dsavi's Blog

The ideas

Since I want this theme, if I ever get around to developing it, to be for the people by the people, I have taken some usability ideas and compiled them here. Feel free to add, in fact I encourage you to.

• Make the jumpbox act like it did in phpBB3, so you don't have to press the "Go" button (Indy500fan)
  
• Make minimized forums smaller and more space-efficient
  
• Use a modern color scheme to create a smooth feel. Like chocolate.
  
• The ability to drag forums on the index in whichever order you like (Hawkxs)
  
• Do the same with the tabs at the top
  
• A place to log in on the index page (Hawkxs)
  
• Make the theme more visually logical by making read/Unread topics easier to differentiate (Among other things).
  

The design

I have a lot of sketches in my room of how I want the tabs to look- Similar to tabs in Google Chrome. I also have a color scheme or two in mind, either the feel of chocolate like I mentioned earlier or the feel of a white LED shining through plastic. I got that last idea from seeing my brother's external hard drive. That isn't a very good picture to illustrate what I mean as it isn't in a dark room.

Please, post your ideas for the new skin!

A new dark theme for TIF

What's the deal here? Since TIF was converted to Invision Power Board 3, there have been some problems with styling: Particularly, the lack of good, high quality themes. Especially in the dark themes department.

So what's wrong with "Deflection"?

Deflection is slightly inconsistent, but much more than that, badly designed. It follows the idea of a glossy look, which gives it a plastic, 2006ish feeling. The color choices are no less than odd; Dark shades of gray, green, blue, and orange do not work well together and add to the aforementioned inconsistency. Then there's some problems with usability: For example, when you try to forum jump, you must click the "Go" button to actually go. If you minimize a forum, it still takes about 40 pixels of space, not counting the margins above and below it. Just small things; But small things add up. One of the reasons I use Ubuntu is because it's full of nice things that smooth over the whole process of using an operating system. For example, you can scroll in a window that's not focused. Again small things, but they add up to make a smooth, practical, but most of all logical user experience.

I know that a lot of people were fans of TIFBlack; That's very cool and I'm glad to have made some sort of contribution to TIF. With this new theme, though, I'd like to do something far better: A theme that's customized to the wants and needs of the average TIF user, not what somebody at IPBforumSkins.com thought that people should have. Post your ideas away, whether they're crazy or not, I'd like to hear them.

tl;dr: The theme "Deflection" sucks; I'm going to make a better one; I want your ideas for it.

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