[Freddy]

Hopefully you will be seeing the new look now.

If things look odd try a hard reload of the forum or refresh.

For a while I wanted to alter things so that the site would work better on mobile devices. When I saw my friend Bloc had made a nice theme for SMF I saw this as my chance to improve things.

I took his theme and customised it to our requirements, with panels, the home page and the articles as we are used to. Also adding things in from the old theme like the round avatars on the boards.

Most of it I think is done now. You may see odd things that don't look right. If you do please post about them in this thread.

Main things about the theme are that it is responsive, ie; it changes to screen sizes. I've allowed it to go down to as small a screen as 600 pixels wide - which is the kind of thing older mobile phones might have. But it also adapts to 800 and 1024.

On smaller screens and assumed less powerful devices things like the rotating planet gets removed so as not to  tax someone's phone.

You'll notice I moved some of the things to the footer. I prefer them down there now. That planet interrupts scrolling so it was necessary to move that. All that stuff is not what you want to see all the time in the fore front, but is interesting sometimes.

I think that's it for now. I hope everyone likes the newer look

[Freddy]

P.S. I know about the video sizes on the pages, I'll work on that tomorrow.

[Freddy]

Oh and one more thing - in the recent posts table on the right - a new post is highlighted by a blue bar to the right.

[Ultron]

Only one, but very serious remark - I want the 'show new replies' link back! It was a truly unique property of this forum and I got used to it - it was very useful.

Okay, one more thing, but it is more of a personal taste - the font, it's kind of, too typewriter-ish.

Well, since I started, 2 more... Okay let's cut to 1 more... The logo - I previously did not mind it, but now it seems as it needs a new look to fit in with the theme...


Edit: Sorry... Just noticed the 'replies' button
Also, forgot to mention the good part - a much more modern look and I like that I can see my avatar on the top right now


Oh, and forget the font... It just appears as such on 'quick reply'. Forget everything, actually. Cheers to the new handsome look!

[8pla.net]

There is something, I don't enjoy with the new theme.

The blue (turquoise) bars at the bottom, with white fonts

are very similar and easy to confuse with title bars,

sort of like upside down windows.


This feedback is meant as constructive criticism, only.

[claude2]

New! superb!

[ivan.moony]

i like it too

[Freddy]

Thanks for the comments.

8Pla.net I quite liked the turquoise bars like that, did anyone else not like this ?

I've increased the font sizes around the place as they were a bit small. And changed the reply font to Arial.

YouTube videos now scale themselves although I had to make a compromise on height, so they go a bit square on some resolutions. But hey at least they change size and you can play them

[ranch vermin]

Im not bothered by the change, looks good!

[Ultron]

I am not sure what are these 'turquoise bars' everyone is referring to but I liked all the colors and combinations so far.. A lot.


Except this most recent change and I am going to take the liberty of taking the 'critic' role in this topic (well, as usual) - the latest background. Reminds me too... much... of Win XP! Also does not match a forum that is by default aimed at technology and science. I mean, green is a good color for the eyes to see and nature is always an amazing site however right here it just does not seem topic-suitable.


Sorry for being annoying... I would like to point out that I would never want anything changed if I'm the only one with objections.

[squarebear]

I couldn't see any turquoise bars either. I was going to comment about highlighting the new posts but I see you have that covered. Looks good Freddy.

[Freddy]

Those bars are on the 'home' page.

I'm in a quandary, I like the background, I think it's nice and fresh. I tried some binary backgrounds but they did not really lift the site the way this one does.

Hmmm.

[Freddy]

Im not bothered by the change, looks good!

Thanks mate 

[Ultron]

Those bars are on the 'home' page.

I'm in a quandary, I like the background, I think it's nice and fresh. I tried some binary backgrounds but they did not really lift the site the way this one does.

Hmmm.

Oh now I see them... Look good, actually!


Regarding the background, I suppose you are right - it does bring some life and vibe into the whole site... Can't get that effect with something technology-based. I will not bug anymore about this


P.S. An idea... Why not enable personalization of the overall forum looks (or at least background)? That way I won't be a pain in the ass sometimes. Just kidding. 

[8pla.net]

8Pla.net I quite liked the turquoise bars like that, did anyone else not like this ?

Once, it was fun to make Linux look like XP using a background image like that.  So, I understand the appeal. Well, let me discuss some possible alternatives which share that appeal, and may even suggest a nice, and valuable improvement. 

If you like that outdoors theme, but would prefer the theme to be more A.I. related, you can have the best of both worlds, and promote your awesome accomplishments... I would suggest you take a screen capture with your chatbot standing in the artificial terrain and use that as a background image.

The chatbot can be standing either on the far left or, far right, so you can see her behind the forum panel.  Or you might consider making the forum panel transparent, or reduce the opacity, so it is semi-transparent.  Another option would be to reduce the width of the forum panel, for wider backgrounds visible on the sides.

The turquoise bars used to match the previous theme. For them to be more aesthetically pleasing, you may need to use a color picker app, to match their color to the current theme.  For example, using a color picker, the grass is green color: #99C21C, the sky is blue color: #578BBA and the clouds are off white color #EEEDED.

Oh, and I do like the current theme, Freddy, because I know how much work is involved with a forum theme.  I've made plenty forum themes myself.  It is hard to believe how many images and cascading style sheets and HTML templates, there are in one theme.  It is a big job, I know.  Thanks for doing it so well, and you have my appreciation, on whatever you decide.   All my comments are constructive, meaning they are intended to serve a useful purpose.