Site styling
admin
Starting to bring back some of the essential site styling, into the new Theme system.
So far:
- Greentooth added back to the + button.
- Author name not all uppercase.
- Emoji tinted green again, and not so large.
More to come. LMK what's top priority for you, and I'll try to get it in.
<3
Replies
My sig is busted? Nope, it's fixed. I can't delete this post?
studio2a3d7:31 pm
My sig is busted? Nope, it's fixed. I can't delete this post?
People have never been able to delete posts.
But we will honor requests, either with Flag:Report, or via email to helpdesk@polycount.com
Features I thought made Polycount awesome:
Editing your post would note the post was edited and how many times. This made discussions cleaner. I took more time proof-reading my post before publishing because I didn't want a "Edited" footnote tacked onto my post.
User avatars and titles were requested and processed. New users didn't get them until they've been around a while and were active on the forum. This made them feel special.
Cleaning up buggy site behvaior and visually distracting embeds will make it even easier to be proud of being a member.
Thanks Cory. I liked those too, back in the day. See what I can do.
I did figure out how to get the rank titles to be colored again, and emoji are now properly green, both in the preview and the post. 😛
I did notice somethings shifting around a bit, and I think I speak for all of the quiet lurkers we appreciate it. So long as you're enjoying yourself and aren't going too far out of your way or create unfun chores for yourself, I think you do more than enough for the community as it is. 😘
Is there a "mark all forums read" button ?
Or was there even one before the change ?
I now have all messages/threads unread and can't find a way to change that …
I don't see any options to mark all as read. But I can ask around.
Did a bit of adjustments on reply headers/footers, cuz it was bugging me. Still a lot that bugs me, so got my work cut out I guess!
Options for themes? i.e. select what we like? jut wondering.
They don’t have a theme selector, it’s just a global setting.
But there are browser extensions for overriding the site CSS, so you can strip all existing styling, make your own theme, etc.
I even shared a couple of the past April Fools themes, not sure if they still work… https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2679860/#Comment_2679860
BTW, this has been working for a few years, see here:
IDK if this is the right place to post feedback, but I feel like the "new" tag on the left side of each thread creates a lot of visual noise IMHO. I open up a topic and I'm bombarded in bold letters with new, new, new, new…
An easy wish to grant…
Anyone else have issues with viewing the notifications drop down on mobile? I end up having to go to my profile and then click notifications.
Works for me, iPhone/Chrome. It's heavily cutoff on the left though, I can't read most of the subject line.
would it be possible to have the icon of the first poster on the left and scaled like anyone else who follows up? atm we end up with a huge empty space on the right just because of that
…
Aaaaalright - I wasn't sure if now was a good time to suggest layout edits ; but if it is, then I'd say that the vertical spacing/padding between threads would need to be reverted to what it was before.
(I personally don't buy the argument that the availability of higher res screens means that web layouts need to be scaled up accordingly : in practice it's nowhere as simple as that since not everybody necessarily has they browser maximized for instance).
In the past, users were able to post a request in a subform after a given number months. It wasn't automatic, a moderator would process the request. One day, you'd get a new title, title font color, and avatar and it felt really good.
That's a default Vanilla thing. I'll see what I can do.
In general I'm trying to keep the CSS overrides as simple as possible, since Vanilla has a habit of renamingthe underlying IDs which breaks our custom styling.
Same with the spacing between threads in the category page.
🤞
Hi there Eric,
Perhaps a valid way for people to suggest edits would be to do so by referencing other existing boards using the same system ? This could lead to some unexpected solutions, with the guarantee that implementation is possible.
Sure, go for it!
Absolutely. You mentionned that it is using Vanilla - are there more details one needs to know ? Limitations, version, and so on.
For what its worth, for those interested :
https://vanilla.higherlogic.com/customer-showcase/
Some quick changes. Before/after:
The OP icon thing is a bit more involved.
Do you folks want the site to be wider in general? Right now the readable part of threads is constrained to somewhere around 934 pixels maximum. It;s dynamic though, it changes if you resize your window down smaller. At around 750 pixels the side gutters are eliminated entirely, so the thread is the full width of the window. This kind of CSS styling is a bit beyond my skills, sad to say.
I've also enabled "All Viewed" which should allow you to mark all unread posts in a section as read. However I can't find the button for this, that's now supposed to be visible?
I wouldn't want it to be much wider, honestly. This works for me, but I'd be okay with something a little wider if there were requests for it
Can the grey links in the main navigation be bumped up?
Edit: Basically any text that's #555 would be easier to read if it were something like #999.
My vote for a wider view. I can only get the site to look right on my laptop (15 inch screen). On a desktop with a proper resolution and a widescreen monitor it's too densely packed in the (sub-)forum view and too narrow looking overall.
Another thing: is it not possible with this forum software at all to edit quoted text? So as to only quote an excerpt of a post, not the whole thing in a box that only displays a few lines in its default state.
Grey category descriptions are now brighter in forum home.
To quote just a sentence or two you can copy/paste it and use the backwards-P control on the left to make it a quote.
But we could get a lot fancier and try the other Editor modes!
The current one is Rich2, this is what Vanilla recommends since the older modes won't be getting bug fixes. But that doesn't mean we can't use 'em if we really want to. We could enable one for a day, Wysiwyg for example, just to give it a little shakedown.
Thoughts?
At the moment doesn't seem I can edit my posts, upon clicking Edit?
so double posted instead too complete my thought 👍️
i only use a 1280px wide browser on my ultrawide monitors. so i dont care but having it centered will absolutely feel more natural to me. here i an example of my screen. not that its representative. but also on a dual screen layout i'd rather have it centered than squeezed into a corner.
Hey, I tested this out and it seems to work for non-admin users. Can you double-check this?
Works here. One important note… you cannot create an empty post, there must be at least a word there.
Thanks Steffen I'll take a look at increasing the width, centering, and moving the OP avatar.
Cheers, should've elaborated a bit more :/
I'd inadvertently hit 'post reply' then tried adding text my to original message by then clicking the gear → Edit but no joy hence that screenshot…hmm thinking on it now maybe it's OS related throwing these glitches my-end, coz I'm using a 12yo muck around gurgleing purposes PC which still runs WIN7 Home OEM?!
Anyway, allgood the OP seemed to've resolved their issue perusing the links I shared - so from now on I'll just stick with posting stuff up using my smart phone, that thus far is without a drama :)
Is it possible to get text size to be consistent between viewing and editing modes for posts? I went to update the "Upgrading or building a new PC" sticky and the text is much larger in edit mode making each line word wrap when it shouldn't need to.
I'll take a look. Gotta say, I'm not a fan of the current text editor. Latest is not always greatest!
This gives us better, more familiar controls:
There are still some problems:
This update seems to have broken unpublished posts? There was a sketchbook one I was slowly working on since April 10th. It's only been saved to draft on the forum and now it can't be seen, edited or saved. Shows up in drafts tab but the reply field just shows a wait symbol when mousing over it. Post button looks like it might work but don't want to bump the thread before finishing the write-up.
Is the new text box kinda buggy for anyone else? I get a loading cursor icon and can't type into it.
edit: All in all, just making this post felt unfortunately kind of messy. Constant edits, scrolling up/down, wondering why things are not working as expected, ... it takes away the joy of making posts and interacting more.
re 1: There are other options in the gear icon for moderators. I hear you though, it's an annoyance. Unfortunately I can't edit this widget though.
re 2: You're hosting these GIFs yourself but you're serving from http instead of https. I asked Vanilla to allow http-served images, but they declined saying it's a security risk. Crazy, I know. I fixed this for my own site by installing a free SSL Cert in my webhost control page, so maybe that's available for you? You would still need to edit posts to replace your image URLs with https: though. As an alternative, you could just drag-n-drop the images right into your posts, then Polycount is hosting them (for free!).
re 3: Yeah unfortunate. Instead of using their crappy interface to edit an existing link... you could right-click on a link and open it in a new page, or right-click to copy the URL. You can get more control over editing if you use the </> html edit mode, if you're comfortable editing in HTML.
re 4: There is a button at top right of the editing interface "Toggle Full Page"
I wish this was better, but Vanilla Forums has said they are not fixing bugs in this old Wysiwyg editor (this one). They want everyone to move to their new Rich2 editor. We tried that, and the bugs in Rich2 are much worse! Formatting is a lot more limited. Left-aligned images bleed over the footer, no Sketchfab embed, no text colors, lots of stuff is messed up there.
We can switch back though, if this change is too horrendous. Happy to make whatever changes I can.