Something about the incessant use of rounded corners, circular profile pictures, flat buttons, and "soft" sans-serif fonts makes sites with modern UI seem sterile and lifeless. Even excluding one of these things would make Mainchan more interesting. In order to attract more users to Mainchan, there needs to be something that sets it apart from other social media applications. The ability to post anonymously doesn't count. I will detail some features that, if implemented, would make this site more fun overall, on another post. Anyways, there should be more than just two themes available for this site. I don't understand why making an, "ultra-dark mode" or even a, "red" mode is so difficult.
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All modern web design is soulless. Take it from a web designer who's been in the trenches since the 90's. I watched artistic, innovative design get slowly replaced by the standardized, formulaic, designed-by-engineers boredomscape we see today. I was designing graphics-intense table-based websites before CSS was a thing. There was a whole movement of people who viewed web design as art first and commerce a distant second. But then the engineers and business people came and they needed everything to be standardized and homogenized for maximum interoperability, platform support, and idiot user support. Basically if a 90 year old grandma with bad vision and poor computer literacy couldn't navigate your site like a pro on their first visit using one of those barely functional old-people phones then your design wasn't getting approved.
That's just the front end, on the backend the engineers need to justify their jobs existing and so generate a never ending parade of frameworks designers and devs have to learn (because the executives make them hiring requirements) which are often hostile to design freedom by reinforcing establish homogeneity or "patterns". Then cram all that into executive enforced development frameworks like Scrum or Agile that leave no room for experimentation and you have todays boring, everything looks the same interwebs.
All this is to say that if I really wanted to, and Cicero was down, I could make this site and the app look unique and amazing while still being as functional or moreso than any other social site. However I've had the love of web design beaten TF out of me by living through all those things I just complained about. It'd take a salary at least over 100k to get me to commit to that level of designing again (which is a bit more than mainchan volunteer designer pays haha).
Just a reminder that /s/FeatureRequest exist if anyone has an idea for Mainchan they want to highlight for consideration.
you're right the font should be changed to comic sans
Modern UI does look crap, but I have gotten used to ignoring it. The less I bother about shit like round corners, the more time I have to post very funny images and videos on Mainchan.
NEW USERS WON'T HAVE A REASON TO JOIN SOCIAL MEDIA POSTING SITE #298402398490238904890194081029840912840912804018409280498120948312 WITH NOTICEABLY LESS ACTIVITY THAT HAS THE EXACT SAME FEATURES AND THE EXACT SAME UI AS EVERY OTHER SITE.
Aight. Here's my sovlification proposal.
So you're saying make it look like a Geocities website from the late 90's? Can the background be an animated fire gif? I vote fire gif.
yeah ok but . . . have you ever played plants vs zombies battle for neighbourvile?
(Also feel free to hate on modern UI in the comments)