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Subject review (reverse sequence)

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Posted by Kris   USA  (198 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Tue 14 Dec 2004 08:07 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
I was one of the first people to use this forum (put your mouse over my name.... my profile id is 6). I've always liked the layout of Gammon's forum script and have in fact used it in many of my own ventures.

I must dissent in that I all-but despise ikonboard. To take from what that other guy said, every script kiddie and his mommy uses it. That, and the interface just annoys me.

I have a similar opinion of PHPBB. The one major thing I've always liked about your forum Nick is that it's not a cluttered mess of topics where you have to search each and every one for new posts. Instead, the topics are used more for archival and categorization purposes, whereas on the front page it's sorted by new posts.

I also have an opinion of CSS, too. Yes, I have an opinion on CSS. I really do have that much time on my hands. Seriously though, I rarely or never use CSS simply because it's too much hassle, for all the reasons you just described. Also, it can be a pain for someone else to debug your page later on if they have to go through CSS includes linked to CSS includes linked to CSS includes.... I personally think it's just a fad. I'll stick with the good-ol fashioned '<font color="blue">'. You'd probably need about twice the code (at least) to do that in CSS. But at least it would be more confusing!....


If you're getting bored with the look of your forum, though, my suggestion would be to just tinker around with it yourself and play with your creativity. You could add different "skins," new administrative functions/options, etc. Probably the thing I'd like most is that group thing you mentioned; whereas not only can certain topics be closed for posting, but also closed for viewing as well. That way, I wouldn't have to create seperate forums for administration and public use, with the former behind a password-protected directory on my webserver.


So yeah, I'd say your best bet is to use what you got and just try to improve on it as you feel is needed.
--Kris
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (18,770 posts)  [Biography] bio   Forum Administrator
Date Sun 12 Dec 2004 09:48 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message

This has now been done, see customising colours in this forum.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (18,770 posts)  [Biography] bio   Forum Administrator
Date Sat 11 Dec 2004 03:53 AM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
The colours are probably easy enough to do. I may have a look at that shortly.
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  [Biography] bio   Moderator
Date Sat 11 Dec 2004 12:23 AM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Is it really a matter of weeks though? :) Personally I think that it'd be nice to be able to customize if not the layout (which is quite harder, yes), at least the color of the pages, and that really shouldn't be too hard to do. Heck, if we decide to stick with this one for BMud, I'll probably do it anyhow if you don't - I could then give you a patch or something that you can choose to include or not in the main forum.
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (18,770 posts)  [Biography] bio   Forum Administrator
Date Fri 10 Dec 2004 11:38 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Well, considering that the base database tables are much the same, perhaps improving presentation here is all that is really required, if indeed anything is required.

Rather than trying to fix existing pages, what might be a lot easier would be to simply write from scratch an alternative way of doing (say) the "showposts" page (bbshowpost.php) which you are reading now.

However I am starting to wonder if we are wandering away from the "core business" here. Would spending weeks changing the PHP files so you can have a brown background really be worth the effort?
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  [Biography] bio   Moderator
Date Fri 10 Dec 2004 07:53 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
I agree that polls are not terribly useful and they would require some time to implement. If Nick's going to implement new features, I would rather it be:
- CSS for easy layout (or at least color) customization
- per-section or perhaps (if possible, haha) per-post tracking of what one has read or not, so that reading a post doesn't "jump" the green bar up there for things from other sections


Ideally, there would also be such features as the option to choose a flat layout vs. structured layout, but that might take a wee bit of time to implement... :-)

(Maybe I could write it as an extension and give it to Nick since it's something I personally would like but I doubt Nick would want to spend time on it)

All that being said, perhaps we should examine what is nice about PHPBB - that is, what it has that this forum doesn't - and then figure out how much we (i.e. Nick :P) would like to "import" here.
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Flannel   USA  (1,230 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Fri 10 Dec 2004 07:01 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Are polls really that important? For whimsical things, sure, they might be fun. But if youre really trying to get to the bottom of something (new forum software, for instance), would a poll do it justice?
To get a feel for the results, you'd really need to read the discussion.
What happens if you change your mind through the course of discussion? Most polls don't let you change your vote.

Heck, most polls attract uninformed people. They vote on something, then (assuming they post at all) post 'lolol rofl! option 1 r0x0rs!! u n00bs! y did u vote 4 option 2?', so for 'real' issues (not social-lets waste some time-polls) you can't trust the poll.
Usually they have a couple of options, and are missing a large selection of options, many people would prefer to vote 'mu' on most polls, I think. Like if Nick had set up this poll, he'd have an option for keeping this, or changing it (to phpBB), but what about ikonboard (and all those others, whatever they are).

Eh, I guess it's all up to the community/admins as to whether they want polls or not. Regardless of my personal leanings, Nick might want to allow users of his forum software to have polls.
~Flannel

Messiah of Rose
Eternity's Trials.

Clones are people two.
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Posted by Zeno   USA  (2,867 posts)  [Biography] bio   Moderator
Date Fri 10 Dec 2004 06:48 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Hmm, I've changed my decision. I'd rather stay with this forum. It works for what we do. Nick, why not whip up a quick poll system for this? (Have it require forum user, so duplicate votes will not happen). Or just keep discussion here. Either way.
Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy
http://www.biyg.org
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Posted by Flannel   USA  (1,230 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Fri 10 Dec 2004 06:39 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]

Amended on Fri 10 Dec 2004 06:43 PM (UTC) by Flannel

Message
No. I'm just sick of people who claim firefox is the saving grace of the internet.
Sure it's nice, and has nice features, but I haven't spontaneously combusted using IE yet.

This is something that firefox, just doesn't do. I don't know why. You'd think something this instrumental to CSS catching on (cross browser compatability/consistency is the largest thing keeping people with tables for layout) would be a priority to firefox developers/users. (Many of which would benefit greatly from CSS being widely adopted.)

Some lack of consistency is expected, but at least get everything to work to a point that it is useable. In my site it doesn't have really devastating consequences, anyone who has any common sense can still figure out what is being said, but this issue really could cause major problems on other sites.

Mind you, IE has its own fair share of problems. And there are many things that neither of them actually do, much of which, would make CSS a whole lot easier.
~Flannel

Messiah of Rose
Eternity's Trials.

Clones are people two.
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Posted by Zhamel   USA  (67 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Fri 10 Dec 2004 05:06 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Do you work for Microsoft? :P
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Posted by Flannel   USA  (1,230 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Fri 10 Dec 2004 12:28 AM (UTC)  [ quote  ]

Amended on Fri 10 Dec 2004 12:31 AM (UTC) by Flannel

Message
It has to do with Firefox not supporting the height attribute.... or something like that. I don't remember exactly, and now I cant seem to find the pages I was referencing.
Or at least, thats what the problem was with some of the other pages (click on 'sections' and youll see that the row of buttons 'eats' the title of the page). As for the text being outside the box, I assume its related.

But yes, my CSS validates. It's just a problem with browsers implimenting things differently. And it is indeed firefox being wrong (not W3 compliant), and not something that IE looks the other way on.
~Flannel

Messiah of Rose
Eternity's Trials.

Clones are people two.
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Posted by Zhamel   USA  (67 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Thu 09 Dec 2004 11:49 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Not trying to start a web design war here...

But have you run your page through the W3C Markup Validation Service? http://validator.w3.org/

There is also the CSS validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
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Posted by Flannel   USA  (1,230 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Thu 09 Dec 2004 07:33 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]

Amended on Thu 09 Dec 2004 07:47 PM (UTC) by Flannel

Message
Yeah, flash intro, nothing to see there.

And Firefox doesn't impliment CSS correctly (or completely, if you will), that's what the problems are. Of course, IE has its own quirks. I am aware of the problem, thanks though.

There are workarounds (so when/if you do it nick, you can have it cross-browser), but the audience I see is all high school parents and their kids, none of which use firefox. It wasnt worth my effort to code it a couple of ways in the CSS, and keeping the site small makes it a lot more friendly for dialup users (which is also a large portion of the 'intended audience').

~Flannel

Messiah of Rose
Eternity's Trials.

Clones are people two.
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (18,770 posts)  [Biography] bio   Forum Administrator
Date Thu 09 Dec 2004 06:28 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
Quote:

If you'd like an example... http://rbvband.com is all done with CSS (yeah yeah, shameless plug, it's not related to MC at all, just an example of pure CSS).


The first thing I saw there was a message box - "Do you want to install Flash?". I always click "No" on principle, my PC is cluttered enough as it is, so the initial web page didn't look very exciting.

However, moving past that, yes I see what you mean. The HTML source looks fairly clean.
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by Zhamel   USA  (67 posts)  [Biography] bio
Date Thu 09 Dec 2004 06:00 PM (UTC)  [ quote  ]
Message
For Flannel...

I doubt this is your intent but when I checked out your site I noticed a small error in layout when viewed in Firefox.

www.minenotyours.com/images/problem.jpg
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