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morphine
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Sun Aug 14, 2016 7:05 pm

biffzinker wrote:
Rand wrote:
I like the layout of the dark scheme but prefer the colorization of the Canvas scheme, I don't suppose we could have an option that combines the two?

How about it morphine?

Not really possible :( Best we could ever do is some minor adjustments, which in fact we have done in order to integrate the themes with the rest of the site. The less customization, the better. Read the original post for more info on why we went this route.

For everyone on this thread going about the looks, here's some explanation so you can understand the process better. We didn't just pick two themes at random and called it a day. For starters, getting a hold of a forum theme (whether free or commercial) that's:

(a) Updated in terms of supporting the latest versions of the software
(b) Updated itself (bug fixing, browser incompatibilities, etc)
(c) Looks like something our audience would like

... is already not that easy. Now, if you add condition (d) stating "dark color based", your options are very limited. Thus we opted to pick two stock themes and integrate them with our site look. The "Black" (Blue) theme actually has some color customizations of our own so that it better blends in with the rest of the site. We even reached out to the Canvas theme author about a proper-dark version of it, but even though that's an often-requested feature, it still hasn't been done.

Long story short, guys, our particular crowd (staff included) is very picky with the way things look, and absolutely abhors change :). Do also consider that the number of people that used and use the blue theme is also percentage-point small when compared to the rest of the users.

In order to strike a balance between moving on with the times and onto phpBB 3.1, while still allowing forum-goers some choice (because we too tend to prefer dark themes), we opted to choose two stock or stock-ish themes and move on with integrating them. If one of them doesn't quite fit your bill, just go ahead and try the other for a few days, you may like it better.

And anyway, to paraphrase UberGerbil once, there may be some gnashing of teeth but in a couple days chances are nobody will even remember what the old forums looked like. :)
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morphine
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Sun Aug 14, 2016 7:06 pm

biffzinker wrote:
Thank you morphine.

Quick question, are you planning on doing anything with the place holder image where the avatar would be shown when viewing a profile?

Not really. It's a cute placeholder. And in any case, it's only showing when someone clicks on someone's nickname, so it's not really a big issue. The themes, by default, were showing avatars (which TR doesn't use), but we removed those.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Sun Aug 14, 2016 8:35 pm

I really like the default theme. Have you considered doing up the rest of the site this way?

It's always been kind of weird to me how the front page has one design language and the forums have another (or two now, since the two themes are so incredibly different beyond the color schemes).

It works great on my phone, which has always been a complaint of mine. Now there's no need for tapatalk support

But now, some ads don't load now that the forums have shifted, which is probably bad for TR. For example: http://imgur.com/a/k1RwS
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morphine
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Sun Aug 14, 2016 9:30 pm

Thanks Ben, we know about the AdSense spot and we'll see what we can do.

There are no immediate plans for a site redesign but I personally would like to give it a good facelift.
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AMD64Blondie
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 12:18 am

Glad to have a dark theme back.

The light theme was WAY too white.
 
Topinio
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 2:44 am

Custom date display format seem broken (for me). Checked in both FF 47 and IE 11.

I set a custom format in Board preferences->Edit global settings->My date format ( D, jS M Y H:i a ) and this works when I mouse-over the post date, but ... post dates are wrong now, showing as e.g. "last year" for the posts in this thread. Also for the date of "Joined" in the user info, all say "Joined: last year".

FWIW, I tried this because the post (and joined) dates are all now in the relative format e.g. "12 hours ago" and I struggle to parse such.

Edit to add on a different point, I also seem to have a problem with not finding the previously essential function of go to first unread post in topic, there was but now I can't see a little clickable icon next to the topic title, am I just being dim?
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just brew it!
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:13 am

Minor nits...

- Can't tell at a glance any more whether you're already subscribed to a topic (need to click the Tools drop-down at the bottom of the page).

- No direct link from the Board Index to the Active Topics page. Again, requires an extra click through a drop-down menu. (At least this one has an easy work-around via a browser bookmark.)

If it is easy to put these back, great. If not, I'll adapt. I can see the advantages to going with standard themes, and adapting to a mobile-centric world.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
drfish
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 6:11 am

If it's there, I'm missing the "view my posts" link where I can see if topics I have replied to have new posts...
 
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 6:16 am

drfish wrote:
If it's there, I'm missing the "view my posts" link where I can see if topics I have replied to have new posts...

Like the "Active Topics" link, it is on the drop-down menu in the upper left corner.
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drfish
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 6:34 am

Ahh! I'm pretty sure I had Bruno explain that to me during testing as well. :oops:
 
SecretSquirrel
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 6:59 am

Topinio wrote:
Edit to add on a different point, I also seem to have a problem with not finding the previously essential function of go to first unread post in topic, there was but now I can't see a little clickable icon next to the topic title, am I just being dim?


At least in the dark theme, clicking on the icon next to the thread title takes me to the first unread post in the thread.

--SS
 
Topinio
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 7:26 am

SecretSquirrel wrote:
At least in the dark theme, clicking on the icon next to the thread title takes me to the first unread post in the thread.

--SS

Thank you!

Works for me in Black, though not in Canvas. Black also has the visual indication that I have posted in a thread, much less obvious that the old one but it's there 8)
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Glorious
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 7:36 am

Yeah, I'd give the canvas theme a chance, but without that "first unread post" icon, it's effectively unusable to me.
 
The Egg
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:16 am

As I wrote on the main page, I have a hard time distinguishing between which sections have unread messages because the word "Moderators" is bolded underneath each one, and throws off my eyes. Should hopefully be easy to change. Also, maybe a subtle color difference for new messages?
 
Topinio
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:30 am

Topinio wrote:
Black also has the visual indication that I have posted in a thread, much less obvious that the old one but it's there 8)

The icon change which shows visually that I have posted in a topic is only there on the standard threads, stickied topics have the same "unread posts" icon regardless of whether I've posted in the thread or not.
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DPete27
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:44 am

I've tried both themes. Don't really care for either of them.

The canvass theme is pretty bright and since quotes aren't shaded, they just blend into the rest of the post. Also the break between posts just isn't strong enough.

The black theme is nice that quotes are shaded, but it seems too busy to the eye. It just looks messy.

I don't think there's any need to completely revamp the new layout, but maybe look into playing with shading of various sectors to regain that clean look that the old layout had.
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The Egg
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 10:31 am

Actually, it looks like the "Black" theme has completely different formatting, and fixes nearly all of my complaints. "Moderators" is unbolded, different colors for new posts, full-width; the only problem is.....I don't care for the colors themselves. :(

Think we could get a new theme with identical formatting to "Black", but with a lighter colors?
 
Topinio
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 10:46 am

The Egg wrote:
Actually, it looks like the "Black" theme has completely different formatting, and fixes nearly all of my complaints. "Moderators" is unbolded, different colors for new posts, full-width; the only problem is.....I don't care for the colors themselves. :(

Think we could get a new theme with identical formatting to "Black", but with a lighter colors?

Hear! Hear!
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Dposcorp
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 11:02 am

Working very well for me, and the "black" theme is actually not bad at all.
Well done sir.
 
kelaynak
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 12:55 pm

Difficult track topics. The old one was good.I'm not happy.
 
thegleek
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 3:43 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
It works great on my phone, which has always been a complaint of mine. Now there's no need for tapatalk support


False.

There's ALWAYS a need for tapatalk support for these forums.

TR has NEVER done it in its entire history and it's unobtrusive and so easy to install a 5 year old could do it!
 
morphine
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:00 pm

thegleek wrote:
derFunkenstein wrote:
It works great on my phone, which has always been a complaint of mine. Now there's no need for tapatalk support

False.
There's ALWAYS a need for tapatalk support for these forums.
TR has NEVER done it in its entire history and it's unobtrusive and so easy to install a 5 year old could do it!

There's always a catch. And the catch with Tapatalk is "monetization."

If it were "just so simple" it would have been done a long time ago.
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morphine
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 5:41 pm

About the Canvas theme:

- Threads with new posts are bolded.
- We did notice that the small arrows pointing to the unread post a threads don't exist in this theme. We'll see what we can do about that.
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morphine
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 7:05 pm

Still on the topic of the Canvas theme and links:

- The thread icons should now all lead to the latest unread post. This was actually a bug in the theme itself.
- We added links to the top bar for "New posts," "Unread posts," and "Active topics."
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Redocbew
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 7:12 pm

Yay for the new posts link on Canvas.
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ThatStupidCat
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 7:26 pm

Oh I like the new stuff especially the darker setting. Now it's not so bright in a dark room. Is this only available when logged in?
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 8:16 pm

morphine wrote:
Still on the topic of the Canvas theme and links: - The thread icons should now all lead to the latest unread post. This was actually a bug in the theme itself."
Hooray! :D
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biffzinker
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Mon Aug 15, 2016 9:44 pm

morphine wrote:
- We added links to the top bar for "New posts," "Unread posts," and "Active topics."

But I liked it under the menu in it's original layout. :P

Appreciate the minor tweaks morphine, and thanks again.
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blahsaysblah
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Tue Aug 16, 2016 3:39 am

morphine wrote:
blahsaysblah wrote:
As an additional note, if you have images in your signatures or posts, we request that you change them to the SSL version. That is, when possible, link to them with URLs starting with "https," to avoid browser notifications about mixed content.


Firefox, set to true, open url: about:config
security.mixed_content.block_display_content

Dont have to worry about it. ;)

DON'T!

If you do that, you're basically telling your entire browser to not let you know if, in a secure page, an unsecure element was loaded. Usually this is as harmless as an image, but you should never ever take that for granted across the interwebs.

Turning that setting on disables loading of non-https content. In recent versions of FF, active mixed content is not loaded by default and a warning given about static content with a broken lock icon before URL.

With that setting enabled, the browser changes the lock icon to all good/green on mixed content pages because you're no longer loading any mixed elements.

For a while now, FF has had security.mixed_content.block_active_content set to true but left security.mixed_content.block_display_content to false.

For example, the first page of this thread has the following error:
Loading mixed (insecure) display content "http://valid.x86.fr/cache/banner/wxuk8w-2.png" on a secure page[Learn More]viewtopic.php

Which is Dizzytaz00's signature so his posts across interwebs can be collated easily... :D

Turning the second option to true than changes the message to:
Blocked loading mixed display content "http://valid.x86.fr/cache/banner/wxuk8w-2.png"[Learn More]viewtopic.php

And if you look at post 18, Dizzytat00's signature is replaced with [image] url for you to manually click and load. And, you now have a nice green lock icon for the page.
 
tanker27
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Re: The Tech Report forums got a big upgrade

Tue Aug 16, 2016 6:14 am

Two things:
1) at 100% everything looks....welll..fat. But that's an easy change. I change the zoom to 90%

2) Is there a way to get rid of the notification popup when marking threads as read?
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