Let me know what you think. I tried to compress out all the wasted space to make the site work better in smaller windows. I'm not sure about the colour scheme yet. Any thoughts appreciated.

Paul.

p.s. some parts may not be quite correct yet

yeah its a very good choice for the forum to get a new look

Woah! The new look is finally here! However, personally, I still like the black background in contrast with the yellow text better, though this may be entirely because I've been used to it since 2003.

For a suggestion, I suppose a slightly darker shade of the present color (or another) for the background would do nicely. The darker background would also bring out the photos much better in the photo page. Plus, the bars on the "statistics" link are inconspicuous. Other than that, everything else looks fine.

And I suppose you'll also be adding the video section later on, but that can take time, but no big deal.

Trav.

Hi Paul,

Interesting look. I remember when I was programing java applets. The hardest thing to do is to color coordinate everything. My first impression is that the black text on grey gives the site a feeling of "boredom". Being a site of firworks, color MUST be used. What you can do is maybe redarken the background (instead of dark blue, use a mixture of colors by using the RGB color panel) and use a shade of color for the text. Maybe use a background of la ronde at night, or of the firing site in the dark (no fireworks). Anyways Paul, the format is there, it's just the color that needs a slight change. Good luck! . BTW, the forum looks great. The background could be darkened a bit and the font size could be increase by one point. Much easier to read the text compared to old forum.

Dan

Paul,

Again, thank you for all the work you do with this website and the forum. I am looking forward to read your reports again and to discuss with other fanatics! About the new look, I am sorry to join my voice to other members and to say that I did prefer the former colors, especially with a dark background. However, this is a minor criticism and the most important is to have an access to this website to share our passion for firework!

Enjoy your summer!
Fred

Really happy with the change, this design is more up to date...

Thanks for everyone's feedback on the changes. If you're using Firefox as a browser, I will make it possible for you to switch between the "classic" yellow-on-black layout and the new one.

One aspect I'd like some comments on is the layout of the page with the new style (not thinking about the colours). I tried to make it so that less page space is wasted with menus and banners etc. Let me know if you like the new layout and I'll back-port this into the old colour scheme so that you can switch between them. This won't work with Internet Explorer version 6 or lower though and may not work with version 7.

Paul.

Hi Paul,

Firefox is not my main browser despite that I have it as an alternative. However, as long as I have a version other than the ones you specified for internet explorer, it should work. I guess there's no way where they can all work nicely.

As for suggestions, I'll be sure to give you some feedback on it later on.

Trav.

I've reset the style for the photos section of the site back to the old yellow-on-dark style. I'll be making more adjustments during the season and hopefully get to a point where the look is more user-selectable. Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Paul.