Possible Candidate for Old Forum Style

[BRickAstley]

There have been a fair number of people asking for a display theme that is a copy of or resembles the old site style, and I know both Yazi and KingofPain have been busy and have enough on their plate, so I've taken a few hours to whip up such a theme for us.

Test website is located here. There are a few items that aren't right (ads are forced on this forum hoster, some thumb-images need refinement, smilies included are horrid, a good amount of other small style tweaks could be done), but I think this is close to the alternate/retro feel that people would want.

Thoughts? Desires? Requests?

[NobleHelium]

Not bad. Certainly much better than the current one. The spherical new posts/no new posts indicators need to go though.

[kjn]

Yeah, the MyBB smilies look horrendous against the green background - they're not properly transparent at the edges.

That said, I think it would be better to go for a new look. I think the forum default that Yaz chose is decent from a colour standpoint, and I'm dabbling on a theme that can get those colours together with the design of the MyBB default theme.

[kjn]

Here's my take on it, it uses the MyBB forum default theme as the basis, and I've also installed the CSS buttons plugin.



The colours are from the theme Yaz chose, and I've also selected nicer fonts (Gill Sans here, and the very nice Candara on Windows).

I've also hacked away some buttons we never use, and changed the order of them.

[Bigger]

kjn - no white please!!

[pling]

Remember there's a fair few people hate the current pale colours. Personally I generally prefer pale colours, which is why I was suggesting in the other thread having 2 colour schemes on the same overall theme. But I think the dark-colour prefering people are both in a majority and much more vocal about it, so sticking to this current colour scheme only is pretty much a non-starter

For a dark theme/reproducing what we had before I like Brick's version a lot better than any of the dark themes we had installed here or on the test forums. Probably coz it does look a lot like what I'm used when I go to RB Good job there, Brick. As far as smileys go, wasn't Sullla planning to replace all the default MyBB ones with our nice set from before anyway, when he had time? So it's just things like the post status indicator buttons that need tweaking to not have horrid white lines round.

One thing I think we do need buttons-wise is a button to report posts, there are periodic waves of spambots & it's nice to have an easy way to flag them. But something unobtrusive, I think the old forum had a exclamation mark in a triangle warning sign button up near the post number for that.

Despite preferring pale colours I'm afraid I'm less keen on yours at first glance, kjn. Brick's looks less cluttered, somehow, but I can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it actually is the colours :/ Black buttons against the dark green blend in more than dark green buttons against white.

I've looked and I don't have either Gill Sans or Candera installed (currently using gentoo linux, I guess in windows 7 I'll have Candera if it's standard). What do you fall back to for users who aren't using whichever OSes you're supporting? Just whatever sans font they use by default?

I'd quite like to see a mockup of Brick's style with a colour scheme closer to the current one (as an option for freaks like me, not as the default :D ).

[kjn]

Correct - I managed to remove the white and make the entire background a solid gray with little trouble. I've changed the mockup above.

Part of why my take on it looks more cluttered might be in that I haven't removed a lot of the superfluous text and other MyBB chrome, and I'm logged in as the admin, thus more buttons since I see my own posts. Another option could be to make the background for the buttons black, but I think that would dominate the actual content too much.

The fonts chosen were Candara, Gill Sans, Verdana, and a sans serif as fallback, so no real change there.

[kjn]

Also, I think a lot of people who are vocal about things are being vocal based on the theme they are currently using, without telling exactly which theme they are using.

So for me the forum default is nice in colours and tone, but it forces horizontal scrolling and seems a bit hacky at times.

The MyBB default is far too bright for my taste with all the bright blue, but it is the one I've used as the basis for my take on a theme.

BTW, Brick, I tried to register on your test site, but did only get an empty registration e-mail. I was thinking we could work there as a sandbox for this stuff.

[scooter]

I strongly prefer something closer to what Brick has up than the current brighter colors. The darker theme is much easier on the eyes.

[Gustaran]

Test website is located here. There are a few items that aren't right (ads are forced on this forum hoster, some thumb-images need refinement, smilies included are horrid, a good amount of other small style tweaks could be done), but I think this is close to the alternate/retro feel that people would want.

Thoughts? Desires? Requests?

I like it a lot! (only the Realms Beyond writing needs a higher resolution).