A few small changes.

[Hawk]

OK! Thanks! But you could have put that image on Aero, since I never use Prosilver.

Good luck with Prosilver.

[Gumboots]

Yeah but at the moment everyone sees Prosilver when if they're not logged in when they rock up. But hey, I can put that banner or any other one on Aero if you like.

Been thinking about Aero actually. The way it's coded is a bit of a mongrel, and frankly I'm not keen on supporting it. But the basic looks of the thing are a no-brainer to duplicate using Prosilver Dark as a basis. It's really just a matter of changing a few link, text and background colours. The translucent border on Aero are easy to do. So it's certainly possible to whip up something that gives the Aero look on a more easily supportable codebase.

[Hawk]

That's fine. You can get rid of Aero if you want. I kind'a like the PsDE anyway.
Make it easy and appealing to you. That's the important thing.

[Gumboots]

Well it can stay for now, and I've thrown that banner on it. What I'm thinking is that I don't mind having a range of different looks (in fact I like that) but it'd be good if they all shared the same templating. There are some things about phpBB templating that bug me, so I'm planning of throwing a few tweaks at it. If those can be kept one set of files then updates will be easy.

[Hawk]

Well it can stay for now, and I've thrown that banner on it.

Cool!

[Gumboots]

Just as an example of what I mean, here's a shot of something I whipped up last night in the ad breaks for Pirates of the Carribbean*. It's Prosilver Dark Edition, live on this site, with about 80 lines of CSS overrides running on top of it (in the Stylish add-on for Pale Moon). Something like this would be quite passable for an easily maintainable light theme.

Prosilver_Custom_Edition.jpg

Had a thought about banners too. They're just defined like this:

Code: Select all

.headerbar>.inner {
	background-image: url(Banner_1.jpg);
	background-size: cover;
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	background-position: center 65%;
	border-radius: 7px 7px 0 0;
}

That allows them to scale with the screen width, and setting them as background images in the CSS cuts bandwidth and load times compared to an inline image. The groovy bit here is that phpBB sets a class on the body tag depending on where you are. The basic declaration shown above covers all forum pages, which means you always have a banner everywhere. Then if you want to have different banners on different pages you can just add them in, for any style, as it suits you, like this:

Code: Select all

/* For the in-forum/topics list page. */
.section-viewforum .headerbar>.inner {
	background-image: url(Banner_2.jpg);
}
/* For inside a topic. */
.section-viewtopic .headerbar>.inner {
	background-image: url(Banner_3.jpg);
}
/* For the post editor/replies page. */
.section-posting .headerbar>.inner {
	background-image: url(Banner_4.jpg);
}
/* For the user control panel. */
.section-ucp .headerbar>.inner {
	background-image: url(Banner_5.jpg);
}

With a minor markup tweak, it's even possible to set up individual banners for each forum category, or even for each board, if you want to go that far. Which is probably overkill, but it can be done, and it can be done just for the ones you can be bothered with, with the rest falling back to the basic banner. So expect random eye candy every so often, because I know I won't be able to resist having some fun.

Edit: I've just set up a stylesheet switcher for Prosilver Dark. This is not the "Quick Style" in the header that we've had for ages. It's an addition specifically for Prosilver Dark. That style comes with 8 different colour schemes (blue, green, grey, orange, pink, purple, red and yellow). I don't like all of them, but they exist and someone might like some of them.

However, the thing is I'm testing what's possible with alternate stylesheets in the one parent style. For example, I can easily define another sheet (like light_and_snowy.css) to run the code shown in the screenshot. This would give us a good range of styles without having to run an extension and without having to actually install multiple styles. If someone wants to change the look for whatever reason, they just click a button and it's sorted.

Check out the footer of Prosilver Dark, right at the bottom.

*I'm into highly intellectual cinema, y'know.

[Gumboots]

I've just added something else I like having: global "Go to top" and "Go to bottom" links. These are only on Prosilver Dark Edition at the moment.

If you hover your cursor near the left edge of the screen, at any height below the top menu bar, you'll see a half height bar with a double arrow in it. Clicking the upper one takes you to the top of any page, and clicking the lower one takes you to the bottom of any page. I find this very convenient.

[RulerofRails]

Looking good. I used to use the "Unread posts" quick link to check for new posts here without being logged in. Just wondering the reason why it disappeared? I suppose I need to login more often now. With the easier way to do that it's more manageable.

[Gumboots]

Oh that's because if you enable that thing then whenever you aren't logged in it shows everything on the forum as being unread. Which is kinda silly IMO. Especially with the way phpBB makes everything flash on and off, which bugs me a lot. I'd never used it anyway.

[Hawk]

The 'Go to Top' and 'Go to Bottom' links are cool, but having to hover over them to show them might make them kind'a meaningless for most folks; if they don't see them.

Also, I've always just used F5 (or the refresh button in the browser header) for a refresh. Does Ctrl+F5 do something different? It didn't seem to for me.

I like that light blue text for PsDE. What was the default color? I forgot already.

Looks like you're bringing the Hawk & Badger Railroad into the 21st century.