Nice work Z, but I really prefer the old forum design. I find this one quite hard to read. The old forum had less contrast and had a more passive and precise design and a unique feel to it.

I mean posts expand too much and do not fit in a window (in opera this happens because of huge image, in some version of firefox everything was expanded (not only threads with pics but whole forum). Of course, I can just resize and everything looks nicely, but maybe there are hardcoded values for element sizes instead of percents.

edit: ahh, there's the description

Okay, well thanks for posting the misleading screenshot without a description. I understand what you mean now and I plan on addressing that issue when I strip out the old javascript library and bring in jquery.

Btw, that's not the POLL that's causing that as you had claimed, it's the screenshots that are too wide for your resolution, which I'm pretty certain you were able to figure out judging by your screenshot.

Maybe I'll hack in some straight javascript that will resize if > 500px and show original on hover... though ideally if resized, I'd like a link shown below the image that's been resized that you click to show original size. This protects against linked images.

http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=4422
I guess he wants polls to be centered like before? Actually the same applies to the login screen, but i guess for the login screen it does not matter.
*edit* hmm maybe not..

Oh, and i'm not sure how to improve it but for some reason for me the 'names bar' above each posts feels wrong.. more like it would be the footer of the previous post. Maybe its just because i'm not yet totally used to it? Does anyone else think the same?

I've begun ripping out the old javascript junk and prepping for jquery magic. prototype and scriptaculous were great for their time and led the way for jquery... but jquery is far better .

Not that anyone really cares but just some numbers:

with old javascript libraries average load time was --> 1.36s
without: 534ms
with jquery: 877ms


I'm still working on decoding the javascript file the previous author included... there seems to be a lot of unnecessary (for 2009) code.. for now I'll let the 3kb file stay as to not break anything.

k, now there is some jquery induced image resizing for over-sized images... still working on fixing a few bugs.

I'm not liking the new theme at all. So I just changed back to the other one in my user CP.

It looks good, but it is just too big.
Fonts need to be smaller, Alien heads on the side of the front page need to be smaller, space on the sides needs to be larger, but the idea is nice.

Maybe look at the phoronix forums since they have similar(dark) colors and a nice layout

uluyol901 wrote:It looks good, but it is just too big.
Fonts need to be smaller, Alien heads on the side of the front page need to be smaller, space on the sides needs to be larger, but the idea is nice.

hold ctrl+scrollwheel down



As for margins on the side, I'm not wasting that much space. It's ridiculous to me to not use a fluid width for a forum.

It's too big by DEFAULT, that's what I mean. And talking about polls, yes I would like them being centered (yet, it is not a part of a problem) and yes, they are just part of the content that expands too much (in some browsers).

13px is not too big by default, I'm glad you have amazing eyesight but on the web in 2009, over 50% of the population uses resolutions > 1024x768, and even on 1024x768, 13px is reasonable.

I've already scaled down the font drastically and if you still find it too large, simply use the suggestion above. 10px for web in 2009 is ridiculous for a normal sized font.


By the way... you didn't even comment on the over-sized image fix.

Fix is somehow borked both in firefox and opera. The images are scaled down until you scroll your window and waving your mouse over when they centered, increase their size. Will post a screenshot.

I don't think you understand how it works...

jquery adds a class "thumbnailed" to any image over 550px.

Code: Select all

.thumbnailed:hover {
   max-width:auto;
}

this means when you hover, it'll go back to it's original size.

This is the most simple way to go about it, I'm working on click toggle in case that is preferred.

If this is how people like, then leave it be. I'll try to avoid hovering my mouse pointer then.

If you don't like the resize on hover, simply turn JavaScript off, as it isn't used for anything else useful anyway.

And even this - why use a javascript library for it? Can this really not be done with CSS?

Except javascript is part of ajax and used in numerous webmails.

Sure, but nobody really NEEDS AJAX.

Well, simple. Turn it off generally, turn it on per-site where you need it. E.g. using NoScript in Firefox.

Much less annoyances (ads, popups, layer ads - all gone).

AJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJAX


I chose to use a javascript library because I plan on doing more with javascript.


I don't know of a pure CSS solution. I used javascript to sense images larger than 550px. The following code snippet failed for me.

Code: Select all

img { max-width:50px; }
img:hover {   max-width:auto !important; }

Wow... something has changed while I was away drinkin'... am I still drunk ?

For a first blink, it's odd, but nice. I have to test it for a few days untill I can tell more.

Vast improvement over the old theme, which I always had to override the css to get a readable font size with.

Thumbs up.

Btw specifying pixel sizes for fonts is such a broken design I won't even comment on it. Wait, just did. Bugger.

I know I should use em but I don't care

i'm already used to this design. Love it.
(just some more images of flying eyeballs in the background and it's perfect)

Isn't there a cookie box that keeps you logged in or have I missed it? If there really isn't one, could one be added?

[-z-]: please keep it perfectly usable without scripting enabled.

Use JS only for optional features (like this image resizing), or like phpBB does, for the bold etc. buttons.

Well the major point of jquery is that it allows you to write unobtrusive javascript so it's easier to make your markup fall back to pure HTML . Even if I started ajaxifying things (which would require me to edit or create php files for an old BB system), they would roll back to normal form submits.

But otherwise, any js mods I do will pretty much be rewrites of whatever is current written, so I can pull it out of the template files and clean it up so we don't have a million "onloads", "href="javascript:...." or whatever other inline javascript solutions are built into this system.

but this is just future planning... I'm not committing myself to any javascript rewrites yet... just trying to level things out.




cookie box was set as a hidden field, automatically enabled, I changed it to a checkbox now.


P.S. rss feed was borked for ~18 hours, fixed now.