O/T—Board Theme Input (was Change Your...)!

[Henry]

The theme I'm seeing right now, after John (MordEth) reset the old one for me (because it didn't come up complete on my Mac, i.e., no buttons), is good for me. As for colors, on my browser (Netscape v. 7.0) the user can specify (under "Edit-Preferences-Appearance") the background and foreground colors of the page, if you choose not to default to the webmaster's choices.

[MordEth]

The theme I'm seeing right now, after John (MordEth) reset the old one for me (because it didn't come up complete on my Mac, i.e., no buttons), is good for me. As for colors, on my browser (Netscape v. 7.0) the user can specify (under "Edit-Preferences-Appearance") the background and foreground colors of the page, if you choose not to default to the webmaster's choices.

Henry,

You can override page attributes in basically every browser, but most people are not motivated enough to want to do it, and I think both John and I want to make this site look good (and work properly, no matter what obsolete browser one might be using—within reason). I actually specifically set your theme, then after the response in this thread (and importantly, hearing John’s opinion), I quietly pushed everyone to use the current theme instead of the more flashy and rounded ‘prosilver’ theme.

The current one is usable until I make something far better that actually suggests the material we are discussing, in my opinion.

...now I just have to make it, and come up with avatars for a few more of the people who do not have one yet.

I’m glad that I was able to fix things for you, though, as I mentioned elsewhere.

I’m also seeing that I need to come up with a ‘link to post’ feature like ProBoards had, as well. On the upside, though; anyone using IE6 should actually see the transparent PNG graphics as intended, since here I was able to insert JavaScript to fix (e.g. ‘kludge a work-around’) the broken nature (at least partially) of Internet Explorer 6.

I still strongly recommend that you get one of: Firefox, Apple’s Safari, Opera or Google’s Chrome (if you are still using Internet Explorer of any version). I’m a huge Firefox fan (and ironically, on Tuesday morning, because I was wearing a Mozilla logo t-shirt, I had someone think that I was one of their developers or something...)

(logo on the shirt)

But if I am going to buy t-shirts, I generally prefer them to be for things that I support, and free software is definitely one of them.

It’s good to be back in Boston, though, even though I had a good time while I was gone (apart from finding out that we lost TMF v1.0 and I needed to get up a proper replacement, but even that was not so bad).

— MordEth

[Henry]

Sorry, David, I see I called you "John" again---darn! When WILL I learn?

BTW, as I understand it (not much!), Netscape 7.0 is a Mozilla-based browser. The other ones you mentioned are not supported on Mac OS 9.1; I've checked. Anyhow, everything is A-OK as of now!

[MordEth]

Sorry, David, I see I called you "John" again---darn! When WILL I learn?

Henry,

You can always go back and edit your previous post and pretend that it never happened...at least until people quote you (as above).

But when pressed you can always claim they made it up...

Anyway, I don’t mind. Perhaps if I were prone to sign public communication with my first name; normally I limit that to private messages and e-mail. Not that it matters at this point; I think that most likely everyone remembers vaguely who I am and where I live now. Despite this, though, only a certain board ‘admin’ has attempted to harass me via my contact information, and it has been entirely through third-party spam.

BTW, as I understand it (not much!), Netscape 7.0 is a Mozilla-based browser. The other ones you mentioned are not supported on Mac OS 9.1; I've checked. Anyhow, everything is A-OK as of now!

You have it exactly correct. In the beginning (of Mozilla’s history, at any rate—browser history goes back further) there was Netscape, and they were pretty much the undisputed king of web browsers until Microsoft unseated them by releasing Internet Explorer for free, as an add-on to Windows 95. Originally Netscape was something for which one paid to use (like a lot more software at the time).

Netscape 7 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1) was created after AOL purchased the Netscape Communications Corporation, then spun off into Mozilla, and for a time, AOL repackaged their work (as they were primarily Netscape employees working at Mozilla until it became autonomous). They finally moved to build Netscape from Firefox, but ultimately ended up axing it in favor of re-branding Netscape as a web portal.

I’m not familiar enough with Mac OS 9 to know if it is possible to use a newer browser on it (I didn’t get a Mac until after the launch of Mac OS X), but it may be—in the meantime, now I know to test in Netscape 7 for Henry (and I have a copy on my laptop).

Here at The Talking Machine Forum™ we firmly believe in “No member left behind.”

I imagine that a lot of this history is not of interest to most of our members, but just in case anyone cares, my personal browser use history was:

NCSA Mosaic → Netscape → Mozilla → Firefox

...with the use of some other browsers in parallel, mostly for testing web sites that I had created. These days you always have to test your pages in IE, also—you can write completely valid HTML and CSS and still have it break your page in any way imaginable, and often it requires kludges to work around its failings.

— MordEth

[MordEth]

I am currently working on a new theme, that if you are really sick of the white you can try out, but I warn you—I haven’t fixed the blue links yet, so...some of the links are hard to read, although they will be fixed shortly. All of the images used will take longer (e.g. icons for things), and I will be working to move things around to simplify the layout a bit more (without removing features).

If you would like to try it out (and offer comments in this thread), feel free to set your theme to ‘anachronist’.

Keep in mind, it is in no way finished, but will be the default theme when I am done with it (ASAP). You will probably want to Shift+Refresh (on Mac, with most browsers this is Shift+Cmd+R; on Windows it would be Shift+Ctrl+R) periodically to force your browser to get an updated style sheet—I’m saving updated versions every couple of minutes or so, as I edit through it.

As always—I’m here to help and I value your input, so please let me know what you think and any suggestions you may have, but note that it’s a work in progress. Try not to flame me too hard until I am done with it.

Also, the current plan is that everything above “ View unanswered posts | View active topics” will go in the blank space next to the logo, which will help to tighten up the page.

Your friendly internet daemon,

MordEth

[MordEth]

Quick update—we’re getting a lot closer; the biggest thing I need to fix now is the link colors.

I should hopefully have that done shortly, and then things will look much as they did on the ProBoards site, at least in terms of colors (if not quite the layout).

— MordEth

[MordEth]

As a quick informational post: after consulting with John we have migrated to my partially finished ‘Anachronist’ or (TMF Classic) theme. It is not 100%, but it is quite usable, and I will work on getting the images, etc. changed over in the meantime.

Finally, those who were complaining about how blinding the default phpBB theme was should not have to ‘soak their eyes’ any longer.

Your friendly internet daemon,

MordEth

[Wolfe]

Great job MordEth, it is indeed a relief to see something like the old theme again. Thanks.

[EdisonSquirrel]

MordEth,

For a moment I thought I was back at the Proboards site. The color scheme is great.

However, the font size has become so tiny as to be almost illegible.

Rocky

[MordEth]

For a moment I thought I was back at the Proboards site. The color scheme is great.

I’ve really liked John’s color scheme—and he gets full credit for it—he directed me in picking the colors, and the majority of the aesthetic decisions have been his in terms of things like color. I’m better at layout.

However, the font size has become so tiny as to be almost illegible.

I’m still trying to figure out why this is—the current 10pt Georgia seems a bit big to me, but other people have told me otherwise, so I am testing on multiple browsers/platforms.

If I could have you guys take a look at this:

(Firefox 3.0.5)



(Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13)



(Opera 9.63)



(Safari 3.2.1)

[Click on any of the above images to see a full-size version.]

How do these compare against what you are seeing in your browser?

Also—thanks for helping me to make this forum look better for you, the members by beta-testing—I appreciate it.

These were taken on Windows XP in VMware and should be representative of Windows machines running this version of Windows. I will be doing screen captures in Windows 2000 (also in VMware) and on Mac OS X (native) next.

I do not have a copy of Vista (and probably would not obtain one—it’s a train wreck of an operating system), so I cannot test in it. If anyone is interested in providing Windows screen captures of what they are seeing, to help me iron out things in the theme (and I’m aware of the images and the ‘Font color’ issue next to the post input field), let me know if you need directions on how to do it.

Thank you all for your time and contributions!

Your friendly internet daemon,

MordEth