Breaking down borders in video games.
New theme and a bit of housekeeping!
At the end of December, we asked you all for some feedback and how we’ve been doing with The Border House. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and we’re so excited that The Border House has grown to be a place for new and exciting conversation about the games we love (and hate). One of the more popular bits of feedback was that our theme wasn’t the best, so we’ve decided to trial run a new one!
A screenshot of our new theme!
This theme hits most of the accessibility issues that have been reported. The biggest benefit so far seems to be a comments section that is much easier to read – especially for lively discussions here!
Please note that if you mouse over the top right corner of the website, there are options to increase/decrease the text size on the site, and also change to a full-width layout if you prefer. Please, give us feedback in the comments. 
On another note, we’ve received some feedback lately regarding some confusion over our comment policy. Our discussion policy can be read in full here, but if anyone has any questions or concerns you can email the editors. If there are personal attacks or derailing tactics the conversation will be moderated and comments will not be approved. Please note, that while we do aim to educate gamers about anti-oppression and feminist issues – we cannot let every post escalate into a opposition war, as it is frustrating and exhausting for those who have to constantly defend our stance.
If you’re unsure about terminology, you may politely ask for an explanation. Please keep in mind that members of marginalized groups have to explain these ideas time and time again. Contributors will explain concepts at their own discretion. You can disagree and state your opinion (politely), but be willing to engage with terminology and concepts with an open mind. We welcome commenters helping the less knowledgeable with 101-level information sharing.
(Source: our discussion policy)
In addition, we have a no-anonymous commenter policy, but we don’t mind if you use a pseudonym. We encourage everyone who engages in conversations here to read through our Helpful Resources guide to ensure conversations are educated and smart.
Finally, we are still on the lookout for good writers – specifically if you’d like to write about casual Facebook games or current MMOs such as World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online, or Lord of the Rings Online. Full details for applying can be found here. Thanks everyone for being such an active and intelligent community so far!
Related posts:
- The Border House is Recruiting Writers! Now that we have gotten settled and have established a...
- Discussion Policy Guiding Principles Feminist Space We welcome non-feminists, those new to...
- Looking Back, Looking Forward It’s been about a month since The Border House went...
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Cuppycake on February 8, 2010 at 10:27 pm, and is filed under Site News. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 5 months ago
I love the new theme. I love the more usable comment threading.
I am, however, interested in what readers think about the usability aspects. Hopefully we can come to some sort of happy consensus in terms of usability, though I know that different people may have different needs. I imagine that this might be an iterative process as we try to figure out, with our readers and commenters, how best to proceed.
about 5 months ago
Hey, just a heads up – GeekFeminism.org currently links to Vorpal Bunny Ranch.
New site looks good, though. I love the peeking icons at the top.
about 5 months ago
Hi, Geebs. I’ve corrected that link. Thanks for the heads-up.
about 5 months ago
/me shrugs
I think it used to look prettier, but if it’s more usable, it’s more usable.
about 5 months ago
We think this one is prettier AND more usable
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess! Hehe.
about 5 months ago
The gray borders on the side bother me a bit for some reason. I also thought that the font you had up for a couple days looked odd.
I do like that the “Reply/Quote” buttons don’t get in my way any more, though.
about 5 months ago
Hey, Borderhouse Residents,
I’ve been reading and loving your site since December. I think the ability for the user to change text sizes is great–and this might be really minor–but I’m wondering if whoever is responsible for design could tweak the script that hides and shows the buttons for font size and fixed-fluid layout toggling to remain permanently visible (or add such functionality elsewhere on the page). Unless there’s some sort of notice at the top of the page, I imagine new readers won’t realize that function is available. Also, sometimes the drop down script seems to malfunction (like it’s doing right now), and when I try to place my cursor over the buttons they scoot back up and disappear.
Somewhat related: I’m finding the rendering of text (something to do with the antialiasing of whatever font is being used–at least, the way FF and Opera are rendering it) very odd, and it’s actually kind of a pain on the eyes to read at almost all sizes (the previous theme did not do this). Going through the style sheet, I am not 100% sure which font I’m ending up with (Myriad Pro, possibly), but I’m wondering if the best solution would be to have the stylesheet point to whatever the user’s default sans-serif font is for the body text, since that’s likely to look highly legible–if not the most stylish–to each user.
Sorry, kind of a long post for something not super pressing, but, hey, feedback was requested.
On a positive and more substantive note, I love what you all are doing here. This is a great resource.
about 5 months ago
Hi StarHen, thanks for the feedback!
I will see what I can do about making the font adjustment permanently stay up. I imagine that won’t be hard.
The rendering of text is easy to fix. I’ll get working on that to have the default font set to your preferences.
about 5 months ago
I was also finding the font somewhat irritating at all sizes but whatever it is that you’ve changed it to today looks great.
about 5 months ago
Thank you, Cuppycake! It’s much easier to read now.
about 5 months ago
I liked the original theme, but if people had accessibility problems with it then I can’t really argue for it.
The self-hiding layout flow and font size buttons at the very top-right corner seem a little unproductive though. If they weren’t mentioned in the post, I never would have guessed that they were there.
about 5 months ago
I’m going to make them permanently stay out so they’re not hidden.
about 5 months ago
Awesome. No complaints from me, then!
Actually– I feel a bit silly for asking, but would it be possible to put a ‘formatting FAQ’ up somewhere? I can never remember whether a given forum or blog uses traditional HTML or stand-in markup, and I don’t think I’m the only one.
about 5 months ago
I think the new theme is beautiful, but I found the old theme more accessible. I tried increasing the font using the button at the top, but it did not become as large as I was able to make it using “control +” on the old theme. This is not really a problem for me, because I just used “ctrl +” on this theme and got the font back to the size I was reading it at before.
I like the comments. They seem very easy to pick out. Are they chronological or branching? Either is fine, although if they are chronological it is easier to check for new comments, whereas if they are branching, it can be difficult to find new comments.
about 5 months ago
Hi Bakka,
Ctrl + will always make a font size larger than using a manual font increaser like in this theme. I’m going to increase the default font size here though. It’s definitely small on a Mac compared to my Windows machine too.
The comments are threaded/nested for ease of conversation. This is a flag I can change though.
about 5 months ago
I don’t really think the comments need to be changed. I get that it helps with conversation. Is there a way you could have an option? So the viewer could choose how to read the comments?
about 5 months ago
For anyone who might be reading this and are still confused or annoyed by the discussion policy…
This blog is kind of like a book club where our book is Basic Anti-Oppression Theory. And just like in a book club, if you haven’t read the book, chances are you don’t have anything interesting to add to the conversation. Questions may be acceptable on occasion. But if you’re coming to the book club without having read the book, and then dominating the conversation by telling everyone else they’re wrong about this book you haven’t read, or asking people to summarize the plot for you, it’s going to ruin the book club for everyone who actually wants to be there to talk about the book beyond just what happens in it.
I hope that makes sense.
about 5 months ago
That is the best way I have seen the issue summarized, Alex. Kudos.
about 5 months ago
Awesome analogy Alex!
about 5 months ago
It does but personally i’m very fond of critical approach to video games, so feminist and anti-opression perspective that is used by authors on this blog, i find really interesting and very often as a breath of intelectual fresh air, but to be honest outside of games i’m interested in neither, so when discussion goes beyond gaming theme it’s pretty likely that i may get confused and post something that may be outside of commenting policy if so my apologies in advance ( though of course i’ll try not to do this).
about 5 months ago
Very well said.
Speaking of questions, how do I get an avatar?
about 5 months ago
Register for an avatar on Gravatar.com and make sure to use the same email address that you registered with here.
about 5 months ago
Nice theme. I would vote for a larger font size – it’s not as geared towards younger eyes as some I’ve seen, but it’s still small enough to be a little annoying, and having magic popup controls for that isn’t the right direction to go – if you believe the controls are necessary, make them visible all the time. (Though I’m sure that many of us with eyes that are ill-suited for the web are used to the in-browser controls for enlarging pages.)
For what it’s worth, I compared the font size to a few books I have lying around; only one of the nine books I have sitting on my desk uses a font as small as yours appears to me on my screen, and I hold books closer to my eyes than I keep my screen. Though different people’s monitor sizes / settings mean that the font appears differently to different people, I suppose.
Other than that, though, I like the new theme – pleasant to look at, easy to get around, the comment threads don’t get super-narrow like they did in your last theme.
about 5 months ago
David,
I’m going to make those controls visible all of the time. Also, I’m going to increase the font size here. It’s teeny tiny right now! I’ll fix that today.
Thanks!
about 5 months ago
Thanks!
about 5 months ago
I love the look of the new design. The font seems slightly smaller than the original design but it is easy to make it larger so that was not a problem for me. I especially love the change to the comments. I think this is great
about 5 months ago
Yeah, that font was icky. I fixed it!