Additional Themes/Skins

17
ArchSenex
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:05:16 AM

I mentioned it on Discord, but figure it's best to have a thread for it too. Right now, I only see "Light" and "Dark" as the options on skins/themes. While it's nice to be able to turn off the blinding white of doom, I'd really like if we had skins available to add more visual breaks. I do not dig the current "undivided layouts" fad.

Also, I'd really like if we could see the last reply/poster in each forum, rather than just for the entire category of forum.

Alastir
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:06:26 AM

@archsenex said in Additional Themes/Skins:

Also, I'd really like if we could see the last reply/poster in each forum, rather than just for the entire category of forum.

I believe they have the code for this, and it is in the works.

When you say the "undivided layout" - Are you talking about the light grey line between individual posters posts?

ArchSenex
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:09:49 AM

Nah, just the general UI approach. On the top-level, there's no visual breaks between each forum, for instance. Only for categories. I'm not being sarcastic about it being all the rage in UI design, it's supposed to present a more "open" feel, but for a lot of people (myself included) it is not optimal.

I like things like alternating shading etc. because my eyes are trained to scan information based on visual breaks. Without breaks, I have to read the text just to scan when navigating etc.

allereli
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:17:11 AM

I would like:

  • a skin where the thread title isn't ginormous so I can read at work more inconspicuously

  • +1 to squelch avatars and sigs wherever that was posted

  • a way to turn off chats completely without sacrificing other features

  • on the unread page: for clicking on the thread to go to the first unread post and not to the first post in the thread

  • an obvious way to block/ignore users

  • an obvious way to close a chat window if chat cannot be completely disabled

ArchSenex
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:29:27 AM

marked improvement.

The good thing is, this software supports choices, right? So we can just install a bunch and people can pick personally?

Alastir
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:32:12 AM

@archsenex said in Additional Themes/Skins:

marked improvement.

The good thing is, this software supports choices, right? So we can just install a bunch and people can pick personally?

It should, yes. But if you can find the theme you like and are able to suggest it. It's easier to add.

ArchSenex
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:33:36 AM

What software are we one (yes, I can probably dig it, but I am le lazy)

Alastir
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:36:02 AM

@archsenex said in Additional Themes/Skins:

What software are we one (yes, I can probably dig it, but I am le lazy)

NodeBB

ArchSenex
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:36:40 AM

thanks, digging around now. However, the dark rectangles is honestly not a bad one, I'd use it for a while to at least see what I like/ don't like.

Alastir
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:47:27 AM

You can also try clicking on your username icon (Profile) in the top right corner, then go to Settings. Scroll down to find Select skin for theme -- Choose the Dark theme -- Click save changes. Then click Elanthian Forums to reload the forums. It should change over to the dark theme.

ArchSenex
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 12:49:03 AM

yeah, the dark theme just changes colors, I've already switched to it, doesn't hit the underlying problems with layout and breaks. It IS less blinding, but still a little cartoony for my taste.

FlayedAngel
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 3:31:11 AM

@archsenex +1 for these ideas.

FlayedAngel
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 3:32:34 AM

Liking the skin sample!

Which is... uh, not what it sounds like, heh.

ondreian
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 7:43:57 AM

It is on our radar to offer more skins, it is just tedious and slightly dangerous to check to make sure they all work with the current version of NodeBB on a live website.

We stumbled across this problem when we were looking at this a few weeks ago and accidentally enabled a theme which ended up being incredibly bug-laden.

This next weekend I am going to be looking at setting up a staging instance, so we can simultaneously work and experiment without affecting the live site, which will be better for everyone.

GS4Menos
Tuesday, August 8th, 2017, 1:34:44 PM

@ondreian

I don't know how anything works on the back end, but it would be really nice if there was some sort of slider or RGB box we could enter in to change the background color and text color. I am one of those odd people who prefer to read everything as black on sepia vs the common choices of grey/dark grey, black/white and white/black. I can pretty much deal with any board layout so long as the colors don't hurt my eyes.

Flimbo
Wednesday, August 9th, 2017, 2:55:54 PM

For someone stuck in 2012, I found this theme - It's got the oldstyle forum look but is a responsive template -

https://community.nodebb.org/topic/9430/nodebb-theme-exodus-exodus-for-nodebb

peam
Wednesday, August 9th, 2017, 6:14:30 PM

@flimbo said in Additional Themes/Skins:

For someone stuck in 2012, I found this theme - It's got the oldstyle forum look but is a responsive template -

https://community.nodebb.org/topic/9430/nodebb-theme-exodus-exodus-for-nodebb

I'm fine with the dark theme here, but that looks like it could quell a lot of complaints about 'not understanding' the layout here. Good find.