Themes/Skins

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't know much about what SMF does and doesn't allow - but it's some open-source sort of thing and I expect they'd actually encourage you to try.

[Buster's Uncle]

...The new Winter theme is fighting me, but well underway...

[Buster's Uncle]

Right now, I'm doing the tedious, but simple, part of altering all the theme component art to fit the new scheme - there's not a lot that needs doing to the colors, and the (frustrating) top-space formatting I'll further attend to when I've gotten the rest shipshape.

The sticking point on this one is not knowing how to get rid of the redundant stuff that's collapsible on most themes - User greeting, News and Search.  They hog a lot of top-space, and I won't be satisfied until I can either make them collapsible again, or get rid of them entirely.

[Buster's Uncle]

...I may have found a way to get rid of those things (the index.php, not the index.css, maybe), but my morning innerwebs browse -the extremely truncated version I do these days while I'm so busy with forum stuff- is only halfway through, so not right away.

I did get the art file element altering done, so it's coming together...

[Buster's Uncle]

.php files are VERY unforgiving about format, BTW, which I knew going in.

[Buster's Uncle]

WELL - fun backing out of THAT try...

[Buster's Uncle]

...I'm considering changing the default theme tomorrow night at midnight to SMAC for 24 hours.

Blame Draz if you don't like it...

[Buster's Uncle]

I've finally made the breakthrough I needed on the Winter theme, if only I can get the root forum frame margins back.  I think the rest is just tedious tweaking.

[DrazharLn]

I think the SMAC theme is almost ready for prime-time.

Just needs the fixes I mentioned elsewhere, as far as I'm concerned.

As for the work on removing top-bar items, let me know how things go and I'll see what I can do to help. You might want to read this: http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/How_to_create_a_smf_theme especially the section on template php files (which is possibly where you need to be editing).

If you find yourself getting stuck on some particularly tricky CSS, feel free to drop me a line and I'll try to explain how to fix it or just fix it myself and describe what I did if you're interested.

@Valka,

Themes in SMF are some CSS files (just one main one) and a collection of templates written in PHP. The SMF wiki goes into more detail. CSS can be a pain to work with, but firefox and chrome both have good tools built in to help you understand what changes you need to make. The main index.css file is a monster that's some 3600 lines long, which is probably way bigger than necessary, but it is commented quite well (in the Curve theme, anyway), and should be easy enough to work with.

The templates will be reasonably easy to work with, but most of the themes don't use custom templates anyway.

[Buster's Uncle]

I fixed it in index.template.php, actually, by replacing some code with the relevant portions from the default, but that introduced a problem I've yet to lick that it no longer reads the side margins set early in the .css.  I'm hoping that'll prove to be redundant settings, as a number of lines seem to be, and find where to change that works now.  I've got Winter pretty much licked except for those margins.

Now, if you wanted to fix the SMAC theme vertical thread spacing on the subforum display level before you go to bed -and tell me what and where you did it tomorrow- I'd be grateful.

[Buster's Uncle]

If it's quicker, just point me at the right spot, and I'll take care of the fiddling with the spacing values...

The more I do myself, the more I learn - but I want to do this default stunt tonight, and best have that fixed first.  I've REALLY not felt satisfied with that, and it looks even worse since I made the background filter more transparent.

[DrazharLn]

The main problem is with some dividers that the template puts in. The simplest way to remove them is to add "display: none;" to the appropriate section (line 955, index.css).

I'll do so as soon as I can work out which theme folder the smac faction is in on the server (it would be a lot easier if it was just called SMAC, y'know.

[Buster's Uncle]

Change it, then - I was afraid it would bork something, like all the filepaths.  I'm trying hard not to Miriam the server again.  You're looking for "Black_Ops_2".

(SMAX is in "minecraft_theme_ok".)

[DrazharLn]

Done. Do you want me to move the themes to more sensible directories, too?

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.  I'm confident I can find my way, afterwards.