New forum style!

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Re: New forum style!

Post by KALSTER »

Makes sense. ;)
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Prime »

Opera, middle click is win.
Last edited by Prime on 11 Apr 2011, 21:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by KatrynKat »

you don't have middle click on a laptop.....
that's where CTRL and left click comes in.....
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Re: New forum style!

Post by RuadRauFlessa »

Damn guess I should bring with a decent mouse for you KK... can't have you playing WoW on a touch pad...
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Ron2K »

Just a note on the primary reason why the style was updated, and what my plans are for the previous style:

phpBB 3.0 comes, by default with two styles: prosilver (which was the new default style) and subsilver2 (a remix of the default subsilver style of phpBB 2). In around November last year, the phpBB development team decided to drop subsilver2 for the forthcoming 3.1 version of phpBB. This would have made it nearly impossible for me to maintain the previous style (which is subsilver2 based), as updating the styles between phpBB revisions is a rather laborious manual process (which involves me having to inspect what the code changes were between versions and then manually merge them in). Obviously, for the subsilver2-based previous style, it looked like I was therefore going to be unable to maintain it, and so during my December break, I began work on a new prosilver-based style, the result of which you now see.

The secondary reason was that I felt that there was a lack of continuity between the look and feel of the main site and the forums. The header was the same (apart from fixed vs fluid width), but that's pretty much where the similarities ended. This is no big deal for most forum members (most of you probably don't go to the main site anyway), but for casual browsers and first-time users, this is a significant issue that would make an impression of their thoughts of PCF online (and I personally feel that we could be attracting more new users - I have been making other changes to try to allow this to happen). When I did work on the new style then, I deliberately tried to keep it as close to the main site style as possible (which is the reason why we're now fixed width). I definitely feel that I've got that right. ;)

As for the old style: the decision to drop subsilver2 entirely seems to have been partially reversed - it will not be distributed by default, but it will still be maintained. This does make it possible for me to continue to maintain the style; the question then becomes whether this is worth doing. Presently, only 5 users have gone back to the old style, and my opinion is that it's not really worth continuing to maintain something that only a handful of people are actually using (remember that updating styles takes a lot of my time whenever phpBB patches are released). At present, I plan on maintaining the old style for as long as we're running phpBB 3.0 - but may likely drop it entirely when we hit 3.1. I have not made any final decision on this, and will only decide closer to the time (although I will give advanced warning if/when I do decide to drop it).

Hopefully this clears a few things up. ;)
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Re: New forum style!

Post by rustypup »

Ron2K wrote:styles: prosilver
good grief... there are some fine examples of hideous in there :shock:

for the record, my only gripe is not being able to hide posts until the old style is put out to pasture....

<troll defeated>..... :lol:

the rest i'm fine with...
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Ron2K »

rustypup wrote:for the record, my only gripe is not being able to hide posts until the old style is put out to pasture....

<troll defeated>..... :lol:
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Re: New forum style!

Post by RuadRauFlessa »

And another win for iRon2000
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Re: New forum style!

Post by KatrynKat »

//
RuadRauFlessa wrote:Damn guess I should bring with a decent mouse for you KK... can't have you playing WoW on a touch pad...
i got a mouse.... from my PC but only use it on the laptop when working with complex stuff and lots of data.....
but for games i prefer using a keyboard.....


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Re: New forum style!

Post by RuadRauFlessa »

Well you will be using a combination of the two if you start playing decent games :P
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Re: New forum style!

Post by KillerByte »

have to say Ron, the new look is great. Its grown on me. Thanks for the hard work man.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Sojourn »

Ron2K wrote:Just a note on the primary reason why the style was updated, and what my plans are for the previous style:

phpBB 3.0 comes, by default with two styles: prosilver (which was the new default style) and subsilver2 (a remix of the default subsilver style of phpBB 2). In around November last year, the phpBB development team decided to drop subsilver2 for the forthcoming 3.1 version of phpBB. This would have made it nearly impossible for me to maintain the previous style (which is subsilver2 based), as updating the styles between phpBB revisions is a rather laborious manual process (which involves me having to inspect what the code changes were between versions and then manually merge them in). Obviously, for the subsilver2-based previous style, it looked like I was therefore going to be unable to maintain it, and so during my December break, I began work on a new prosilver-based style, the result of which you now see.

The secondary reason was that I felt that there was a lack of continuity between the look and feel of the main site and the forums. The header was the same (apart from fixed vs fluid width), but that's pretty much where the similarities ended. This is no big deal for most forum members (most of you probably don't go to the main site anyway), but for casual browsers and first-time users, this is a significant issue that would make an impression of their thoughts of PCF online (and I personally feel that we could be attracting more new users - I have been making other changes to try to allow this to happen). When I did work on the new style then, I deliberately tried to keep it as close to the main site style as possible (which is the reason why we're now fixed width). I definitely feel that I've got that right. ;)

As for the old style: the decision to drop subsilver2 entirely seems to have been partially reversed - it will not be distributed by default, but it will still be maintained. This does make it possible for me to continue to maintain the style; the question then becomes whether this is worth doing. Presently, only 5 users have gone back to the old style, and my opinion is that it's not really worth continuing to maintain something that only a handful of people are actually using (remember that updating styles takes a lot of my time whenever phpBB patches are released). At present, I plan on maintaining the old style for as long as we're running phpBB 3.0 - but may likely drop it entirely when we hit 3.1. I have not made any final decision on this, and will only decide closer to the time (although I will give advanced warning if/when I do decide to drop it).

Hopefully this clears a few things up. ;)
Tnx.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Stuart »

Ron2K wrote:The secondary reason was that I felt that there was a lack of continuity between the look and feel of the main site and the forums.
Now suggest to dawid22 that he make the background on the main site fixed too. ;)
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Siemens »

What does the "Delete Board Cookies" button do? I like cookies :(
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Re: New forum style!

Post by RuadRauFlessa »

It means all your browser history will be wiped clean for the site.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by SykomantiS »

I've noticed that the new style tends to get broken when an image is even moderately sized. Have a look at the pic of the day or comic threads to see what I'm talking about.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by rustypup »

i see nothing... which browser?
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Re: New forum style!

Post by SykomantiS »

Firefox 4

EDIT: scratch that, it seems fine now :scratch:

EDIT2: actually, no http://forums.pcformat.co.za/viewtopic. ... 2#p1471172
It cut's half the last frame.
Last edited by SykomantiS on 13 Apr 2011, 14:33, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by rustypup »

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Re: New forum style!

Post by Stuart »

SykomantiS wrote:Firefox 4

EDIT: scratch that, it seems fine now :scratch:

EDIT2: actually, no http://forums.pcformat.co.za/viewtopic. ... 2#p1471172
It cut's half the last frame.
Perhaps people will start resizing their images now. ;)
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Re: New forum style!

Post by SykomantiS »

Yes, there is always that... :?
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Re: New forum style!

Post by doo_much »

Regs click, view image.

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Re: New forum style!

Post by GDI_Lord »

I really like the new colurs of the posts as they are really easy to read, thanks!

As for the width of the posts, having a relatively narrow column makes reading easier (google for the research that supports this, the exact references escape me right now) so I enjoy that, however, images get cut off if they are wider than the displayed width.

I'm trying and trying and trying to like the avatars on the right hand side, but similar to other forums that tried this, I just don't like it. I actually didn't register on two forums because reading posts were just too much of a mission as I had to schlep to I would like to know who is communicating with me before getting into the message. Ron, I'm really asking you very, very nicely to please put some serious consideration into having the avatars on the left hand side of the posts, either as an option with this theme or a new theme that is as readable as this one.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Siemens »

Stuart wrote:
SykomantiS wrote:Firefox 4

EDIT: scratch that, it seems fine now :scratch:

EDIT2: actually, no http://forums.pcformat.co.za/viewtopic. ... 2#p1471172
It cut's half the last frame.
Perhaps people will start resizing their images now. ;)
With the crazy sig sizes, each page alone should be a 56k warning and wanting us to resize the pics would thus make you all hypocrites.
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Re: New forum style!

Post by Tribble »

Just look next to the page icon at the top of the post. It says who wrote it.
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