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The new dark forum skin development entry #1: Preperation

dsavi

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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.

[x]

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obfuscator

I really think we should stick to something similar to what we had on the old forum - basically matching the site. I'd really like to see a lot of blue :P

 

And I love how deflection is "so 2006" XD

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dsavi

I really think we should stick to something similar to what we had on the old forum - basically matching the site. I'd really like to see a lot of blue :P

 

And I love how deflection is "so 2006" XD

The truth is, it is very 2006. Apple had even more design influence than it does now back then, and take a look at their site as it looked in 2006. Lately, a very sensible design mode has started to go a lot towards smooth, or even almost grungy design which works very well and doesn't look half as cheesy (Although I admit that Apple managed to pull the glossy look off better than about 95% of anyone else who tried).

 

As for TIFBlack, I think it's about time to move on and do something new. This theme will be dark, but it might not be the TIFBlack you remember, and I plan to not even reuse the name.

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Hawks

Dark is good. If possible, removing the header sections or collapsing them to like 5px height would be great. Also if possible, if you could drag the headers to organize your forum in the order that you read them (repositionable forum headers, I don't think that was really clear).

 

Otherwise I have no thoughts besides the fact that it better look sweet in the Firefox Night Launch theme.

 

Also if you get around to it, a proper mobile skin would be awesome, I don't know if there's a way you could make it so it automatically chooses that skin if it senses you're on a mobile device but that would be perfect.

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dsavi

Dark is good. If possible, removing the header sections or collapsing them to like 5px height would be great. Also if possible, if you could drag the headers to organize your forum in the order that you read them (repositionable forum headers, I don't think that was really clear).

 

Otherwise I have no thoughts besides the fact that it better look sweet in the Firefox Night Launch theme.

 

Also if you get around to it, a proper mobile skin would be awesome, I don't know if there's a way you could make it so it automatically chooses that skin if it senses you're on a mobile device but that would be perfect.

IPB is designed to sense mobile browsers and automatically switch to Lo-fi, but apparently it doesn't always work now does it. :razz: I had thought of making the tabs at the top sortable and being able to collapse forums into a much shorter height, but I hadn't thought of being able to sort forums, that's a great idea. It could be difficult to implement, but it's worth it if I can do it IMO.

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Makoto_the_Phoenix

Not only am I thinking that Tip.it could benefit from a more consistent dark forum theme, but also a site facelift. If you recall, the forum skins were also made to resemble the looks of the main site, which I found to be a rather nice tool. With the new scheme you have in mind, did you ever consider redoing the main site as well?

 

Consistency for both site and forum would be ideal, if you asked me.

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Hawks

Realized also that we need a front-page forum login box. Would be the best feature possible, since these forums do not have it. Also a logout button at the bottom of pages/the forum navigation bar again at the bottom would be very useful as well.

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dsavi

Realized also that we need a front-page forum login box. Would be the best feature possible, since these forums do not have it. Also a logout button at the bottom of pages/the forum navigation bar again at the bottom would be very useful as well.

I agree about logging in on the index- But the navigation bar at the bottom of the page is very subsilver and I don't like that.

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