Forum Theme Issues - reporting and discussion

[Bagheera]

I almost accidentally reported this post trying to quote it, so perhaps those buttons should be farther apart.

I agree with this. IMO the "report post" button should be on the bottom somewhere, so that we have to look for it rather than putting it in the region we reflexively click to reply to posts.

[Monk Ed]

I second the desire to see the return of visibly named buttons and to keep the warn button separate from the rest.

I could try to replace the icons directly in the file system (and hope the formatting can accommodate the changed dimensions) but Paul doesn't want me changing things out from under him -- it's hard enough for him to keep the live and test instances of his styles synchronized.

[pwhodges]

I have rearranged the buttons so that the report button is separated from the edit and quote buttons (and for mods their buttons are separated similarly).

I'm still looking into text, but it's more involved as the buttons are not held as separate files. I may just put text on the edit and quote buttons, as they're most used, and having them bigger would be appropriate. But the fact this is a responsive theme is making that much harder...

[Sailor Star Dust]

I was going to suggest for forum aesthetics, I think light and dark themes as the site layout (alongside their banner of choice?) would be excellent. That way folks can choose their preference without eye strain worries.

Think y'all are doing a great job with the upgrade so far!

[NemZ]

It occurs to me that if we make a light/dark switch option that we might need to put down a blanket ban on colored text in sigs to keep everything easily readable for both options.

[Seele00TextOnly]

^ I humbly request that colored text in sigs not be banned for this or any other reason.

I mean, isn't the worst that can happen being that someone can't read a sig because of a theme they're using? That's not a big enough problem in my mind to ban the colors entirely for everyone.

[TehDonutKing]

It occurs to me that if we make a light/dark switch option that we might need to put down a blanket ban on colored text in sigs to keep everything easily readable for both options.

Invert the text colors for the dark theme.

[Sailor Star Dust]

^ Ooh, that's good thinking

[pwhodges]

Inverting colours in posts would be beyond my capability, and very disconcerting; it would also create confusion over mod and admin colours, for instance.

At QC I used a fairly dark gray background, but it's far from black. The main problem has been when people used yellow in posts which vanished in the light theme - but we just discouraged it (with explanation) and it stopped.

I provided two themes there other than the default, but in spite of complaints (which lasted only a week) each of the alternates has only been taken up by single-figure numbers of users (out of a similar membership to here).

[pwhodges]

BTW, I'm aware that my changes last night aren't as well integrated into the responsive bit for mobiles. The responsive stuff is actually very complex and I don't understand it all yet, though I'm getting an idea what bits to copy around when trying to fix it.

Do bring up such matters though, if you suspect I need a heads-up; it takes me time to try every page of every theme on every device, so I only check at that level when I feel guilty enough.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Out of curiosity, will the Front Page/News link (should be next to Wiki) and the Threads list be added to the infobar eventually?

[pwhodges]

Front Page I literally just forgot to include (I did that change after midnight, so was getting tired). Thanks for the reminder!

I don't think a thread list exists; I asked Monk to look into it a while ago, but haven't chased it up as it's a minor convenience (but a good one, I agree) that can wait its turn. I hope the built-in forum search will help in finding things in a more focussed way than the old Google one could.

[pwhodges]

Front Page is back (called News).

I renamed FAQ as How-to - it contains stuff about using the forum, not about Eva. But now I realise I can't remember what the old FAQ link pointed to; was it the same, or some page in the Wiki, does anyone recall? (We intend to have a copy of the old forum running to check such things, but at the moment it isn't playing ball - something to do with being so tightly integrated to its previous environment, I suspect.)

[Monk Ed]

(We intend to have a copy of the old forum running to check such things, but at the moment it isn't playing ball - something to do with being so tightly integrated to its previous environment, I suspect.)

By contrast, I was able to set up a test version of the current forum literally by just copying and pasting the forum code folders and changing the names of a few things (and cloning the database, of course -- and clearing a cache folder that was causing it to access the live database instead of the cloned one).

You all could even visit it -- if I ever gave out the link.

[Shamsiel-kun]

By contrast, I was able to set up a test version of the current forum literally by just copying and pasting the forum code folders and changing the names of a few things (and cloning the database, of course -- and clearing a cache folder that was causing it to access the live database instead of the cloned one).

Heck, we could use it as a giant social experiment, to check whether, when starting with two separate copies of exactly the same forum, threads end up differently depending on which contiguous group of users post in them. And whether, if each forum supplements the other at a certain time, to keep each copy the same as the other, this causes a time paradox to occur at a certain moment (and the end of the world).

Or perhaps this has secretly been implemented, and we just think we are posting to the same forum, but are actually in two parallel ones.

/technobabble.

You all could even visit it -- if I ever gave out the link.

Didn't you do this earlier this week?
/mindscrew

[Monk Ed]

Shouldn't "EvaGeeks Wiki" be called "EvaWiki"? That's what it calls itself in the title bar and on its front page. I also think it would look better that way on the menu.

[robersora]

I love the Unread posts thingy, so it's pretty awesome of Phwodges to put it into the front main menu box.
Question: Would it be possible to put a "mark all topics as read" into the "Unread posts" page?

[pwhodges]

I'm missing that, too. I don't know where it's gone, but I'll try to find it and bring it back home.

NB: there's still a Mark All Read on the main forum index page.

[Monk Ed]

Just letting everyone know that the double-spacing issue in sigs is actually part of the corrupted text issue, so that's not something pwhodges can fix (but I can). A test sig that I de-corrupted (or rather, successfully ported over from the old database) lost its double-spacing.

[Bagheera]

One thing I really liked about the old site was the fact that the forum navigation tree (Board index < EvaGeeks.org Forums < Evageeks.org News and Feedback in this case) was at the bottom of the page as well as the top. That made it easy to read new posts and jump back out to the front page without having to scroll back up.