Forum styles

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coulomb
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Forum styles

Post by coulomb »

One of the things that comes with the change to phpBB forum software is the ability to customise the appearance of the forums as they appear in your browser(s). These are called styles. But you can't just use any style, they have to be installed and tested to customise them for the forum content (e.g. AEVA logo), and to ensure that everything works (e.g. do images tile as they should, are all the visual elements visible, and so on). Your admins have been working on this for you, and there is a set of styles available to chose from now,

It's in the User Control Panel under Board Preferences, which you may be familiar with from changing your time zone (see my New Forum Tips post). But to make this post stand alone, here is the way to get to the User Control Panel and the Board Preferences tab:

Image Image

Now notice the new option just before the TIme Zone:
AEVA forum styles.png
AEVA forum styles.png (8.22 KiB) Viewed 5732 times
The default style is prosilver; that's what will be initially highlighted. Proflat has a similar set of colours. Absolution and Flat Style have orange themes, and the last two have green styles. I've highlighted my favourite style, ne-blackgreen, which is quite visually different to the default colours. Be warned, however, that on some monitors or screens, user names may be difficult to read.

All the styles have a mobile version as well, so if you use a smaller screen device to read and post to AEVA, test them out on your mobile device(s) before settling on one. Selecting a theme on your desktop means you use it on all your other devices as well.

It's possible that after you check out all the new styles, you hate them all. If so, it's possible that you could find a new phpBB style that you really like, and request that our admin Rob install them for you. Note that not all styles are suitable for phpBB version 3.2 which we now use. Also be aware that installing and testing a style isn't a trivial matter, and we might need a new logo or image with the logo superimposed, there may be problems with visibility of some features that you don't notice till someone starts using it, and that styles are a matter of taste. Each additional style is more testing every time a major upgrade of the forum software happens (e.g. to phpBB 3.3x, assuming it eventually happens), and a really long list of styles is unwieldy. So not all requests can be accommodated. I hope I don't get into trouble making this suggestion :|

So if you are interested, and/or don't like the present style, give the new styles a try. If you find any problems with them, post about it here. They are reasonably configurable, so we might be able to fix the problem, as long as it doesn't adversely affect other users.

A big thanks to Rob Hills and Weber for installing and testing these, and encouraging me to fiddle with the logos, stretching my meager artistic talents.
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EV2Go
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Re: Forum styles

Post by EV2Go »

coulomb is there a style or way to remove the bolding from everybody's name? It's much harder to read for someone who is RGB color blind / needs glasses. Since you put the offer out there is there a plain all white style, so I can easily make out the colours of the names.

Something like this would be great.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120217191 ... va.asn.au/

[ Edited Coulomb: changed image= BBcode to url ]
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weber
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Re: Forum styles

Post by weber »

EV2Go wrote: Tue, 22 Aug 2017, 05:28 Since you put the offer out there is there a plain all white style, so I can easily make out the colours of the names.
No promises, but what do you think of these styles with a white background (click for a demo):
Milk
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coulomb
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Re: Forum styles

Post by coulomb »

EV2Go wrote: Tue, 22 Aug 2017, 05:28 coulomb is there a style or way to remove the bolding from everybody's name?
Rob's had a go at it with the AllenStyle-SUBSILVER style. It's a free style that is somewhat light in background. Hopefully it will be possible to make it whiter. Not all the bold names have been changed so far; what is there is after only a few minutes of effort. Perhaps check it out and see if it's heading in the right direction.
It's much harder to read for someone who is RGB color blind / needs glasses.
To me, the bolded names are easier to read than unbolded. But I have pretty standard vision, as long as I'm wearing my glasses.
Since you put the offer out there is there a plain all white style, so I can easily make out the colours of the names.
As well as the above, you may find other suitable styles here:

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/styl ... r/demo/3.2

Those are the styles suitable for phpBB version 3.2 (as we use now) that have been set up for demonstration. There are more extensive lists of styles, but only with tiny screen shots. If anyone else has vision problems and an opinion, please chime in. It seems like a good idea to have a style that is better suited to those with limited vision, but it's hard for us to choose one.
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EV2Go
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Re: Forum styles

Post by EV2Go »

weber wrote: Tue, 22 Aug 2017, 17:36
EV2Go wrote: Tue, 22 Aug 2017, 05:28 Since you put the offer out there is there a plain all white style, so I can easily make out the colours of the names.
No promises, but what do you think of these styles with a white background (click for a demo):
Milk
Yeah Milk looks fine anything with a white background is instantly easiest to see. Soft Blue also looks fairly easy to see.
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EV2Go
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Re: Forum styles

Post by EV2Go »

coulomb wrote: Tue, 22 Aug 2017, 22:10 To me, the bolded names are easier to read than unbolded. But I have pretty standard vision, as long as I'm wearing my glasses.
The date in normal non bolded to my eyes is several times easier to read. The bold because it has more colour volume (due to size) next to another bolded colour i.e. the name next to the title kind of all mixes up and blends into one jumbled mess to my eyes making it hard to read either (like trying to see the numbers in a colour blind test).

If just the title was bolded the other two would stand out far more to me, because of the white space in between the title and the name.
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EV2Go
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Re: Forum styles

Post by EV2Go »

Don't know what the font is in "Flat Style" currently using it, but it is very clean and easy to read.
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