AuthorTopic: A skin appears!  (Read 30716 times)

Offline #36005A

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #30 on: September 20, 2010, 03:06:12 am
Ah, ok, the 2 pixels ARE intentional, it's supposed to protrude. I'll look into it tomorrow, there should be a way around that eventually.

Cool. I'm not a huge fan of the 2 pixel either, but that's definitely a style thing – it's the extra 2 pixels (total 4 pixel shift) in Webkit browsers that's the technical problem (for anyone else reading who is confused).

On the topic of web-design again, I enjoyed skinning the forum, but it's not something I do often. In the past I usually found my way around classic layouting. This here was for web basics class 3 years ago, which illustrates it nicely :P (not exactly cross-browser compatible, best viewed in firefox):

http://users.fh-salzburg.ac.at/~fhs16724/eightbitfactory/index.html

Nice design! I agree with you about skinning things, it's not always the most fun – you have to work around other people's (sometimes crappy) code, and you can't always just "do something" when you want to. Though I will say that I think there's an in-between: starting from scratch but using the general principles of layout design and user interface design. I think we have the two extremes here: skinning something, in which you are tweaking a very rigid already-created layout – and starting from scratch, coming up with something completely unique (possibly to the point of confusion). I don't mean that your website's design is bad, it looks very good, but it is very difficult to navigate. For example, it's not obvious what to click on on the first page (I first tried the logo, then the door, then the door again, then the dude). I know you said it was a student project, but I'm just using it as an example for the sake of discussion (sorry :P).

I'm not familiar with SMF, but I'm curious: have you modified any of the PHP or anything? Or just the CSS? Not asking for any particular reason, just curiosity (and if there's something that you absolutely cannot resolve with CSS modification, I suppose the PHP would be the next step).

Offline blumunkee

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #31 on: September 20, 2010, 04:07:13 am
Give it some time to sink in, guys. I was surprised too, but it's already starting to grow on me.

The banner does look kinda pukey now.  !yus!

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #32 on: September 20, 2010, 06:07:28 am
Uhm, so, I love it :]

That is all.

Offline questseeker

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #33 on: September 20, 2010, 09:46:41 am
I like everything, the angles, the icons, EXCEPT the colors.
It feels too... blue. I liked it better with warmer colors.
I don't mind the cold colours, but the few black bars and buttons in a basically light background scheme scare me because they look like holes of missing/wrong/malformed content within a normal page.

Writing this, I also noticed the Post and Preview buttons have a thin green drop shadow. What the...?

The oblique terminal of the drop shadow in the upper right corner of the "Post reply", "Topic Summary", etc. panels doesn't meet the corner properly (maybe due to a box model illness; I'm using Firefox). Is it meant to be like the one in the lower left corner?

The drawn buttons ("Login" etc.) and panels ("User Info" etc.) have shadow on the upper left corner, contrary to the implied light source direction of the large panel drop shadows.
 

Offline Accident

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #34 on: September 20, 2010, 01:04:24 pm
I don't understand why people were so confused with the 'reply' 'watch' and such images.
Because when you hover over it, it takes about a second to figure out what image does what.  :-*

Anyway, call me a biiig fan of this skin. I only with our banner color-matched.

Offline miascugh

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #35 on: September 20, 2010, 01:44:55 pm
Quick change, removed the button depth for clarity's sake. Also adjusted text-color on black backdrops and the margin issue with the link-tree.

Also, zooming should go smoothly, as in not, again.

I'm not familiar with SMF, but I'm curious: have you modified any of the PHP or anything? Or just the CSS? Not asking for any particular reason, just curiosity (and if there's something that you absolutely cannot resolve with CSS modification, I suppose the PHP would be the next step).

I didn't write new functions or change the database, just added and modified tags and attributes when needed.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 02:07:27 pm by miascugh »

Offline Sly

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #36 on: September 20, 2010, 02:45:45 pm
@ sly: Didn't perceive the text-background combination as hard on the eyes so far. What kind of monitor do you use?

I use a Hp W1907V Monitor

I'm at work right now and I am using a Lenovo L192 wide monitor and it seems much better. Maybe my HP monitor is too pixel clear.

My Lenovo L192 kinda just blends certain colors with a slight blur.

I love the new skin. =D
No zombies here.

Offline #36005A

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #37 on: September 20, 2010, 08:44:01 pm
Just wanted to add that the skin looks way better with fresh eyes. It was already great yesterday, but today it feels like "home".

Offline CrazyMLC

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #38 on: September 20, 2010, 09:16:13 pm
Just to be more clear;

I'd love to see more yellow in the skin. When I make a reply, the window changes to a yellow, and I think it looks really good with the brown background. I'm thinking less blue, and more yellow. But I'd keep the green, I think it looks good. (EDIT: Looking again, I'm seeing more yellow-green-yellow, which I think looks good, but I still don't see it in threads, which is what I really meant.)
I also think there should be more bold greens on the site, like with the reply button. (I'm diggin' it)

The buttons up top like home, or help, look off to me. I think the text could be brighter, and I don't get what's going on with some of the letters being grey.

A lot of this skin seems to center around icons, but I'd personally like to see more words. That might seem odd, seeing as this is an art forum, but it's my honest opinion.
What I mean by it centering around icons if that the words are either darker than the icons, or non-existent.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2010, 09:36:13 pm by CrazyMLC »

Offline questseeker

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Re: A skin appears!

Reply #39 on: September 21, 2010, 02:11:34 pm
The margin problem of the text links below the main panel seems fixed.

Does anyone confirm that the drop shadow in the top right of the main panel stops below the corner it should start from?