Topic: Upgrade to SMF 2.0, New Theme.

[-<WillyP>-]

Scy, in the Gimp, there is an option to change color to alpha. Very easy to do, just use the dropper to get the right color, and a couple of clicks and your there.

Alio, the option would be to create different themes, and allow people to choose which one, the downside to that is each theme needs to be created and maintained. Some changes to the site require each theme to be edited so more themes means more work. I will make a theme for light on dark, dark on light and one with over-sized text.

[DarkWing]

Mmm, but something else I just remembered. The blue background for everybody's posts won't work too good for the MPD forum. Could there be a way to rig just the MPD to have black instead (as that works best for it)?

Me thinks he has a point there.   Is that an option?

Of course, it isn't very often that people actually use the quote function while in the MPD...

[Matthew]

Mmm, but something else I just remembered. The blue background for everybody's posts won't work too good for the MPD forum. Could there be a way to rig just the MPD to have black instead (as that works best for it)?

Me thinks he has a point there.   Is that an option?

Of course, it isn't very often that people actually use the quote function while in the MPD...

I think the style he's using has the whole background as blue, not just quotes.

[Scyphi]

MPD has always worked best on a black texting background, for the colored text to show up the best. Other colors, especially blue, don't work as well, because then the text colors tend to blend in and are then harder to see. And MPD is already pretty inactive now, so leaving the posts colored with a blue background is only going to hurt it more.

Except for this one detail, however, I'm okay with the blue background the posts sport, hence why I asked if a black color for posts could be rigged for the MPD forum only.

Scy, in the Gimp, there is an option to change color to alpha. Very easy to do, just use the dropper to get the right color, and a couple of clicks and your there.

I figured that's what you did, I was just curious. Maybe I should go ahead and make a version with a transparent background anyway, just in case. Wouldn't be hard to do in Photoshop, really,  it would just take more clicks than I was willing to do last time I had the file open.

[Crash]

What would be best is if the background scrolled with the page rather than "sticking" there as you scroll. Maybe that would be the best of both.
I think it looks really professional - like some huge gaming network site.
Maybe it would be worth stretching the shield orbs behind the main menu options to make them more rectangular. Not sure if it'd be worth your time but it might be kinda cute.

[Matthew]

What would be best is if the background scrolled with the page rather than "sticking" there as you scroll. Maybe that would be the best of both.

Oh god no. Scrolling backgrounds piss me off to no end. Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you're saying, I haven't actually checked it out as I honestly can't remember my password :/

[-<WillyP>-]

No need to log in to see it, what he is saying is that when you scroll down the page the pipe detail stay, instead of scrolling up with the page.

[Matthew]

Oh, I see what he's talking about. Normally I hate that, but since it's just the borders I think it looks fine.

[Crash]

I figured that since some people weren't keen on the background you could make it so that it only appeared when you were scrolled to the very top of the page. I really like the way it looks but I'm not so keen on how it floats and doesn't scroll with the rest of the page.

That was how I figured it was the best of both.

Another idea would be to make the blue-green background are a semi-transparent PNG so you could see through onto the silver techno background a little bit. That would be quite cool.

[Scyphi]

That would be really cool, might be worth trying. 

[-<WillyP>-]

Removed the pipe detail, made the background for posts black, and a few other things.
Please take another look: Test 2: Planet Descent

[Matthew]

I think it needs some sort of background, whether static or scrolling. It looks kind of wierd with that shade of blue on the black foreground and background.

[Crash]

I like the black background in the table cells messages in the forum. That is sensible and it looks good.

[VANGUARD]

is there any reason we can't upgrade this and keep the themes? I like the SMF default theme. The best? maybe not, but not bad.

[DarkWing]

I was just looking at the new (test) forum, and I like those new little changes you've made, WillyP.  

I was looking at the end of what there is of this thread in the test forum, and looked at how the badges look there... And I really like how smooth (and trim) the sample badge looks (look here).

I (personally) would like to see you the new proposed badges would look like on the new forum. (look here for the discussion about the badges).  Can we arrange for a sampling of the badges on the test forum?

EDIT: Fixed the links.