Themes/Skins

[Valka]

Okay. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not finished yet, but I've done a lot to Halloween, including fixing the spelling and making the breadcrumbs usable.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Geo]

More stars.

[Buster's Uncle]

Beg pardon?

[Buster's Uncle]

I wish there was a way to edit pages in a proper page editor program and paste the relevant code back in.  That would solve the heck outta a lot of layout problems...

[Buster's Uncle]

?

I'm pretty happy about this one - I'm always trying to minimize wasted space at the top w/o unduly hurting functionality or aesthetic appeal.  That's pretty tight -took long enough to fiddle it that way- but tight.

[Valka]

Ostara looks fixed. 

And Halloween looks good, too - it's a relief to be able to get where I want to go. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm learning a lot as I go, and will end up having to cycle through the others to tweak more when I'm done.  -This includes the default theme, Curve.

These are finally to my satisfaction until such time as I figure out where to fiddle with padding to get rid of most of the spacing between threads at the subforum level.  You may need to refresh to see the changes from the last versions, for the 'thumbs' below and the themes themselves.





-That latter saw me, just today, finally kill my white whale (besides the eternal battle against wasted page-top space).  The big gap in the root between the index and the right sidebar.


I guess trying to do something less Pokémon with Pokémon is next...  Wait; I'm taking a run at the top of Curve first.  Fingers crossed...

[Buster's Uncle]

BTW - I still haven't found where to change the menu wording, but I have found the plugin for some of the pulldowns and I can change them, so now BE/RT instead of Civ: Beyond Earth and SMACX instead of Alpha Centauri.  -That'll reduce the rolling over to a second line problem...

[Buster's Uncle]

HA!  Valka, I ain't no hypocrite --- the top of Curve is tight now.

It'll take me half tomorrow getting used to the base look of my life here altering, but that freed enough topspace to reveal two threads at the top of Command Nexus when I'm on patrol looking for new posts.  I gotta look back at Halloween again; I know where to change the spacing on the breadcrumbs now, which I wasn't satisfied with.

Pokémon tomorrow; bed now.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh - and here's what I found mid-day when I checked which themes are being used:

Default Curve - 11603 people are using this theme.
Green Core - 1 person is using this theme.
GoneFishin - 1 person is using this theme.
The Chilling - 1 person is using this theme.
SMAX - 2 people are using this theme.
SMAC - 7 people are using this theme
Adk Halloween - 1 person is using this theme.
Lazy Summer (impulse2) - 1 person is using this theme.

(No one home)
Enterprise
Astronomy
Autumn
Ostara
Thanksgiving
SMF Pokémon

We've picked up a SMAC user since, I believe, and Valka seems to have moved to Ostara for now.  I didn't count me in any of this, 'cause I'm in which theme to work on it.

[Eadee]

That looks like the whole work on the themes does already pay off. I mean 14 people found a theme they like better than the default. Before this it was... about two?

However I have to say I really like the SMAC theme, it just feels right to use it. I highly appreciate all the work you put into those themes.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; there were two people in Enterprise, and someone had taken up wearing The Killing at some point fairly recently.

---

I spent far too long this morning trying to take out the extra space above and below the navigation/breadcrumbs line atop the Halloween theme.  I made a little headway in making the line itself a bit shorter, but the space above and below appears to be something specific to special stuff done to that line for this theme to put a box around it --- Hey!  Idea to try!

---

Ugh.  Pokémon is just too much of a pokémess; I just killed it.  I'm going to find something else to use as a base for a winter theme.

Since Autumn was a failure, I'll try it, I think.

And then there were 13.

[Valka]

I actually liked the Pokemon theme! 

I've been looking around to see if there is a tutorial on making skins; something turned up in a Google search but I haven't tried anything yet. Does SMF allow people to make test forums to try these things out?

You shouldn't take any of my current themes as indicating that it's my favorite; the only real way to see how well they work is to actually use them for awhile, so that's what I've been doing. Enterprise is what I'm most used to, but I've been using a lot of others since this project has been going on.