I have been looking at the themes and I found something useful.
The themes has an optional welcome, <username> header with a search bar.
The themes also has the option of placing a search bar in the header.
Personally I think the welcome, <username> is of little use.
Removing it from the theme and placing the search bar in the header leaves more space to list topics.
What do you think?
Should we keep the welcome component or is it better without?
Without welcome
With welcome
I am thinking - perhaps we could have the welcome on the default Horizon Theme - which will be new users - then experienced users can change to a theme with a more condensed layout - without the welcome component.
For the default, would it be possible to eliminate the welcome text altogether and extend the search bar to the left ? I think a large default search bar is quite useful. Its also quite good that the search bar switches location as the user scrolls down.
I only forced myself to use material design because of this welcome stupidity in horizon. Looking at the poll, it’s obvious i am not the only one.
Not everyone is using 4k 32 inch monitor…
Which is why I created the poll - and removed the welcome component.
I wanted to make sure - I wasn’t making a bad decision.
Agreed 100%. That ginormous “Welcome, $USER” takes up way too much screen real estate that could be better spent on topic titles.
The default landing page for anonymous access - without the welcome banner
Note the ever present search bar
If an anonymous user reads a topic - the search bar will be replaced with the topic title - and the - search becomes a 
instead - placed at the upper right corner.
If it is not removed I would think about changing my username to Kotter
But I voted to remove it because it can sometimes seem to me to be insincere, and we have banners for new and returning users suggesting we welcome them to the forum.
And it does take up a lot of space “above the fold” - anyone using the new forum themes might see only 2 or 3 of the Latest topics
I would say Horizons is a good theme.
Been using it for a week now, and I’d say its a pretty nice one for new comers.
The default is indeed too boring and bland for my taste…
Saying that I have a colorful taste.
Only one small issue i noted is the manjaro Title after the logo in header is kind of weird, like a low res image… I personally dont care, but if its something to set default, you may wanna double check that test on phones and stuff.
Scratch that… Its more like a higher res image that is scaled down too much.
I just zoomed in and it was more sharper.
So its like scaled down slightly by horizons theme I think on my tablet.
On desktop it looks slightly better, but not perfect.
Mod edit: Consecutive posts merged. 
