If you’re a Bowie fan, then the title of this post might mean something to you If not, sorry - obviously wasted…
The main point of this post is to advise you of some changes that are happening within the platform. Over time, Sudonix has evolved (in a good way of course) and has attracted readers and new members alike across the world. Whilst the below stats are not in the millions, it does show modest growth which is always assuring given the nature of what is on offer here.
Based on the increasing number of new users, I wanted to improve the overall look of Sudonix and make it more appealing to the eye. Some of you may have already noticed the changes, or, as in the case of @Madchatthew, been hit with some odd-looking effects that mean you have to choose another theme, and then re-select the one you were using before. Thankfully, most of this work has now been completed, but these changes do have an impact on your daily usage as below
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Support for multiple themes is going to be reduced - to the point where there will only be three. Light (Luminate), Dim (Dusk), and Dark (Tenebrous). The real reason for this is that, as @crazycells keeps telling me, “less is more” and I’m becoming a fan of that paradigm. Having a lot of themes also means a lot of maintenance, which is something I’m looking to avoid. If you use Dark Mode on your device, you’ll get issued with Tenebrous. If you use Light Mode (native), then you’ll get issued with Luminate. I am going to be removing the dropdown swatch and replacing this with a simple 3-way toggle (or something like that).
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Font sizes have been reduced. The point here is that on a mobile device, these are a bit too large for my liking, so they have been scaled back on desktops to 98%, and 95% on mobile devices. The dominant font (Poppins) will remain as it’s a firm favourite and works well on all devices.
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The look and feel experience has also changed. I’ve adapted something of a “Material” view which is on by default (currently, it cannot be disabled, but I will include this ability if desired as I helped write something similar for @DownPW some time ago). This uses outline
instead of border
which is much easier to work with (under the guise of CSS) as it does not increase the element size, but simply adds a “wrapper” around it. Other “soft” changes have made their way into this release, and are subtle in nature, but will certainly improve the overall experience.
There are a ton of other changes, but some of these are either under-the-hood, or subtle enough that they go unnoticed - one such example is a change to OGProxy
(only CSS) that alters the rendering order making it faster, and aligning to what other sites are doing in terms of how the card is presented. There are numerous colour changes too, which typically attract new naming conventions which won’t be available under your session unless you change themes or clear your browser cache.
I’m hoping most of this will simply pass most users by - but, do let me know if that is not the case.