Forums

I think Avatars would be great.
An alternative would be that your name appears in a different color to find what you wrote easy. You can only see it in a different color when you are loged on.

We don't want avatar to preserve the forum from visual pollution.

AFAIK you don't see your name colored differently when logging in, do you? I never thought this feature could be useful, it's not something that I usually need when reading posts because I check the author's name anyway. Other opinions on that?

Sorry to not bat for your team Furanku, but I do have to agree with Bock. I like this forum cause its un-cluttered.

Also Avatars take server space and small chunks of bandwidth everytime a thread is loaded which is something this website doesn't have much of

If people really want to customise their profile a bit, there may be a good middle ground here. Might I suggest having a few different preset avatars to choose from. Make them small, for example SMS sprites like the random ones on the main website, but not zoomed in. That way people can pick their favourite character/item/whatever, but they won't break the forum's theme and most of the time they will be cached by people's browsers. An 8 colour 24x32 GIF image shouldn't take any real bandwidth (probably less than 400 bytes).

Just a thought. :)

I do find sometimes this forum is a little hard to read than most simply because so much of the text/background is similar. It's nothing that major though. On my forum I alternated posts by color, so first post is one color, second is another, third is back to first color, etc. Just makes it easier to read posts I believe, though others probably don't like it so you can never please everyone. :)

In regards to avatars you could have people link to offsite ones if bandwidth was a concern, though that presents its own issues. Sure is a lot of aussies in this thread. :)

Maybe we can add our own catch phrase or choose our own font style to be a little more individual.

furanku wrote

Maybe we can add our own catch phrase or choose our own font style to be a little more individual.

The point of this forum is that what you actually do and say shall makes you "a little more individual", as opposed to funny geek quotes or colored Comic Sans MS writing.

Avatars, mjeh, I dunno. I'm indifferent to it. Though I guess a picture of your favourite SMS-character would be nice, but then at some point someone would add something that's not relevant to the SMS universe and then it would be abused (just like Sega itself is today.)

I guess I'm fine as it is right now (even though I don't post much, I do read everything)

But I swear, if you so much as think about implementing signatures I will come to your house and burn your Phantasy Star collection.
There's nothing more annoying and time-consuming than having to read the same lines over
and over
and over
and over again.

There's an IRC-channel for everyday talk. And good material and articles are more often put up on solid websites or blogs. To me a Forum is some kind of weird middle-ground.

I'm not trying to piss anyone off, I'm just venting cause I like this forum and I'm typing really fast cause I really have to poop.
<3

Wrim wrote

Avatars, mjeh, I dunno. I'm indifferent to it. Though I guess a picture of your favourite SMS-character would be nice, but then at some point someone would add something that's not relevant to the SMS universe and then it would be abused (just like Sega itself is today.)

I guess I'm fine as it is right now (even though I don't post much, I do read everything)

But I swear, if you so much as think about implementing signatures I will come to your house and burn your Phantasy Star collection.
There's nothing more annoying and time-consuming than having to read the same lines over
and over
and over
and over again.

There's an IRC-channel for everyday talk. And good material and articles are more often put up on solid websites or blogs. To me a Forum is some kind of weird middle-ground.

I'm not trying to piss anyone off, I'm just venting cause I like this forum and I'm typing really fast cause I really have to poop.
<3

Haha, I agree. Nothing more frustrating than reading a thread where the signatures take up more space (and text) than the actual content of the posts.

This is phpBB, we actively disabled all that crap.

I did enable "zebra striping" in a test board (alternating background colours to separate posts) but Mr. Bock vetoed it.

Avatars would only happen if they were strictly controlled (maybe even admin-approved), forcibly unique (no preset list), and the board was otherwise almost devoid of images.

I am working on a custom phpBB3 style recently, that will be *less* cluttered than this one. However, I'm also considering alternatives. phpBB will always be a spamtrap and it's quite horrible to use.

I quite like Vanilla, for example; you can't get much more pared down than that, and it has a great add-in system that involves zero file editing, but it's also a bit beta, I might wait for 2.0. Forum conversion might be some work, although phpBB's layout is simple enough.

For what it's worth, I like the way it is now. Simple and clean, and if someone wants to post an image there's still the IMG tag available.
This is a forum where people discuss about high-level, technical, important things, the content is what matters the most.
This is not the "Rainbow party" forum.

ptepid wrote

Haha, I agree. Nothing more frustrating than reading a thread where the signatures take up more space (and text) than the actual content of the posts.

I ment a saying under your name. Look at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=31070 for example.

furanku wrote

I meant a saying under your name.

They're usually called "taglines". Again, I don't see the benefit.

Maxim wrote

I did enable "zebra striping" in a test board (alternating background colours to separate posts) but Mr. Bock vetoed it.

Hmm let's see look at that again under a new light? (or maybe it can just wait for the phpBB3 upgrade).

Let's look at what we have:

- Join Date
- Number of posts
Useful to know how "senior" someone is.

- Location
Somewhat superfluous, but can be useful to gauge the language ability, cultural differences and might be useful for IRL developments.

- Subject
- Post time
Somewhat important.

- Quote/edit buttons
Can't much avoid them. Might be interesting to have them auto-hide in some way.

- Profile/PM/website buttons
I could live without these. (Click on a username to do actions relating to that user.) But they help to break up the messages, we might need to restyle if they are gone.

So we're pretty pared-down. However, I didn't get to the viewtopic part of phpBB3 yet, so there's scope for changes in the future.

Bock wrote

Hmm let's see look at that again under a new light?

Now active, somewhat. The posting form looks a bit odd.

I think you softened it a bit Maxim? I liked how it was an hour or two ago, but as it is now I still think it's an improvement.

Yes, I was experimenting a bit. (Live edits as usual...) I toned down the light colour and tried removing the "separators" between posts, but things did get a bit too flat at that point.

The way phpBB is using the second colour in unwanted places is one reason to avoid a more contrasting colour.

It looks good as is, quite good and probably helping. There's that line separating the author info and post that seems broken, I think Maxim was referring to that.

Bock wrote

There's that line separating the author info and post that seems broken, I think Maxim was referring to that.

I'm not sure what that means. Annotated screenshots please :)

Unless I am mistaking the circled region had contrasted separating lines before?

forums-lines.png (10.48 KB)

forums-lines2.png (22.31 KB)

Grr :( Poor separation of CSS classes in the template is screwing things up. I've had to remove the "zebra striping" since it looked bad without border collapsing, and border collapsing was causing other issues.

The second line was never there.

I may make a hacky patch to allow re-enabling but getting migrated to phpBB3 is a better priority...

furanku wrote

your name appears in a different color to find what you wrote easy. You can only see it in a different color when you are logged on.

This helps you keep track of where you last read too when there are pages of posts on a subject. I went right past myself just now. Only yourself see it as a different color when you a logged on.

There shouldn't be any confusion now with the visual attached.

highlighted name.jpg (114.55 KB)

highlited name

To find posts of yourself you can also look right: if you see an Edit button, that was posted by you. Does not apply to mods/admins.

Zebra stripes are back (for viewtopic pages only), and your own posts will be on a darker background. Inter-post separators are just a 1px line now; with the contrast difference, and the button row, I think it's enough to delineate clearly.

Maxim wrote

Zebra stripes are back (for viewtopic pages only), and your own posts will be on a darker background. Inter-post separators are just a 1px line now; with the contrast difference, and the button row, I think it's enough to delineate clearly.

I think Zebra stripes are not needed because the button row acts as a separator as well but the other improvements/alterations are just fine.

furanku wrote

Maxim wrote

Zebra stripes are back (for viewtopic pages only), and your own posts will be on a darker background. Inter-post separators are just a 1px line now; with the contrast difference, and the button row, I think it's enough to delineate clearly.

I think Zebra stripes are not needed because the button row acts as a separator as well but the other improvements/alterations are just fine.

I quite like the Zebra stripes it looks quite modern, and just makes it that bit easier to read :)

I think the move to phpBB3 is an exciting venture when Maxim gets around to it.

Hey, check the attachment.

I hadn't seen Jacko's post before, so the page was not in cache.

No zebras!

Nevertheless, after I refreshed the page (in Chrome) it did appear.

Are the CSS styles loaded separately from the page (so a delay would explain) ?

Anyone else experienced this ?

no_zebra_in_chrome.jpg (164.1 KB)

Browsers tend to cache CSS more aggressively than other content.

Author	Message
furanku Joined: 10 Dec 2000 Posts: 592 Location: Australia and Japan	Avatars Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 11:37 pm
	I think Avatars would be great. An alternative would be that your name appears in a different color to find what you wrote easy. You can only see it in a different color when you are loged on.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:16 am
	We don't want avatar to preserve the forum from visual pollution. AFAIK you don't see your name colored differently when logging in, do you? I never thought this feature could be useful, it's not something that I usually need when reading posts because I check the author's name anyway. Other opinions on that?

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:12 am
	Sorry to not bat for your team Furanku, but I do have to agree with Bock. I like this forum cause its un-cluttered. Also Avatars take server space and small chunks of bandwidth everytime a thread is loaded which is something this website doesn't have much of

ptepid Joined: 03 Sep 2009 Posts: 7 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:23 am
	If people really want to customise their profile a bit, there may be a good middle ground here. Might I suggest having a few different preset avatars to choose from. Make them small, for example SMS sprites like the random ones on the main website, but not zoomed in. That way people can pick their favourite character/item/whatever, but they won't break the forum's theme and most of the time they will be cached by people's browsers. An 8 colour 24x32 GIF image shouldn't take any real bandwidth (probably less than 400 bytes). Just a thought. :)

PoorAussie Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 292 Location: Australia	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:37 am
	I do find sometimes this forum is a little hard to read than most simply because so much of the text/background is similar. It's nothing that major though. On my forum I alternated posts by color, so first post is one color, second is another, third is back to first color, etc. Just makes it easier to read posts I believe, though others probably don't like it so you can never please everyone. :) In regards to avatars you could have people link to offsite ones if bandwidth was a concern, though that presents its own issues. Sure is a lot of aussies in this thread. :)

furanku Joined: 10 Dec 2000 Posts: 592 Location: Australia and Japan	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 3:50 am
	Maybe we can add our own catch phrase or choose our own font style to be a little more individual.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 4:10 am
	furanku wrote Maybe we can add our own catch phrase or choose our own font style to be a little more individual. The point of this forum is that what you actually do and say shall makes you "a little more individual", as opposed to funny geek quotes or colored Comic Sans MS writing.

Wrim Joined: 24 Sep 2007 Posts: 64 Location: Umeå	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 4:31 am
Wrim Joined: 24 Sep 2007 Posts: 64 Location: Umeå	Avatars, mjeh, I dunno. I'm indifferent to it. Though I guess a picture of your favourite SMS-character would be nice, but then at some point someone would add something that's not relevant to the SMS universe and then it would be abused (just like Sega itself is today.) I guess I'm fine as it is right now (even though I don't post much, I do read everything) But I swear, if you so much as think about implementing signatures I will come to your house and burn your Phantasy Star collection. There's nothing more annoying and time-consuming than having to read the same lines over and over and over and over again. There's an IRC-channel for everyday talk. And good material and articles are more often put up on solid websites or blogs. To me a Forum is some kind of weird middle-ground. I'm not trying to piss anyone off, I'm just venting cause I like this forum and I'm typing really fast cause I really have to poop. <3

ptepid Joined: 03 Sep 2009 Posts: 7 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 7:01 am
	Wrim wrote Avatars, mjeh, I dunno. I'm indifferent to it. Though I guess a picture of your favourite SMS-character would be nice, but then at some point someone would add something that's not relevant to the SMS universe and then it would be abused (just like Sega itself is today.) I guess I'm fine as it is right now (even though I don't post much, I do read everything) But I swear, if you so much as think about implementing signatures I will come to your house and burn your Phantasy Star collection. There's nothing more annoying and time-consuming than having to read the same lines over and over and over and over again. There's an IRC-channel for everyday talk. And good material and articles are more often put up on solid websites or blogs. To me a Forum is some kind of weird middle-ground. I'm not trying to piss anyone off, I'm just venting cause I like this forum and I'm typing really fast cause I really have to poop. <3 Haha, I agree. Nothing more frustrating than reading a thread where the signatures take up more space (and text) than the actual content of the posts.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 9:17 am
	This is phpBB, we actively disabled all that crap. I did enable "zebra striping" in a test board (alternating background colours to separate posts) but Mr. Bock vetoed it. Avatars would only happen if they were strictly controlled (maybe even admin-approved), forcibly unique (no preset list), and the board was otherwise almost devoid of images. I am working on a custom phpBB3 style recently, that will be less cluttered than this one. However, I'm also considering alternatives. phpBB will always be a spamtrap and it's quite horrible to use. I quite like Vanilla, for example; you can't get much more pared down than that, and it has a great add-in system that involves zero file editing, but it's also a bit beta, I might wait for 2.0. Forum conversion might be some work, although phpBB's layout is simple enough.

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:19 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	For what it's worth, I like the way it is now. Simple and clean, and if someone wants to post an image there's still the IMG tag available. This is a forum where people discuss about high-level, technical, important things, the content is what matters the most. This is not the "Rainbow party" forum.

furanku Joined: 10 Dec 2000 Posts: 592 Location: Australia and Japan	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:25 am
	ptepid wrote Haha, I agree. Nothing more frustrating than reading a thread where the signatures take up more space (and text) than the actual content of the posts. I ment a saying under your name. Look at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=31070 for example.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:36 pm
	furanku wrote I meant a saying under your name. They're usually called "taglines". Again, I don't see the benefit.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:38 pm
	Maxim wrote I did enable "zebra striping" in a test board (alternating background colours to separate posts) but Mr. Bock vetoed it. Hmm let's see look at that again under a new light? (or maybe it can just wait for the phpBB3 upgrade).

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:45 pm
	Let's look at what we have: - Join Date - Number of posts Useful to know how "senior" someone is. - Location Somewhat superfluous, but can be useful to gauge the language ability, cultural differences and might be useful for IRL developments. - Subject - Post time Somewhat important. - Quote/edit buttons Can't much avoid them. Might be interesting to have them auto-hide in some way. - Profile/PM/website buttons I could live without these. (Click on a username to do actions relating to that user.) But they help to break up the messages, we might need to restyle if they are gone. So we're pretty pared-down. However, I didn't get to the viewtopic part of phpBB3 yet, so there's scope for changes in the future.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:07 pm
	Bock wrote Hmm let's see look at that again under a new light? Now active, somewhat. The posting form looks a bit odd.

PoorAussie Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 292 Location: Australia	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:21 pm
	I think you softened it a bit Maxim? I liked how it was an hour or two ago, but as it is now I still think it's an improvement.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:43 pm
	Yes, I was experimenting a bit. (Live edits as usual...) I toned down the light colour and tried removing the "separators" between posts, but things did get a bit too flat at that point. The way phpBB is using the second colour in unwanted places is one reason to avoid a more contrasting colour.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:58 pm
	It looks good as is, quite good and probably helping. There's that line separating the author info and post that seems broken, I think Maxim was referring to that.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:08 pm
	Bock wrote There's that line separating the author info and post that seems broken, I think Maxim was referring to that. I'm not sure what that means. Annotated screenshots please :)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:14 pm
	Unless I am mistaking the circled region had contrasted separating lines before? forums-lines.png (10.48 KB) forums-lines2.png (22.31 KB)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:26 pm
	Grr :( Poor separation of CSS classes in the template is screwing things up. I've had to remove the "zebra striping" since it looked bad without border collapsing, and border collapsing was causing other issues. The second line was never there. I may make a hacky patch to allow re-enabling but getting migrated to phpBB3 is a better priority...

furanku Joined: 10 Dec 2000 Posts: 592 Location: Australia and Japan	Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 12:36 am
	furanku wrote your name appears in a different color to find what you wrote easy. You can only see it in a different color when you are logged on. This helps you keep track of where you last read too when there are pages of posts on a subject. I went right past myself just now. Only yourself see it as a different color when you a logged on. There shouldn't be any confusion now with the visual attached. highlighted name.jpg (114.55 KB) highlited name

Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 5:05 am
Tom Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 1356 Location: italy	To find posts of yourself you can also look right: if you see an Edit button, that was posted by you. Does not apply to mods/admins.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 9:01 am
	Zebra stripes are back (for viewtopic pages only), and your own posts will be on a darker background. Inter-post separators are just a 1px line now; with the contrast difference, and the button row, I think it's enough to delineate clearly.

furanku Joined: 10 Dec 2000 Posts: 592 Location: Australia and Japan	Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 11:58 am
	Maxim wrote Zebra stripes are back (for viewtopic pages only), and your own posts will be on a darker background. Inter-post separators are just a 1px line now; with the contrast difference, and the button row, I think it's enough to delineate clearly. I think Zebra stripes are not needed because the button row acts as a separator as well but the other improvements/alterations are just fine.

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 12:54 pm
	furanku wrote Maxim wrote Zebra stripes are back (for viewtopic pages only), and your own posts will be on a darker background. Inter-post separators are just a 1px line now; with the contrast difference, and the button row, I think it's enough to delineate clearly. I think Zebra stripes are not needed because the button row acts as a separator as well but the other improvements/alterations are just fine. I quite like the Zebra stripes it looks quite modern, and just makes it that bit easier to read :) I think the move to phpBB3 is an exciting venture when Maxim gets around to it.

Niloct Joined: 25 Dec 2005 Posts: 607 Location: São Paulo - Brazil	Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 4:26 pm
	Hey, check the attachment. I hadn't seen Jacko's post before, so the page was not in cache. No zebras! Nevertheless, after I refreshed the page (in Chrome) it did appear. Are the CSS styles loaded separately from the page (so a delay would explain) ? Anyone else experienced this ? no_zebra_in_chrome.jpg (164.1 KB)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 5:30 pm
	Browsers tend to cache CSS more aggressively than other content.

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