Right on, tackled the front page... Actually I really like that version of the AB logo. I just fixed the vertical bars of the second 'O' to unquad it. Hope this helps!
(the first green bar might need to be higher to have the same black space on top of the CP links and at the bottom... )
I don't like the green bars much, it's all so flat. But! I will play with that when I can. The reason being one of the things we wanted to do was to bring this Polycount forward.. keep it up with the times, not take a step back. I understand the need for uniqueness that everyone wants so that we don't look like "everyone other CG forum". So with that, I'll take the colours and ideas you're presenting and see what can be done.
About the flatness... I believe that an art forum doesn't have to be fancy on its own - it's a mere canvas to display art into. The more bevels, shiny effects and line separators we put in, the more distracting it is for the art displayed inbetween... in my opinion :P ConceptArt.org went a bit in the 'material' direction but kept it simple and in cohesion with the sites content. To me a superflat design like the one I tried to mockup here has a bit of an underground artsy-techy flavor... the very taste of Polycount!
Plus ... material effects ala aero/glass/bevels are always very nice - but get old very fast I think. Personnaly the only OS effect I like is when windows cast a tiiiiny bit of shadows, to separate things a bit ! (Not saying that the board redesign needs that anyways)
Oh yes yes, I agree on the mac-shine everyone is pointing out. I guess my thought is that flat colours were what was used in the mid 90's, I'd like some flare. Conceptart.org is a good example of interesting ways to mix it up w/out going with mac-shine.
I like Piors experiments apart from the very green bars. I like the darker slightly 3d satin effect on the current divider bars.
Having a quick look at the source, it's VERY table based with a lot of shared CSS, so some of Piors changes don't look possible - like moving the login box up to beside the logo.
EDIT: ah, you can edit the underlying HTML too. Should be a doddle then.
One last thing (not a bug but a feature I'd like):
*It would be nice if a wide post (someone posts a huge image) didn't fuck up the width of all other posts around it. I has to be the most annoying thing in the world to scroll over all the time to read.
Not sure if this was mentioned before, but when changing the text size in Firefox, the upper menu goes vertical instead of horizontal. Crlt + or - to check it out.
yeah it's a weird bug, i can't see anything wrong with the css but i'm a little rusty, no pun intended, except maybe forming the box with the actual <a> tag. i always used divs personally for the block (i'm anti-table) but it still shouldn't mess it up. either that or the fact that the dimensions are defined 3 different times... i dunno, i'm temporarily retired from web-design from dealing with stupid people who make me do stupid things for my money lol.
Is there any possibility that we can individually tone down the greater than a thousand suns bright contrasty text? Cause I`m suffering a bit of retina burn here too.
i thought of a suggestion i think might be useful,
if it's possible, add links for the 'nav tree' at the bottom of the thread as well as the top. maybe just duplicating the top bar without or even with really the user info. i've never messed with vbulletin much but if it uses templates like phpbb it shouldn't be too hard i think.
then again maybe i'm just lazy and noone else would use it lol. i know ya'll got a lot on the plate atm to fiddle with piddly stuff just thought i'd throw it out there for futer thoughts. and thanks again to everyone who keeps this place up and running.
Knowing that you're probably furiously and indefatigably working away on all the minor issues, and that most things have been covered , all I'd like to say is congratulations on moving everything over from ubb to Vb , and props for all the work that must have taken!
I appreciate how much effort you guys must've put in, having gone through a similar process over @ UnrealPlayground.com, and had just as many helpful replies of "want the old one back" or "it sucks" as gratitude lol.
We had so much bitching I ended up spending several hours having to remake to old skin to appease people, despite having already spent 20-25 on all the gfx for the new one.
That caused plenty of headaches and hair-tearing with gfx like all the brand-new scratch-made emotions all being designed for a white matte, and the old skin being black...
yea... do we have a uhh homepage for ourselves like the previous design. where we can fall back to and look at our favorite thread posts, and look up our private messages?
I'm with snemmy. 10 char minimum limit sucks. For quick responses in posts where questions are asked, you can just say "agreed" or the like - you have to bamble on like a nitwit just to make the minimum post count.
CiscoJavier (cool name btw): UserCP is what you want. More options than before, but everything you want is in there. And, your messages can be accessed from any page if you look at the top right of the forum where it will say, "Welcome, CiscoJavier".
We actually had software to do that exact thing on the dev server when we were setting this up.
Does the -entire- forum grow in width or just that single post? It should be the entire thing. I will probably have that installed over the weekend.
Yeah, I'd prefer it if only the one post was widened, and all the others fit the window like usual. It's annoying to have someone post a single wide-ass image and then be forced to scrub left-right for every post to be able to read it. That would rock :poly106:
Installed some image resizing software for the thin theme we're using, however its effecting all themes and not just the one. I'll work on fixing this for tonight but if I cannot make it work I will disable it for Sunday morning.
Hmm, would it be possible to make the default link colour into the colour it currently goes when you roll over a link?
With the dotted underline, it's really easy to miss a link embedded in a post unless you happen to be mousing over it. Making the link green and underlined would certainly help avoid that.
Also when you use the "Advanced" post editor, links are displayed as dark blue in the body text while you're typing, which makes it really hard to see what the link is, since it's against a dark grey background.
Just to reiterate about the much needed vertical compression - I noticed (and mockuped) earlier that there is a lot to be trimmed out, but I just checked the boards on a 1024*769 screen today and it's quite heavy to read - can only see 2 posts at once in a thread. In comparison the 'topic review' condensed layout is much more efficient (but it has the problem of gray text over gray background tho)! So I thought I could mention that.
Also, I don't see the point of the reply text being lime green, and agree about the need for clearer links.
Lastly it would be nice to be able to let some colors be user-defined just like Fire suggested. Text and links, but also surfaces, outlines and such. And maybe making these available as themes for everybody to chose from?
When sending a forum link to a friend, the "what are you working on" page 17 (heres the link: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=51687&page=17), he got something entirely different. It linked him to page 8 or something, and it showed the thread as having 27 pages, not 17. When he clicked "last page" it then sent him to page "27", which was actually page 17.
When sending a forum link to a friend, the "what are you working on" page 17 (heres the link: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=51687&page=17), he got something entirely different. It linked him to page 8 or something, and it showed the thread as having 27 pages, not 17. When he clicked "last page" it then sent him to page "27", which was actually page 17.
That is probably because of the default posts-per-page. Which is something that'll be different for everyone. I think the default is 25.
Your best bet is to copy the link from the post # (top right of each reply) and link him directly.
Replies
well, mine used to be 'challenge 35 winner'
:poly142: :poly142: :poly142: :poly142: :poly142: :poly142:
(the first green bar might need to be higher to have the same black space on top of the CP links and at the bottom... )
Thanks pior, mucho helpful here!
About the flatness... I believe that an art forum doesn't have to be fancy on its own - it's a mere canvas to display art into. The more bevels, shiny effects and line separators we put in, the more distracting it is for the art displayed inbetween... in my opinion :P ConceptArt.org went a bit in the 'material' direction but kept it simple and in cohesion with the sites content. To me a superflat design like the one I tried to mockup here has a bit of an underground artsy-techy flavor... the very taste of Polycount!
Plus ... material effects ala aero/glass/bevels are always very nice - but get old very fast I think. Personnaly the only OS effect I like is when windows cast a tiiiiny bit of shadows, to separate things a bit ! (Not saying that the board redesign needs that anyways)
btw, are you online on MSN?
i still think we could add a touch of the other colours somewhere
Having a quick look at the source, it's VERY table based with a lot of shared CSS, so some of Piors changes don't look possible - like moving the login box up to beside the logo.
EDIT: ah, you can edit the underlying HTML too. Should be a doddle then.
*It would be nice if a wide post (someone posts a huge image) didn't fuck up the width of all other posts around it. I has to be the most annoying thing in the world to scroll over all the time to read.
Does the -entire- forum grow in width or just that single post? It should be the entire thing. I will probably have that installed over the weekend.
if it's possible, add links for the 'nav tree' at the bottom of the thread as well as the top. maybe just duplicating the top bar without or even with really the user info. i've never messed with vbulletin much but if it uses templates like phpbb it shouldn't be too hard i think.
then again maybe i'm just lazy and noone else would use it lol. i know ya'll got a lot on the plate atm to fiddle with piddly stuff just thought i'd throw it out there for futer thoughts. and thanks again to everyone who keeps this place up and running.
And we have to wait 30 seconds between posts?
snemmy, yes. Right now anyway...
I appreciate how much effort you guys must've put in, having gone through a similar process over @ UnrealPlayground.com, and had just as many helpful replies of "want the old one back" or "it sucks" as gratitude lol.
We had so much bitching I ended up spending several hours having to remake to old skin to appease people, despite having already spent 20-25 on all the gfx for the new one.
That caused plenty of headaches and hair-tearing with gfx like all the brand-new scratch-made emotions all being designed for a white matte, and the old skin being black...
So - any plans to introduce the old Blue too?
electric vagina
Yeah, I'd prefer it if only the one post was widened, and all the others fit the window like usual. It's annoying to have someone post a single wide-ass image and then be forced to scrub left-right for every post to be able to read it. That would rock :poly106:
Oh yeah, polycount smiles rock too!
With the dotted underline, it's really easy to miss a link embedded in a post unless you happen to be mousing over it. Making the link green and underlined would certainly help avoid that.
Also when you use the "Advanced" post editor, links are displayed as dark blue in the body text while you're typing, which makes it really hard to see what the link is, since it's against a dark grey background.
When you quote someone it will ignore quotes made in the post you are quoting.
Just to reiterate about the much needed vertical compression - I noticed (and mockuped) earlier that there is a lot to be trimmed out, but I just checked the boards on a 1024*769 screen today and it's quite heavy to read - can only see 2 posts at once in a thread. In comparison the 'topic review' condensed layout is much more efficient (but it has the problem of gray text over gray background tho)! So I thought I could mention that.
Also, I don't see the point of the reply text being lime green, and agree about the need for clearer links.
Lastly it would be nice to be able to let some colors be user-defined just like Fire suggested. Text and links, but also surfaces, outlines and such. And maybe making these available as themes for everybody to chose from?
Good luck with all this!
tschapfuuuj
thankyou!!!
.........
starting to look like home
Exactly! I didn't even notice, it just felt better and right! Ahhhh it's almost like home again.
Good job on the avatars too.
-caseyjones
haha! nice
wtb shorter post requirements...
That is probably because of the default posts-per-page. Which is something that'll be different for everyone. I think the default is 25.
Your best bet is to copy the link from the post # (top right of each reply) and link him directly.