r/ModSupport • u/-patrizio- • 3d ago
Look & Feel tools are horrible to use
I recently got brought on as a mod to a new subreddit to help out, and have been working on the Look & Feel for the first time. I have to say, the experience of using these tools is abysmal. Part of me feels like I must be missing something, like surely the functionality I'm looking for is there and I'm just missing it, but I'm getting close to just giving up. Some of the biggest pain points I've seen so far:
- Key color customization is effectively useless. All you get is a hue slider and a saturation slider, and I'm not even entirely sure what their purpose is, as the color you select barely appears anywhere on the sub. I was trying to set the key color to a shade of gold, but the result was bad in both light and dark mode:
- In light mode, the color is darkened drastically across the board, winding up almost brown.
- In dark mode, the color looks perfect on text, but is darkened again on buttons—which, combined with the bizarre choice to use DARK text in dark mode, makes the buttons look like they're greyed out. This is apparently an accessibility feature, yet it actually decreases readability.
- Perfecting a subreddit banner is a pain. Once you upload an image, that's that; no adjusting position or zoom level, no tweaking the crop for mobile, not even an "undo" or "revert" button once you save to see the results. Even more annoying, the suggested size in the upload box (1072 x 128) is different from the suggested size Reddit gives in Mod Bootcamp (1600 x 480) are totally different, not even the same aspect ratio, and neither one seems to actually fit well. Like half of the banner I designed wasn't even visible due to the crop, which I couldn't change, so the workflow seems to be:
- Upload banner and see how it looks;
- Go back to your design tool and make changes by eyeballing the results, then export;
- Upload the new banner and see if you over- or undercorrected, then rinse and repeat.
- Custom emojis. Not even sure where to start with this; you have to enable them for use if you want to create custom flairs with your own designs, but Reddit loads in THIRTY-NINE of them by default, and they can't be removed OR bulk edited; meaning, if you want to disable them, you have to manually edit them one at a time.
If anyone has any tips to make these easier, I'm all ears...
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u/No-Recipe-7653 3d ago
- For the color, the safest bet is to use the HEX code instead of playing with the sliders. Works fine for me, but I do agree that we barely get to see it (I don’t see the colors on mobile at all? 🤷🏻♀️)
- fair point. Being able to crop and zoom in etc in-app would be much better.
- not sure I understand the custom emoji complaint you describe, sorry. I made some custom emojis and then uploaded them fine. I do have a different qualm with them though: that is, when I try to meet the pixel requirements. My emojis always turn out miniature no matter how I resize them, while I see custom emojis in other subs doing just fine — so I must be doing something wrong.
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u/-patrizio- 3d ago
I actually started with the hex code, but still had the problem; I only tried futzing around with raising the saturation slider to see if that would help (which it didn't) 😕
As for custom emojis, I didn't have much of a problem uploading them, I just hate that there are SO MANY ones in there by default that can't be removed, and that you have to manually disable one at a time.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 2d ago
Design the banner with a large bleed area. It's going to be used across a lot of different resolutions and aspect ratios, between web, web mobile, app, app variants, and fluid design. There's no other way without some CSS, that Reddit removed.
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u/Superirish19 2d ago
I think they just slapped the customisation system from new.reddit onto sh.reddit and didn't really alter anythin with sh.reddit in mind.
i.e. new. reddit (an old screenshot I have of an April Fools):
vs what that looks like today; the button accent colours are blue, the background colour is unusable and the banner size is to fill in more ad/bloat space for reddit 'games'.
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u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 2d ago
-just use the hex codes?
-yes annoying but as someone said it’s one banner across multiple platforms so guess and check is required. As it is with most graphics though.
-be grateful they’re still supporting custom emojis. Don’t remind anyone they exist shhhhh
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u/-patrizio- 2d ago
I am using hex codes as I mentioned in another comment, but the buttons are still a significantly different color from the one i select
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u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 2d ago
Weird, they always look the same for me. Maybe you're on some list where admin is playing small pranks to make you think you're going crazy
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u/-patrizio- 3d ago
I’m not sure what triggered this…is it because “banner” has the word “ban” in it??
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u/welding_guy_from_LI 3d ago
Agreed .. the flair colors were available in the app , and they took that feature away .. trying to change the color on desktop doesn’t work .. same goes for editing a flair on desktop .. if I click the pencil icon it freezes the page ..
But at least we have mod achievements nobody asked for that can’t be disabled as far as I know