Themes/Skins

[Buster's Uncle]

See if you get that in SMAC, which has a lot of improvements we've yet to apply to SMAX.

...I'm thinking I should do a concept illo made from a screenshot with half the colors changed...

[Vidsek]

  All is good in SMAC, right where it ought to be.

This switching themes frequently has turned out to be fun.  Love the variety

[Yitzi]

  All is good in SMAC, right where it ought to be.

This switching themes frequently has turned out to be fun.  Love the variety

Maybe there should be a "random" theme, which changes randomly once per day.

[Buster's Uncle]

...THAT is a fantastic idea if Draz knows how to engineer it without a lot of trouble... 

[Buster's Uncle]

Ah.  Turns out I saved a 'thumbnail' from before I split the themes...

I think it has infinitely more visual appeal with not all shades of one color.

[Buster's Uncle]

And now, the worst smilie ever:

[Valka]

Not to mention the largest. Try dropping that into a post a CFC to promote the forum! 

(mind you, a lot of people would be jealous because we've got such a wide variety of forum skins here)

[Buster's Uncle]

They should be jealous...

[Buster's Uncle]

...In fact, following on that I did a little thing over a week ago with the page-top design of CFC's Classic theme.  I've been hesitant to post this there, 'cause I see no likelihood of it ever being acted on, and I am trying not to come off so critical all the time.

See previous attachment for the actual layout that robs me of a second or two of my finite lifetime scrolling extra on every. single. page I browse there.

I moved the two top menu lines together -every control on the Camp's pagetop could use lowering to be closer to the content- moved the breadcrumbs box as low as I could, eliminated the superfluous line telling me were I was, since the breadcrumbs tell me that, eliminated an uncollapsible notice added since I took the whale screeny  -and the rest was entirely just reducing the outlandish amount of padding between and within the various lines to a still-generous (more than I would be if it were my place) 5 pixels.

It's a conservative redesign that looks like the old page, only more user-friendly and I can see the entire first post before I even scroll down.

[Buster's Uncle]

...And for good OCD-tendencies measure, I did the same up a level with the Site forum itself, which is even worse.  See the first two attachments illustrating having to scroll down a half page just to see the top of the first sticky.  (Your mileage may vary according to the resolution and shape of your monitor, but all of these are actual proportions, scaled-down for display convenience.)

There's four different lines telling me where I am redundantly.  I did the same things as in the previous of a thread view, and the last attachment is that, with half. a. page. space saved - at least you could see the first sticky before you started scrolling, this way...

[Valka]

So that's what the banner ad looks like.

[Buster's Uncle]

Also?  That's a lovely logo -but it doesn't fit the space.

I'm not going to blow a few hours redesigning their logo -strongly tempted as I am- but put the two lines side-by-side and reduce the cute shadowed barbarian guy to about 1/3 the height.  That saves (the OCD tendencies force me to load a screeny and actually measure) from 420x118 to 810x83 (it only needed 43 pixels height, but the Google search bar thing hogs x83 and the little guy does look a lot better that big.

Crap.  I ended up doing a redesign except for fixing the shadow.  Gotta watch those darn OCD tendancies.

Anyway, I measure a 65 pixel height savings, about an inch, from that change alone - and I daresay it actually looks better on the page laid out the way.  The black bar at the bottom of the attachment represents that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Draz - is there a more efficient way to make a copy of Curve to alter -w/o all the extra default folder stuff in there- than just copying everything to a new folder?

I've had a cute idea...

[DrazharLn]

You can save some actions by using the administration themes panel thing to make a copy. Then it'll be registered with SMF and copied.

I'm using this from my phone, and forgot you'd removed redsy: it's quite annoying to browse the forum without a responsive theme. Just checked on demo.smftricks and fastline isn't responsive, either. Might have to just edit redsy to be more acceptable to you lot and put it back.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay - if it's phone-friendly, it's good for something.

I actually tried that Admin copy thing weeks ago - it claimed to have done it, but I've not the foggiest where the files are.