Forum and Web Design

tom_mc · Post by **tom_mc** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 11:33 am

Ya true but it just depends how fussy you are at retaining "The Look" of your page. Your audience is techy so it might not matter that much, as most will not be using IE. I might be temtped to leave it too but a friend of mine is a graphic artist and he is so fussy that when he creates something he makes sure it is perfect in ever browser. Just depends how fussy you are I guess

tom_mc

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:38 pm

tom_mc wrote:I love the look! It is clean and easy to read. Good job.

Now as far as the making it work with Internet Exploder, I have to vote yes, it needs to work with IE. They still own 90% of the market share (unfortunately). That is a very large audience that will see your creation as broke.

just my 2 cents
tom_mc

Thanks for the comment, tom_mc! The responses here have been better than I expected, particularly since I figured that only a few people would like darker themes. I'm pretty sure the "clean" part of the layout would come through in a lighter theme, if not come through better, so I'd like to try that anyhow.

The forum I'm running right now has about a dozen of my friends, and we like to keep everything private, anyhow, so I'm not looking looking to expand or cater to casual users. When I told them I was testing it, I warned them that if they were using Internet Explorer it would break.

I'm not a graphic designer by any stretch of the imagination, so making things perfect in every browser seems silly. My designs aren't going to be so brilliant that such perfectionism is warranted. Not to mention that Andy Clarke made a good point: people don't really expect things to be the same in every browser, not to mention every device. Designers do because they're accustomed to the control of a print environment, but you don't expect new technology to work the same in older browsers any more than you expect an old cell-phone to support pictures and movies.

I was thinking that since this is a linux forum, it's probably not imperative that it look fantastic in IE. I'd rather it look good, but I'm not fussy and doubt I'll get hung up on my design if isn't exactly what I want. After all, I'll not be able to make things as pretty as a pro who knows what he's doing, and if I were only concerned about a consistent look across browsers, I'd stick with tables.

But if someone comes to the forum from work and is forced to use IE, or someone visits the forum who has yet to try linux or a good browser, I'd like for it to stay functional and look professional enough to be inviting, though it would be nice to add some little "extras" to show the advantages of using a more standards-compliant browser such as Firefox, Seamonkey, or Opera. I'm getting way ahead of myself, though. Just sorting out my current ideas in Firefox is my first order of business.

I love CSS the more I use it, even if it throws me sometimes. My bigger problem is figuring out where to put things. I like the way the "quote" and "edit" buttons look in the default theme here, how they're part of the "outer table" of each post, though the look is very different than what I'm attempting. The design is very well done but every post has at least two headers and two footers, while I'm attempting the opposite look, with nothing but simple color to unify each post's contents and divide them from the next. I'm NOT happy with what I have now for posts, but here's the basics:

See, those quote and edit buttons just don't work. They stand out too much (sticking with the red color was probably a bad choice), and the placement feels awkward. This is where my lack of design knowledge is most likely hurting me.

Speaking of getting ahead of myself, I don't really remember any member of the tech show suggesting they'd even want a new forum design, and if they do, they might not particularly care for whatever I might have in mind. It's their forum, after all.

tom_mc · Post by **tom_mc** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 1:22 pm

See, those quote and edit buttons just don't work. They stand out too much (sticking with the red color was probably a bad choice), and the placement feels awkward. This is where my lack of design knowledge is most likely hurting me.

I disagree, I like the quote and edit buttons. Being the same colour gives the buttons continuity throughout the page. That way when I am looking for a button I know what colour they all are. I know when you create something - you work in it so much that it gets hard to stand back and critique objectively but I think they look fine where they lie.

tom_mc

mowestusa · Post by **mowestusa** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 2:17 pm

Vogateer wrote: See, those quote and edit buttons just don't work. They stand out too much (sticking with the red color was probably a bad choice), and the placement feels awkward. This is where my lack of design knowledge is most likely hurting me.

Speaking of getting ahead of myself, I don't really remember any member of the tech show suggesting they'd even want a new forum design, and if they do, they might not particularly care for whatever I might have in mind. It's their forum, after all.

Actually, I agree with Tom, I like the quote and edit buttons. I might want them a little smaller is all, but hard to tell from just a picture without having to use them.

As far as a new template for the TLLTS forum I personally don't see anything wrong with some options, however, ever since they switched the forum's security to the higher notch, I have that KDM2 theme as my theme whenever I follow a link from my RSS Bookmark folder in Firefox. It changes to Cobalt 2.0 as soon as I log in, but that KDM2 purple theme just hurts my eyes everytime it pops onto the screen. I have no idea why it always picks up that theme instead of the original default or the Cobalt 2.0 theme that I have been using, but it does. Also for me clicking the option to keep me logged in doesn't work. As soon as I close every tab in Firefox that has the TLLTS forum in it, it logs me out. If I close Firefox or close every tab that has the forum, then it acts like I have loged out. Then when I try to follow one of the TLLTS RSS entries in my RSS bookmark folder I get that hurt the eyes KDM2. It is painful to visit the site that way, but so easy to simply click on the last post listed in the RSS bookmark folder in Firefox to view a thread I'm following.

I'm not normally a dark theme fan, but I love the one you are working on compared to that KDM2 theme.

Anyone else have this issue?

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 5:15 pm

mowestusa wrote:Actually, I agree with Tom, I like the quote and edit buttons. I might want them a little smaller is all, but hard to tell from just a picture without having to use them.

I think you guys are right. I tried to follow the sizes of the original "subSilver" style, for what reason I'm not exactly sure. I think the inconsistent size (and therefore alignment) ruin what should be a clean line. Glad you guys pointed that out, I was struggling to come up with something clever, maybe a CSS drop-down menu for it or something along those lines. Also, you're right about keeping the red color, it keeps things monochromatic and consistent.

mowestusa wrote:As far as a new template for the TLLTS forum I personally don't see anything wrong with some options, however, ever since they switched the forum's security to the higher notch, I have that KDM2 theme as my theme whenever I follow a link from my RSS Bookmark folder in Firefox. It changes to Cobalt 2.0 as soon as I log in, but that KDM2 purple theme just hurts my eyes everytime it pops onto the screen. I have no idea why it always picks up that theme instead of the original default or the Cobalt 2.0 theme that I have been using, but it does. Also for me clicking the option to keep me logged in doesn't work. As soon as I close every tab in Firefox that has the TLLTS forum in it, it logs me out. If I close Firefox or close every tab that has the forum, then it acts like I have loged out. Then when I try to follow one of the TLLTS RSS entries in my RSS bookmark folder I get that hurt the eyes KDM2. It is painful to visit the site that way, but so easy to simply click on the last post listed in the RSS bookmark folder in Firefox to view a thread I'm following.

I'm not normally a dark theme fan, but I love the one you are working on compared to that KDM2 theme.

Yeah, I'm not usually a dark theme guy myself, but I found the weblog of soem woman who's a designer, and she did a really good job with it, so I used that as my inspiration.

Might it be that the RSS bookmarks use http instead of https? I know if I visit using http, it never logs me in automatically. Perhaps switching the RSS feed to https links would help, though that might requiring delving into the php extension that's doing it.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 10:39 am

(Edited)
Well, interest in the theme turned out to be underwhelming (nobody wanted it

).

If for some reason anybody does want the theme, just send me a private message.