The CRFH Board Needs YOU

[Maritza Campos]

Okay, people. I have foolishly volunteered to make a new skin for the forums. But there's a little problem.

I have no idea how to do it. If someone can help me with these, I'm sure your boardiestatus will gain a zillion thanks from the rest of us.

The first thing to do, however, is to choose the colors. We have to have some green included somewhere. I was thinking of choosing light grey as a background for the text, because I feel that any color behind what you're constantly reading gets tiring no matter how pleasing.

Also, the reduction of the logo so it fits on left side of the black bar, instead of going above the text in white at the top.

I'll post my experiments. Of course, I'll be using images only for now. The actual skins will be implemented once we choose the colors. Otherwise we're just working double.

Maritza
CRFH.net

[pennyangelos]

I am sorry to say I don't know anything about making skins, but the light grey background sounds very appealing.

[dagonz]

Personally, I can live with the background as it is now, but since the only way to canalize the dark and sadistic urges that live deep within my soul are aither to go and kick puppies and baby seals or to become an art critic, I will give my unsolicited opinions on whatever Thy, Our Goddess, createth for us lowly mortals.

[bruceluis]

I'll try to help with this too. However, there are two little details:

1. I'm sort of biased towards blue tones...

[Maritza Campos]

http://www.crfh.net/other/forumstemplate.gif

Okay, look at this and tell me what you think. I don't inline the image because it's gonna ruin the table.

Maritza
CRFH.net

[twistyplot]

I like it. Might wanna go with a slightly darker shade of green on the borders, but I've always liked forest tones, personally.

[MolTARE]

Very pleasant; although if it's possible to reduce the font size of the thread title a teensy bit that would be even better.


The greys clash less horribly with my various avatars; happy man now.

[Jappus]

Okay, I like it, it

[The Watcher]

http://www.crfh.net/other/forumstemplate.gif

Oh, so that's the black scrollbar everyone has been talking about (must be an IE thing?). Title layout is much better, the logo size and option positioning is far more sensible. Your use of grey is good, overall it seems an improvement on what I remember.

I don't have much experience making phpBB themes, but if nobody else does I'll swat up on it.

[Uniqueusername]

I already made a few to try and persuade Josh to change the scheme.... These were posted to Keen Central a while ago...

I found that simply changing the background to white and dumping the black scroll bar helps a lot. (That's what's most glaring while reading posts)
See here. Also, here, here and here.

These all keep the colours 100% 'Keen', just correct a few mis-matches.

[Midnight Wonder]

I personally don't like the white backgrounds... Is there any way you could do it the way it was before and have different shades of gray?

I also think it might be nice to stick with one shade of green. Darker, foresty ones are much easier on the eyes and in my opinion, more attractive.

[Arsreth]

It's awfully drab, white+gray+grayish-green+black. I think a brighter green, forest- or grass-hued, would be an improvement.

[Uniqueusername]

Same as above, with grey boxes.

One green only, with grey background.

[Maritza Campos]

Changes in these:

*Smaller topic title
* got rid of the green border that surrounds the ads
* background for the text is white in one post, slightly gray in the next. * Unified all the dark greens to only one shade.
* Got rid of the exclamation point
* The Author/message tag is now white.

*Also: got rid of the green main background (behind everything) and replaced it with black (which makes it blend with the logo at the top):

http://www.crfh.net/other/forumstemplate3.gif

and with white, just to see the contrary effect...

http://www.crfh.net/other/forumstemplate4.gif


And your statistics, Jappus, were censored by... *mmph*


Maritza
CRFH.net

[Joel Fagin]

The high contrast borders - black and green - draw the eye away from the text as it's reading. The white one manages to do the same somehow, possibly because it looks like there should be a visible border but it really isn't. I'm not sure about exactly why that one's happening yet and since I onlu just got up, my eyes are still tired anyway.

At any rate, I would recommend something very close to the text background, but different enough to make a visible border. A shade of grey, most likely

Apart from that, I don't see any problems.

Edit: I tell a lie. The bar at the bottom of each post - with "Back to top" in it, now manages to look like a title bar for the post beneath. I think that light green you used before is better or, failing that, a lighter grey.

- Joel Fagin

[Uniqueusername]

The white one has lost the 1 pixel border- possibly due to a fill? Assuming that's just a glitch, I think either of those would be fine.

However, I'd suggest replacing the "New Post" and "Reply" icons so they match the others.

[Maritza Campos]

Like this?

http://www.crfh.net/other/forumstemplate5.gif

Yeah, glitch.

Maritza
CRFH.net

[Maritza Campos]

Refresh #4 and #5. I have added the 1-pixel thing. Tell me which one looks better.

And Joel, it's not at the bottom of each post, but the top.

Maritza
CRFH.net

[Uniqueusername]

Almost- the header still off, since it's not full width.
Thusly!

I like both, to be honest...

[Joel Fagin]

And Joel, it's not at the bottom of each post, but the top.

No it isn't. The first post doesn't have one and there's one right at the bottom where there's no post to follow it.

Anyway... I prefer number 5. The white border is just that little bit too much white, making the forum look like it's on a piece of white paper. White paper just looks dull. We get enough of that from the print industry (by necessity, so I don't hold it against them or anything). There's also a small glare consideration with pure white.

(I'm not suggesting you change the post background colour here - that's fine. It's just, as I said, the white border is just enough to kick it into "paper" territory.)

Although... Possibly the bar with the advert and the matching bar at the bottom would also look better grey. Your call. Probably worth a try, anyway.

- Joel Fagin

[freeflier]

Looks good.

You might consider a light green to replace the light gray, keeping the intensity of the green equal to that of the gray. You want the text to be a high contrast with the background, which is the main fault I find with the current color scheme.

One tip: when you have a scheme you want to look at, please view it in black and white. Some people are colorblind, and while B&W isn't exactly the same, it's a start, and easy to check.

Red on a green background or vice-versa is to be avoided.


Of course, I really don't care as long as it's readable and doesn't induce migraine . . . which comes down to the same thing, really.

--FreeFlier

[Uniqueusername]

Although... Possibly the bar with the advert and the matching bar at the bottom would also look better grey. Your call. Probably worth a try, anyway.

Looks like this.
Or this with the darker grey. Don't like that so much, possibly because the text anti-aliasing is starting to break down with so many fills...

You might consider a light green to replace the light gray, keeping the intensity of the green equal to that of the gray.

Like this?

[Midnight Wonder]

Hmm.. I still don't like the white messages. It also erases the line between username/avatar and the message itself. I'd be very sad without that line.

[ASCIISkull]

It seems a bit too glaring with the totally white background, and as mentioned before it would remove the white lines in between the message and the sidebar.

[LCARS]

The current style seems OK to me. Just the enormous keenspot logo needs to be reduced in size.

And maybe the page's background color to be a darker green.