Background schemes

[Ben McClellan II]

As long as I can remember, the Never Ending Quest has just three backgrounds to choose from when you're writing an episode: scroll, white text on black, and black text on white.

I also know that the Black Void has six unique schemes: Limbo, Dark, Classic White, Clockwork, Pirate, Road, and Border. That's in addition to black text on white, and white text on black.

What I'd like to know is, would anyone else be interested in seeing if a few more backgrounds could be added to the NEQ to the three we all know and love? I'm not suggesting that we just import the six Black Void backgrounds into NEQ, though, but it would be great if we could come up with something visually attractive to post our episodes with.

Personally, I'm partial to blue text on a yellow background, along with yellow text on green. I don't think those would be too bright to look at, but someone else might disagree. Your thoughts?

[JH]

As long as there's enough contrast to make the text easy to read I'll be happy. Some of LiveJournal's colour schemes can make text almost illegible, so hopefully we would do better than that. It occurs to me that a feature whereby the person reading the episode could "switch off" the background if they found it made the text hard to read would be neat.

[Ben McClellan II]

That's what I was thinking...no backgrounds that would be nearly impossible to read, or anything that would instantly give someone a headache.

I'm also wondering about the thought of letting the writers selecting their background by selecting two different colors from pulldown menus. This might be a good idea, but I think that inevitably, someone would select a scheme that's too hard to read.

[KnightRandom]

Now why would anyone want to do that?

[Ben McClellan II]

All right...I spent more than a few minutes looking at this site for some background ideas, and here's what I came up with. Obviously we don't have to stick with these choices, as I was looking for combinations that wouldn't be too difficult to read:

Cyan text on medium blue background
Cyan text on navy blue background

Lime green text on black background
Light blue text on black background
Red text on black background
Yellow text on black background

White text on brown background
Yellow text on brown background

Black text on gold background
Dark blue text on gold background
Medium blue text on gold background
Dark red text on gold background

White text on green background
Yellow text on green background
[Forest green or dark green could also be considered]

Black text on grey background
Blue text on grey background
Green text on grey background
Red text on grey background

White text on maroon background
Yellow text on maroon background

Black text on orange red background
Dark blue text on orange red background
White text on orange red background
Yellow text on orange red background

White text on purple background
Yellow text on purple background

Black text on red background
Light blue text on red background
White text on red background
Yellow text on red background

Black text on yellow background
Blue text on yellow background
Red text on yellow background

I felt that selecting just one shade of blue for a background was actually pretty difficult. I would lean towards darker shades for the benefit of those reading the site, though.

As for the unique schemes like NEQ's Scroll and the Black Void's Road, I'm sure we can come up with some new designs if we wanted to.

[Noise Tank]

In some other topic on this board, someone had a list of slates and there were quite a few that I liked. To me, anything other than the scroll is unfitting for the most part, so some variety would be cool.

[Won-Tolla]

Now why would anyone want to do that?

I have no idea.

[Sir Toby]

Improving the options for background schemes in Extend-A-Story is something I've been considering for a while. If you are interested in this, you may also be interested in this thread.

[Sir Toby]

Since it appears that the discussion of episode color schemes seems better suited to specific stories rather than Extend-A-Story in general, I am cross posting the relevant information from the Extend-A-Story thread.

The current template for episode color schemes uses a background color, background image (optional), text color, HTML link colors (unvisisted, visited, and active), and images for the three types of episode links (uncreated, created, back link). All colors need to be in the HTML RGB format. For example, the color red is specified as "#FF0000".

I am open to adding additional episode color schemes, just remember that there are a number of text elements that require distinct colors and all need to be readable against the background color. I'm not particularly good at design problems such as this, so I welcome assistance with adding additional episode color schemes.

[Ben McClellan II]

I do have a list of color combinations that I made up as part of my proposal to add more backgrounds to the new Horsehockey (which hasn't happened yet). If there's interest, I can post it here for those who haven't read it yet.

[lordreaibn]

I do have a list of color combinations that I made up as part of my proposal to add more backgrounds to the new Horsehockey (which hasn't happened yet). If there's interest, I can post it here for those who haven't read it yet.

Aye, yes, I need to do that. I think perhaps the upcoming Thanksgiving break will be the free time I need my friend.