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A major design update is now live!

Most of the changes are not visible; these tweaks go along with recent updates that were made to Stack Overflow:

  • We are moving the site's CSS to a newly refactored LESS system, so that it's easier for us to fix SE network CSS bugs globally and launch new features in the future.
  • We are updating the graphics to SVG for retina support.
  • We've fixed a LOT of obscure bugs that arose when new features were not thoroughly tested across the entire network.

Visually it should "feel" the same as the old site with slight layout adjustments.

This update should retro-actively fix most of the old design bugs. If you see any new ones, or old ones not yet fixed, please post an answer here to let us know!

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  • 6
    There is too much empty space between questions to my taste. It comes from avatars.
    – jimmij
    Mar 17, 2015 at 22:11
  • Feels weird, probably that I'm not used to it. Mar 17, 2015 at 23:18
  • 1
    The question and answer scores looks different—smaller maybe? Probably intentional, I guess?
    – derobert
    Mar 17, 2015 at 23:23
  • @kurtis-beavers Any word on fixing the regressions?
    – Mikel
    Mar 24, 2015 at 2:00
  • @Mikel we just pushed a few changes. Most of the issues listed below have been resolved. There are a few other things that we are still working on. Mar 25, 2015 at 19:25
  • Out of curiosity. Have colors for links vs. visited links been swapped? E.g. for questions listing.
    – Runium
    Apr 2, 2015 at 20:08

10 Answers 10

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Let me go through previously reported issues:

One more important point, which I'm sure I've reported on meta before but I can't find now: double quotes " in titles are rewritten to their slanted versions “…”. This is highly inappropriate on a site where is an important matter. Double quotes in titles are often the ASCII character (U+0022 QUOTATION MARK) in a bit of Unix shell syntax, and showing different characters gives the impression that what is written is not shell syntax. We can use the typographically pleasant U+201C and U+201D when we want. Please leave U+0022 alone when we mean it.

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  • Thanks for the details. Here are a couple notes: I'll look into changing the captcha, error, and 404 pages. The text in the badges is now larger. The highlight color in the Favorite tagged questions has been dulled a bit. The question title font is still Liberation Serif. Will fix code spoiler background color on Meta. Mar 18, 2015 at 1:01
  • 1
    +1 for the question titles. If you are not on a retina screen, they are painfully (literally) small...
    – jasonwryan
    Mar 18, 2015 at 6:01
  • @KurtisBeavers Thanks for the prompt reaction! Note that the spoiler issue was on main, not on meta. Mar 18, 2015 at 8:21
  • 2
    @KurtisBeavers - could you please look at the issue of turning "curlies" back into straight quotation marks? It's weird as Hades: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/191827/… Mar 22, 2015 at 20:52
  • @DeerHunter I'll look into it. I'm pretty sure it's a global issue and doesn't have anything to do with the recent site updates. Mar 24, 2015 at 2:10
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    @KurtisBeavers It is a multi-site issue, but one that can't be solved globally. On sites with “human” content only, turning "stuff" into “stuff” is sensible. On sites like Unix & Linux with bits of programs meant for computers, "stuff" is not at all the same thing as “stuff”. Mar 24, 2015 at 9:00
  • @Gilles I understand, you should be able to use either dumb or smart quotes when you need them. This issue isn't related to the recent front end updates. I did a search through the meta bug reports but couldn't find anything on this. I'm going to pull someone else in to help out with this. There is time scheduled for bug fixes within the next week. Mar 24, 2015 at 13:42
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    We looked at the quotes on the last several hundred posts. While a few would be more correct without fancy quotes, the vast majority are correct and would be negatively impacted by such a change. Given that, we want to stick with the net-positive of replacing the quotes globally. Apr 6, 2015 at 15:31
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    @NickCraver You're reasoning as if the situation was symmetric, but it isn't, both because we don't get a choice and because one is a matter of aesthetics while the other is a matter of correctness. If a title would be improved by using typographic quotes, I can force them by using the appropriate characters. If a title is incorrect due to being displayed in typographic quotes, there's nothing I can do. Apr 6, 2015 at 21:43
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    @NickCraver - this decision (to stick to fancy quotes) does Unix and Linux (and, incidentally, Server Fault and SO) a great disservice. Tons and tons of noobs coming in from Google would be better off with working recipes. Apr 17, 2015 at 8:53
  • @NickCraver On Unix & Linux the technical (not aesthetic) aspect should matter the most. Aside from that I feel offended when any site, text editor or whatever "knows better" what I want to write. If I cannot even make it stop, this is rude and haughty. Aug 26, 2018 at 6:36
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Odd <a href> remnant above the banner on Meta:

Wayward clickable pixel

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  • Good catch. This will be fixed in the next build. Mar 17, 2015 at 22:41
  • Looks like this has been fixed. I don't see it, do you still see it Jason?
    – terdon Mod
    Mar 19, 2015 at 15:53
  • @terdon Yep, done :)
    – jasonwryan
    Mar 19, 2015 at 18:37
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Please add background-color: white or make your layout working with dark window backgrounds.

enter image description here

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The heading font is inconsistent with the rest of the page, and is harder to read for me.

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  • The heading font is the same font as it was before the site conversion. We can look into a new one. Mar 24, 2015 at 2:09
  • It used to be 18px, but now it's 16. It's now too small, at least on Firefox Linux with whichever font I'm actually getting (Liberation Serif?).
    – Mikel
    Mar 25, 2015 at 6:52
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The question titles in the side bar for Sections "Featured on Meta", "Hot Meta Posts", "Linked" and "Related" are harder to read than before. It is now using font-family: 'Liberation Serif', Georgia, Times, serif; and font-size: 12px;.

The "Hot Network Questions" doesn't seem to have changed and is more readable. It is using font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; and font-size: 12px;.

The sans-serif fonts seem more readable. In addition, the serif fonts used here feel smaller. As far as I know, distinct fonts don't necessarily have the same visual size when used with an equivalent point size, so the same presumably applies to px sizes. (In fact, after zooming in an "o" in the new serif font at 12px is 6-pixel tall, whereas it is 7-pixel tall with the sans-serif font.)

enter image description here

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  • Thanks @Bruno. This will be fixed in the next production server build. Mar 24, 2015 at 15:07
  • @KurtisBeavers Thank you.
    – Bruno
    Mar 25, 2015 at 19:26
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When editing favourite/ignored tags from the front page, the Add button is hidden because it protrudes beyond the right column (at least on FF ESR 31.5.3):

layout bug: add button not visible

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I'm seeing a dot pattern in the background. I don't like that. :(

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  • Downvote because you like the dots, or downvote because you're not seeing them?
    – Mikel
    Mar 24, 2015 at 2:01
  • There was a dot pattern in the background in the last version of the site. Mar 24, 2015 at 2:07
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The links below questions break alignment when there are pending edits and (or?) close votes:

enter image description here

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  • Thanks @terdon. This is a global bug that's been reported on meta.stackexchange.com. It should be resolved soon. Mar 24, 2015 at 15:08
  • @KurtisBeavers yes, I thought I'd seen it reported somewhere. Great work overall though, thanks!
    – terdon Mod
    Mar 24, 2015 at 15:09
  • This doesn't happen with just pending edits and close votes, you also need the mod link.
    – Anthon
    Apr 14, 2015 at 15:30
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A minor cosmetic CSS thing.

When zooming out – I usually have zoom set to something between 65% and 90% – for some zoom levels one get a scroll-bar in the main menu.

It almost looks as if there is some disabled extra menu thing.

Scrollbar in menubar

(Rightmost scroll-bar arrows)

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I'm not sure if this is new or not (which would indicate it is not that important either) but the Meta U&L logo in the side bar is blurry:

  • firefox 37.0

    blurry icon

  • It looks much better on chromium 31.0.1650.63. It's still a little blurry but not enough to really make it an issue:

    enter image description here

  • Same goes for opera 12.16

    enter image description here

All screenshots were taken from a system running 64bit Debian.

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  • Hmm. I can't reproduce this. Which browser and version are you using? Apr 13, 2015 at 18:15
  • @KurtisBeavers firefox 37.0 on 64bit Debian. It looks OK in chrome and opera, see updated answer.
    – terdon Mod
    Apr 13, 2015 at 18:28

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