Trying something a bit new

Arantor

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Trying something a bit new
« on February 24th, 2012, 02:45 AM »
I'm no designer, and I generally leave theme design to others, but this one I thought I'd start trying to do something interesting. It's a WIP, dubbed Wintage. Might be familiar to some of you :whistle:

 wedge_wintage.png - 27.22 kB, 640x391, viewed 275 times.

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live627

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #1, on February 24th, 2012, 03:06 AM »
Might be familiar, yes :P Core wasn't that bad of a theme, although it looked  better in SMF1 than 2, dunno why.

Evening jab: gonna make Wabylon and Wassic, too? lol
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TE

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #2, on February 24th, 2012, 06:18 AM »
reminds me on C...  :whistle: but I'd definitely prefer your version, is looking way more modern and cleaner ... Nice work  :cool:
Thorsten "TE" Eurich - Former SMF Developer & Converters Guru

Nao

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #3, on February 24th, 2012, 08:19 AM »
Lol. After all this time, it'll be fun to try and run Wedge with such a skin. Is it inherited or main?
We should try finding existing W words before relying on new terms but it's not important.
Maybe I should give guests the ability to change skins too. Via a URL var I guess?

billy2

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #4, on February 24th, 2012, 09:52 AM »
Are you guys going to release .png files anytime, so we can have a fiddle with skin colours?

 :angel:
<br /><br />cough, cough.

Nao

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billy2

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Nao

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #7, on February 24th, 2012, 11:46 AM »
Color changes can sometimes be done with a single variable change.

$main_bg = hue(rgb(235,235,255), 20%)

to...

$main_bg = #fcfafc

Save and upload.
Totally different results :)
You can set $main_bg in custom.css too, this ensures Wedge updates don't erase it.
Has other vars like $window_bg2 etc.

billy2

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Dr. Deejay

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #9, on February 24th, 2012, 02:07 PM »
Nice, Arantor! :D I have always liked Core a lot but I like this version better :)

Arantor

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Nao

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Arantor

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #12, on February 24th, 2012, 03:29 PM »
And there's no images either, it's all CSS gradients (not even inheriting the normal gradient classes)

It is experimental, though, so it's ugly coding for now, but I did manage at one point to do a "#id reset extends something" which I thought was pretty neat :D

But it is also interesting to note where there is styling stuff hardcoded - the gap between the catbg and the titlebg bars in the screenshot is not controlled by the theme - but by a hardcoded div in the template. Same for the misaligned div in the thoughts area of the sidebar (where it's hard up against the left side)


Interestingly, it's not possible to truly replicate SMF's Core layout without changing templates, because there's no way I could find to wrap both the upper sections (the blue gradient area, the title area) with the navigation menu inside a single element, to get a border around both at once, because they're contained in two separate divs and the only parent is #wedge which contains the entire page.

As it turns out, I'm not that fussed personally, because I think the style I have there works better. Though I do want to see if I can't recreate something akin to SMF's Core menu tab thing, since I quite liked that. We'll see, busy seeing how badly the world looks on an iPod touch right now.

Nao

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #13, on February 24th, 2012, 04:03 PM »
Quote from Arantor on February 24th, 2012, 03:29 PM
It is experimental, though, so it's ugly coding for now, but I did manage at one point to do a "#id reset extends something" which I thought was pretty neat :D
I felt the same, made the same for Wine when rewriting inheritance, but I had to get rid of it and it broke my heart. Good that you could add it, so it'll give an example to future skinners :)
Quote
But it is also interesting to note where there is styling stuff hardcoded - the gap between the catbg and the titlebg bars in the screenshot is not controlled by the theme - but by a hardcoded div in the template.
Really...? Is that something in Wedge you mean? Where?
You can rewrite title headers with a mixin, although I think they really need some kind of rewrite... (Perhaps just removing the default ones from the index template, because it's really not the same format as in skin files.)
Quote
Interestingly, it's not possible to truly replicate SMF's Core layout without changing templates, because there's no way I could find to wrap both the upper sections (the blue gradient area, the title area) with the navigation menu inside a single element, to get a border around both at once, because they're contained in two separate divs and the only parent is #wedge which contains the entire page.
Everything is doable in CSS... :niark:
Just that sometimes it's not worth it.
Posted: February 24th, 2012, 03:59 PM

Speaking about the skin system...
I was thinking about something a bit funny and idiotic. And very certainly too late in the process.
Having all template blocks behave as if they had no indenting at all, and then indenting them when outputting them, by using the number of tabs by which the block name is indented in the skeleton.
The code is already ready for that, since there's an 'indent' param in skeletons, I just thought it'd be neat to do it automatically based on the skeleton...
Of course, the only (and major!) issue is that it would require going through all existing templates and removing their base indenting.

Arantor

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Re: Trying something a bit new
« Reply #14, on February 24th, 2012, 04:12 PM »
Quote
Really...? Is that something in Wedge you mean? Where?
For the info centre, InfoCenter.template.php. Under the <we:title> is a div with an explicit 8px height.

For the thoughts, I believe it's index.template.php, but there's a div explicitly setting sizes there too.
Quote
Everything is doable in CSS...
Not everything. The specific case I have in mind seems to be one of those.

<div id="wedge".
  <div id="somestuff">
  </div>
  <div id="someotherstuff">
  </div>

  ... more markup

</div>

Now put a single border around those items, with a 1px padding between the border and the content, and leave the content such that you can still put borders on the content that butt up against the 1px padding+border (e.g. the someotherstuff div has a gradient but a 1px darker border on it)

i.e. replicating the Core layout.
Quote
Speaking about the skin system...
I was thinking about something a bit funny and idiotic. And very certainly too late in the process.
Certainly late, but interesting idea. Personally, though, I'd rather strip the indentation instead of outputting it - simply because it should save a bit of bandwidth, no?