyway, it would have a lot of knock-on effects on foregrounds etc). [update -- seeing Tim's mockup now -- yeah, doing full background in cltl2 grey would probably be a bit too much...]
Question though - do the menu foregrounds have to be white if the menu is that grey? Does black not work (foreground text on cltl2 is black & red, with just some white for the fractal diagram thingie).
Tim Plotnikov (@tplotnikov) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Here is also a palette for this color suggested by http://www.colorexplorer.com/
(i find it too dark tho)
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
FWIW here are photos of the front & spine of cltl2 as well.
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Ok let's digest for a while.
If we don't get a lot of further input I will say let's take direction from Marco (including "maybe menus and sidebars can be colored").
Also what about font? Can we match the cltl2 font (maybe at least for the menu items)? The book cover has some kind of fancy kerning as well (looks like maybe done by hand).
Tim Plotnikov (@tplotnikov) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
@dcooper i'll work on font and colors and try to match navbar style for cover of the book. It'll be interesting
Erik Huelsmann (@ehuelsmann) on GitLab, 2018-10-12.
Yea. Let's get some of the other issues listed addressed first. (I'd like the Markdown issue fixed a lot :) )
Tim Plotnikov (@tplotnikov) on GitLab, 2018-10-14.
Ok, let me try to match cover image with some font recognition software
Best Regards, Tim Plotnikov 12 окт. 2018 г., 19:10 +0300, Dave Cooper mailto:gitlab@common-lisp.net, писал:
Marco Antoniotti (@mantoniotti) on GitLab, 2018-10-15.
Hi.
I vote for the navigation bar CLtL2 color only. Let the main text be white background (or off-white).
Erik Huelsmann (@ehuelsmann) on GitLab, 2018-10-15.
I'd vote for a white-ish background too: the problem with grey is that it's hard to find colors which contrast enough with it to make text readable (especially when you run your site through filters for the color blind).
Erik Huelsmann (@ehuelsmann) on GitLab, 2018-10-28.
With the major refactoring from this weekend, I think we're right in there for further content enhancements, now that our code is pretty clean.
Is this an issue that needs addressing? Or are we happy with the current darker title bar with white text? (I personally am, really, but I may be alone in that?)
Dave Cooper (@dcooper) on GitLab, 2026-10-01.
Superseded by the redesign live since September 2026: a new layout, a light and a dark theme, larger type and no thick red bar. Thanks to everyone who took part in the CLtL2-colour discussion. Closing; new feedback on the new look is welcome as fresh issues or in #common-lisp.net on Libera.Chat.
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