That would be great. Iām going to post a few threads now. Thanks.
I vote for Design 1
PERSONAL OPINION HERE
With respect to the proposed designs - why does everything have to be huge with mega padding?
All the input boxes are padded far too much IMHO, as are the buttons.
One of the complaints for the Suite designs were that there was far too much wasted space. Little seems to have changed in this department.
Although there is an argument to say that cramming as much on to a screen as possible is very bad, there is again far too much wasted space in all the proposed designs.
MUCH less padding and better spacing please.
Also the only differences I can see in the designs are the colours, which IFRC were to be customisable in a colour picker, meaning there is actually no new design as such?
Can you try some other layout options? Sidebar right for instance? No top bar and nav on the left? Square corners?
How about using some of the design themes out there? Metro? Material??
Just some ideasā¦
I do recognise that this is hopefully a massive bug fix, and not just a design patch, look and feel are very important to users, and I think these look a little naive.
no need to vote, you get all of those design and you can select between them on a per-user basis! 
I (and many others) agree the padding needs reduction.
try the padding on SuiteCRM 7.10 Beta2, itās already reduced. So when the new colors come out, they will have smaller paddings than they show on the current mock-up designs. So, your wish was granted
There are no different layouts, though. Thereās a LOT going into this release, and a line has to be drawn somewhere. Still, everythingās configurable in an open source program, so go ahead and customize it to fit your tastes!
But you are right, there are lots of improvements that can go into the screen designs in the future!
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Most definitely! fix the bugs FIRST - the pretty can wait
Glad to hear the padding has already been fixed though - awesome!
Will the new colours be in SuiteCRM 7.10 final release? Iāve just installed beta version 3 and the colour scheme is unchanged and I canāt see any easy way to configure it other than hacking the CSS myself. As previously stated, the colour scheme as supplied doesnāt meet accessibility criteria so we simply canāt use it. Also, will the scheme on this forum be fixed as well? I find it very hard on the eyes due to the extensive use of grey on grey.
I canāt check right now, but I assume it will be under User Profile, Themes, click the Theme name to access the options, and you should see four sub-themes, or colour options, inside SuiteP.
If not, then look under Admin > Themes, click the SuiteP name.
You can change the scheme in user profile, advance settings
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You are right , I wonder where is this (craziness) of grey on grey come from, sometimes it is almost unreadableā¦
we never print like this in the paper worldā¦
things needs to changes (not only this forum, but www publishers should think about this)ā¦
āDesignersā are the main cause of the problem, as they prefer pastel colour schemes which can be difficult to read. Their main goal is to āwowā people in a boardroom presentation or trade show booth, with little regard to the end user.
Suite P was apparently designed by someone who was given free-reign, without any real understanding of UI/UX or how / where SuitCRM is actually used.
I canāt check right now, but I assume it will be under User Profile, Themes, click the Theme name to access the options, and you should see four sub-themes, > or colour options, inside SuiteP.
Ok, I see the options they have a very non-obvious name. Why on earth is the colour scheme named āLayout optionsā ???
However, this is only partially helpful, firstly because it doesnāt allow a system default to be set and secondly because none of the alternatives addresses the issue! They still lack good contrast. Day and Dusk still have far too much grey on grey or mid grey on white and do not seem to address the core problem at all. Dark is a bit better, but there are still places where Iām seeing black or dark grey text on a dark coloured background (eg the Back To Top link text is almost invisible) and I tend to find that āinverseā colour schemes give me eye strain for reasons other than colour contrast, so thereās no way I can use this.
If not, then look under Admin > Themes, click the SuiteP name.
Definitely nothing there. There ought to be a āsystem defaultā option.
SalesAgiliy are based in the UK, as am I, the same disabilities legislation applies to them as to me and yet SA seem to be spectacularly unaware of its requirements. Why? If you want to write āstylish but non compliantā themes, you can, but there has to be at least one available that meets the laws we both have to abide by. I work in the education sector, not complying with this legislation is not an option.
Right now it looks like were sticking with 7.8 for the foreseeable future and will have to start developing our own custom themes if the situation isnāt rectified. To be honest this does cause me significant concerns that other accessibility issues arenāt being taken seriously.
I agree with some of the things you say. Iāve already posted about the Forums colors which are indeed hard to use.
But regarding the Beta 3, itās been out for a couple of days - really your complaints just need to take the form of simple āFeedbackā.
This thread is here for that purpose - people can try the product before itās final, and thatās helps tune things better for the actual release.
For example, āLayout optionsā is not a good name, itās not very visible, people were obviously having trouble finding it, so itās already being improved, as we speak.
The other details (parts where you have trouble reading): just gather everything into a single text and open an issue on Github asking for the changes, they will surely be considered.
Remember also: you donāt have to ādevelop a themeā, you probably just need to customize 4 or 5 things in CSS to fit your needs and taste. SuiteCRM makes it very easy to customize CSS.
Apart from all the improvements that you will surely get before the release (with your help), I wonder what bits of legislation you think are not being met? Is it just contrast or anything else? Iāve seen SalesAgilty always label accessibility issues as high priority and respond quickly, so I think they have a track record of taking that seriously.
Thanks for your feedback!
Iām in Dallas, but I understand the UK/EU disabilities/compliance requirements, being from there (Iām British-American).
Contrast changes ā¦ which are mostly just font-color and font-weight tweaks ā¦ to any theme are not that difficult to make.
In a nutshell, you essentially use the right-click and inspect capability (e.g. in the Chrome browser) on any part of a SuiteCRM webpage, to view the underlying CSS code down the right-side of the page. Try it and simply change some of the values shown, to see the pageās appearance change, before your very eyes! (If you make a mistake, simply refresh the webpage, to reset!) Then find the same section of CSS code in the style.css file and make the desired changes there. CSS changes do not require a ārepair and rebuildā, btw - you just edit the CSS code, save the file and refresh the page.
I understand the frustration of users regarding the Suite P theme, but many things in the open-source world require you to get stuck in and help yourself. Either that or go with some paid-support ā¦ or another product.
Open-source may be āfreeā, but there is always a cost in the equation ā¦ either in terms of time or $$$.
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thank you for this quick tip on how to customize the CSSā¦
I will keep this in my technical notesā¦
@pgr I am very happy to see " Iāve seen SalesAgilty always label accessibility issues as high priority and respond quickly"ā¦
My concern is that SalesAgility, a UK company, subject to UK rules with a significant customer base of paying customers in the UK is putting out theme code which isnāt compliant with UK (and EU) law. If I was a paying customer of SalesAgility I would be pretty mad right now and bombarding there support line telling them to get this sorted ASAP. To be honest, Iām amazed that that hasnāt happened, but clearly it hasnāt or the SuiteP theme colours would have been fixed by now (as would the poor colour choices on this forum). So I can only assume that SAās customer base isnāt very clued up on accessibility issues. The instant reaction of my colleagues when I showed them Suite 7.9/SuiteP was (without prompting) āwe canāt use thisā. Also, as previously said, when a company seems so unconcerned about something so obvious and fundamental, it does call their QA processes into question.
I certainly agree that in the open source world, if you donāt like it, you pay somebody to fix it, thatās what I do for a living. So you could argue that by complaining Iām doing myself out of income, since I could otherwise have just charged my client for a theme fix and kept my mouth shut. However, I consider it to be in the interests of SA to have such a fix and it is better if they do it themselves, since they are best placed to deal with this. Whatās even more inexplicable is that having had the problem highlighted some time ago, the supposed fix for the problem doesnāt actually do any good, I would have expected at least one of the new colour schemes to have good contrast!
As for doing my own colour customisation, this doesnāt look very easy. While I could add a further sub-theme, if you look inside the sub theme files, none of the colour definitions has been given a meaningful name, there are simply 82 numbered colours in an scss file which get compiled into the final css server side. So I would need to spend a lot of time tracking back through the code to find out whatās actually going on in order to trace problems back to the original source of the issue. Is there a key anywhere saying what is what? Show styles only works up to a point, I spent the best part of an hour today tracing a styling problem with an element which failed to show all of the applicable styling information in show styles.
There are some other theme customisations which I may well do myself, such as stripping out a lot of the icons in SuiteP which seem to serve no purpose. Iām not suggesting that SA should do this as well, since itās a matter of personal preference, rather than an essential change. So I will do that myself if/when the time comes.
Sorry for the further rant, but Iām trying to highlight a serious problem which would benefit SalesAgilities business to fix as well as the rest of us and I simply canāt understand why this isnāt seen as being more important.
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Ok, tim1mw I get your points.
Still I think this is a good moment to be thankful and appreciative, not complaining; weāre just getting 4 new colour schemes! I, for one, quite like some of them, and I love having a choice. Different days ask for different things. For me, this Beta 3 is already a nice Christmas present.
The new colours do include more ācontrastyā looks, maybe they need a couple of fixes on particular items, letās go ahead and ask for that with specific things.
Iām not sure exactly which laws are being broken, if you can point out any, I think itās obvious that SA will want to look into that.
So please letās stay positive and cooperative - thereās so much stuff going into this Beta, lots of PRās merged, new features, many of the things we as a Community asked forā¦
@tim1mw, This forum merely uses a 3rd-party piece of forum/blogging software; it was not created by SA.
@paullm, yes I agree that SalesAgility didnāt create the forum software, but they are responsible for the choice of theme. Other website use the same forum software with better colour schemes.
@pgr. I promise Iām not trying to be difficult, Iām just very frustrated and to be honest disbelieving that this ever happened in the first place. I had hoped to see a more dramatic improvement in 7.1. I would have preferred to see one really good colour scheme instead of 4 slightly improved ones. Right now it seems that style is winning over practicality.
The legal problem relates to the Disabilities Discrimination act, by law you have to take into account the needs of people with disabilities. Thatās more of a problem for āfront endā website software than back end stuff, since only your staff see the CRM itself. Perhaps thatās why Iām the only person grumbling. However, for the sector my client works in, they have to be seen to be compliant in all areas and set an example. The best way to show that you have taken the needs of the disabled into account is to demonstrate compliance with the relevant W3C accessibility guidelines, these include minimum recommendations for colour contrast. To be fair SuiteR also fails the tests, but the deficiencies werenāt as glaring, so could be overlooked.
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