New forum style

[jsmorley]

That's just about right IMHO. The important stuff stands out and we lose all the glare. Now getting on to really pin-ick-ity stuff, I think the post time and date get lost down in the bottom left. How about putting that up in the top right where you see it when you start reading the post and the 'QUOTE' 'EDIT' buttons (which are now a good size) down in the bottom right which is where you need them when you've done reading the post and want to reply / edit?

That would require just too much tearing up of this style, and I think the position of things is just something you get used to. I like this style, but I too am struggling a bit with the muscle memory built up over two years or so of using Rainbow Pearl. Let's give it some time to see if it grows on us.

[Mordasius]

That would require just too much tearing up of this style, and I think the position of things is just something you get used to. I like this style, but I too am struggling a bit with the muscle memory built up over two years or so of using Rainbow Pearl. Let's give it some time to see if it grows on us.

Le entiendo and I'm already warming to this style.. pero.. I'd still like to see a little cluster of QUOTE / REPLY / EDIT / REPORT buttons down in the bottom right. That said, thanks for giving us a new way of viewing posts on the forum.

[Kaelri]

That would require just too much tearing up of this style, and I think the position of things is just something you get used to. I like this style, but I too am struggling a bit with the muscle memory built up over two years or so of using Rainbow Pearl. Let's give it some time to see if it grows on us.

This is what I was talking about with regard to the "strange conventions" of phpBB. In my opinion, many of the layout and positioning choices make absolutely no sense and are just awful for usability. But this template has existed for at least 10 years now, and people have grown used to it, for better or for worse. I believe it can be altered, but I'm not familiar enough with phpBB to know how deep we would have to go; it might make updating the software prohibitively complex, in which case it would probably not be worth the effort.

[poiru]

This is what I was talking about with regard to the "strange conventions" of phpBB. In my opinion, many of the layout and positioning choices make absolutely no sense and are just awful for usability. But this template has existed for at least 10 years now, and people have grown used to it, for better or for worse.

I think prosilver SE is just about perfect in terms of usability:


Could always be better, but the layout is more intuitive compared to Rainbow Pearl and Serenity, at least. I might mess around with it on my site when I get some time. I think it might look pretty nice with colors adjusted to match our main site and perhaps a clearer icon set.

I believe it can be altered, but I'm not familiar enough with phpBB to know how deep we would have to go; it might make updating the software prohibitively complex, in which case it would probably not be worth the effort.

Yeah, that's perhaps the biggest fear with digging too deep.

[jsmorley]

Generally speaking, the "styles" are well isolated from the core functionality of phpBB, and altering a style won't effect upgrading the version of phpBB. This is not binary of course, as there can be changes to the core code that is then either left out in the older style that does not support it, or in rare occasions can cause a style to malfunction. But for the most part, as long as you only change the stylesheet.css, various template html files and images of a style, you are pretty safe.

As soon as you start messing with the php of the core code, you are putting any future upgrade at serious risk and I would resist such. The only thing I currently have changed in the core code is to add a couple of snippets to allow support for the highslide / lightbox mod that displays big images as thumbnails and lets you zoom in and out of them.

Having said that, making fundamental changes to a style is not for the faint of heart. Everything is pretty well all intertwined and done with embedded php in the html templates that then call functions in the core code, and its not trivial to follow all the breadcrumbs and not have a change cause unintended ickiness somewhere else.

Feel free to grab down the \Serenity folder and play with it if you want Kaelri. The easiest way to do it is to turn on IIS on your PC so you have a web server, then install phpBB and the style and whack away at it. Probably want to create two accounts to test. One admin who sees everything, and one regular user who can see some things and not others. Then connect as "guest" to see the minimum for an unregistered user.

[jsmorley]

Moved the date of the post up and right and the Edit and Quote buttons to the bottom right.

[smurfier]

Ok, now I love the new style beyond all reason. I just got a private message and there was a huge box at the top making sure I didn't miss it.

[jsmorley]

Ok, now I love the new style beyond all reason. I just got a private message and there was a huge box at the top making sure I didn't miss it.

Yeah, it doesn't want you to miss a PM...

[Mordasius]

Moved the date of the post up and right and the Edit and Quote buttons to the bottom right.

This style is looking really good even if the Report button is a little fuzzy. Can't think why I stayed with that wide black Rainbow_Pearl_Gold thing so long!

[jsmorley]

This style is looking really good even if the Report button is a little fuzzy. Can't think why I stayed with that wide black Rainbow_Pearl_Gold thing so long!

The report button looks ok to me. Try hitting Shift-F5 to make sure you get a fresh version of everything.