Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 6:08 pm

Whether or not you see the alternating colors (and how dramatic they are) depends *greatly* on the settings for your monitor. Play with the contrast and brightness. I'm using calibrated monitors on my main computer, but I noticed that on Chiara's monitor (which isn't calibrated) the alternating colors are barely visible, and look greener rather than cyan/blue.

Vorax: the forums have *always* had alternating colors. The difference is that one of the colors is bluer than it used to be (before it was more gray). And, of course, the first post is somewhat orange (the complement color of the blue).

While PHPBB does have a feature to allow people to choose their own theme, that was disabled a long time ago on this site because people would use a different theme and then complain about the site not looking good. I decided back then to have one good theme, rather than a bunch of mediocre themes. And having multiple themes greatly multiples the amount of work I need to do to update the site, and my time is better spent on CMUD.

Unfortunately, when it comes to colors, everyone likes different ones (that's why we all have different favorite colors). So I'm afraid it's something you'll need to get used to. I can make minor tweaks, but the current blue theme was designed to blend well with the mountain graphic at the top of the screen. And as you can see from reading this thread, some people don't even notice the colors. So you might check to make sure your contrast setting isn't turned up too high.

Finally, it might also be a trick of the eye. The blue separator bars make the alternating blue color a lot more visible. Check out the background color at the bottom of this page (below the Quick Reply box where the Options are). Notice how much dimmer the color looks? It's exactly the same color as the color used in the alternating post background. But without the surrounding bars it blends more into the background.

So, when I made the post separator bars more obvious, that also makes the eye more sensitive to the background color.

But one of the common criticisms of the old design was that it was too bland and too gray. So one of the goals was to bring a bit more color to the site.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Yeah, naughty eyes playing tricks. Actually I like the alternating colours from the "post reply" topic review box best - it's a pale blue alternating with the light cyan, looks much nicer than the white alternating with the cyan.

At the end of the day it's about getting information, so doesn't really matter what fonts and colours are used, but I also don't like the huge font for the title (I know, it's all the rage to be a blogsite... crisp looking forums are so 2005).

I find I want the posted date on the left - to me I always check posted date and it strains my eyes having to look all the way over to the right hand side when the rest of the post is aligned left. I also never felt the need to support titles for subposts, if it's not Re: <the topic> then it doesn't belong in that thread.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the changes :)

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 12:24 am

Hmm, weird, I wonder where it's getting that other color in the Post Reply review box. Looks like the same color as this quick reply memo field background. I'm not sure what controls it, but I'll check into it. It's actually kind of a weird purple color, so I'm not sure if it fits the color scheme yet, but I'll see if I can find a good similar color.

But thanks for reminding me about the Post Reply screen. I hardly ever use it, so I hadn't seen the colors on that yet.

As I mentioned above, I still plan to tweak the title font size a bit.

For the posted date, it might work to put it before the reply Subject title (the Re: text) on the left side of the screen. That works for everything except the main topic post at the top. I *really* want the text of the main topic to flow right after the topic title. Maybe I can put the Posted date *before* the main title line. If I work on the web site tonight, I'll give it a try.

As far as being "all the rage..." yeah, that's true. In fact, it amuses me that blogs have become so hyped when they are really just a special type of "forum" that we've had for years. In fact, you'll notice the Zugg's Blog is really just a private forum that only I can post topics to. "Comments" to blog entries are really just "replies" to a forum post.

It's sort of like AJAX. Someone will coin a term and put a slightly different slant on something that's been around for years, and suddenly it's the latest and greatest thing. Blogs really aren't new. It's just that it finally became common and almost expected to see people using them. Anyone could have posted their thoughts and comments in a forum for years, but because it's called something different and looks a bit prettier (and is a bit easier to set up thanks to services like Blogger), now it's suddenly all new again.

That's why you aren't seeing me switch to anything like Blogger. Our existing forum software is really a *superset* of what I need for blogs. I've been able to use the same scripts and data structures to handle the Discussion Forums, Blogs, and Knowledge Base all at the same time. That's nice because it integrates the user logins across all systems. It allows you to post a forum reply, or a blog comment, or a knowledge base comment, all from a single login identity. And that's something that some of the blogger sites don't really think about.

So yes, I'm pretty happy with what we have going here and the directions that I can take it.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Yeah 99% of the time I just use the quick reply box, but for some weird reason I hit "post reply" that last time hehe :)

You could even put the posted date in the side panel, although it looks kinda weird if it's at the bottom of the post, and it looks kinda weird if it's immediately under the avatar, so I'm not sure :)

Yeah, I'm not the type of person who jumps on the wagon because it's popular to do so, I understand why people blog (and/or podcast), but aside from yours I don't read any other blogs - it just doesn't interest me, but I'm a part of several forum-based communities... I guess I like the feelong of community better than one person lecturing and 50 people nodding their head :)

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:37 am

OK, a few more changes to try:

1) I reduced the size of the title font by a few points. That's about as small as I really want to go with it. Hope it's better.

2) I put the Posted time back on the left side at the top. This is where it was before I started making these changes. The difference is that there isn't a line between the posted time and the post text. I think since the posted time is in a dimmer font color that no line is needed. I'm trying to remove as many distracting lines as I can. For the main post, the post time comes first, then some extra white space, then the title. For replies with subjects (like Re:...) the subject is shown to the right of the posted time in a bold font. I think this works pretty well and might be a nice compromise between the different things I've tried.

3) I made a small adjustment to the color of the alternating posts. It's a bit less gray than before. In fact, it's a lighter version of the color being used in this quick-reply memo box. If you didn't notice the old color, then you probably won't notice this new color either...it's a very subtle change.

Let me know how you like the changes. Didn't have much time to play with this tonight though.

Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:19 am

Yes I noticed the alternating colour change straight away and like it much more than white, the two colours don't clash as much now.

The posted date is back where it ought to be in my opinion since it really doesn't make sense for you to track over to the right to see when the post was made.

The post buttons are now where they should have been at the bottom of the post, it always irritated me that I'd just finished reading a post and had to scroll back up for the buttons.

All in all I very much like the changes that have been made, reading the forums is now much nicer Very Happy

Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 1:28 pm

I see them. They make me think of bathrooms or swimming pools.

I never had a problem with the titles, but they're fine now too. They look ace in the help topics.

Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 4:46 pm

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 8:17 pm

I notice that when a thread goes into multiple pages, non of the extra pages gives the thread title.

Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:51 pm

Hmm, good point. I'll see what I can do about that. Not sure if I'll find time to tweak the site this week though. Trying to get this CMUD release ready before Chiara goes into the hospital. So it's something you might need to live with for a bit.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Also, I just noticed, but it's very related: it's not easy to see the subject of the thread after pressing the Preview button on a Quick Reply. You have to scroll way down in the bottom frame to see it. It would be nice to have it as the page title...

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 3:48 am

OK, fixed a bunch of stuff instead of gaming again tonight.

1) On multi-page topics, the topic title, topic post date, and topic author are shown at the top of every page.

2) The Post Reply and Preview Reply pages show the post topic at the top of the page. Sorry, but I can't easily change the official page title...that's buried in PHPBB somewhere.

3) The Post Reply input boxes now span the entire page instead of being fixed width.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Nice!

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

You know I never really looked at this part of the forum before. Wish I had.