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Message icons, some proposed changes
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Arantor

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Message icons, some proposed changes
« on February 23rd, 2013, 11:40 PM »
There are a goodly number of things wrong with message icons and I want to get some feedback on them and what to do with them.

1. Single set of icons, not multiple sets
They're actually changeable per physical theme at this point in time. I don't know any theme that ever actually shipped *its own* as such; all the ones I ever saw just shipped whatever the default icons were in SMF at the time.[1] I'd like to propose we make it a single set of icons.

2. Get rid of this 'enable customised icons' nonsense.
There is really no need for this nonsense. There is, yes, the argument to be made about performance, but caching would fix that anyway. We'd get a simpler and better to use UI out of it.

3. Drop the enforcement of it being .gif
There's really no reason why it must be .gif, other than having a standard format to work with. But that's solvable through another thing.


Then we can get a bit more exotic if we wanted.

4. Stop storing it as a textual item.
If we're already storing them in the database anyway, we will already have numeric ids for them. I see no reason why we can't make proper use of them and just store a numeric id in the messages table and be done with it (yes that would SAVE space!)

This isn't without its issues, because it would mean that all the silent-forced changes that occur (for iPod/iPhone/tablets/Android etc. not to mention moved notices, deleted posts at present and posts with attachments) would also have to be in that table. This raises other issues (what happens if the user deletes them? what happens with migrating existing SMF stuff including this site?)

I'm not exactly dead set on this one, but it is certainly an option to explore and not without its caveats. Though it could also mean the user doesn't want those things set, e.g. if they delete the tablet one, don't use that replacement later.

5. Topic filtering
Assuming we make it a numeric id, we could store that numeric id in the topics table (first post's)... it would allow us to stick an index on it and then filter topics on it. Of course, any plugin that adds its own would be rather awkward but it's not insurmountable.


/discuss
 1. This is most notable in the Bloc themes where they were upgraded from 1.1.x to 2.0 themes but kept the 1.1.x message icons.
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MultiformeIngegno

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Farjo

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #2, on February 26th, 2013, 01:17 AM »
1. you're right - I cannot find a single theme that ships with its own set.

2. Nonsense! Oh, we want to use that :( We have a forum where we want two extra message icons that would not make sense elsewhere. We would also disable icons for an individual forum but it would be too untidy.

3, 4. Uh-huh (nods head pretending to understand).

5. This sounds really if it could go with our use of per-forum icons. But otherwise I don't think we'd use it.


My requests would be:

6. Ability to easily disable icons per forum.

7. Place the icons' images in a row under the subject input. That way people would use them more often.

Arantor

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #3, on February 26th, 2013, 01:23 AM »
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2. Nonsense! Oh, we want to use that
No... you misunderstand. I don't want to have to fart around enabling it. It would be 'on by default without any way to turn it off'. That's what I mean about the nonsense.
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3,
Right now all the icons are gifs and there's no way to change that, it's forced in the code to be gifs.
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4. Uh-huh (nods head pretending to understand).
Right now it's stored as text. If you make it a number you get to save space and make it a little bit faster in some ways. But it does make some other things a bit more complicated.
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6. Ability to easily disable icons per forum.
That seems easy enough to make as part of the interface overhaul (but effectively it's mostly already possible, just needs a nicer UI)
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7. Place the icons' images in a row under the subject input. That way people would use them more often.
As opposed to a more prominent dropdown that's already present showing the icon?

Farjo

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #4, on February 26th, 2013, 02:06 AM »
2. :cool:

3 & 4. Thanks as always for your explanations. Is there anything you want explained? Medical? Financial? How a 4 stroke engine works?

6. Yes it's the UI that makes it too messy to set up.

7. Looking at the first page of the boards on our forum, there are only 4 (2 by me) threads with a non-Standard icon. Even wedge.org seems to be 90% Standard icons. So it's just a suggestion for how to prompt topic starters to pick one.

Arantor

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #5, on February 26th, 2013, 02:10 AM »
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Is there anything you want explained? Medical? Financial? How a 4 stroke engine works?
Well, I live with a lady who is an ex-nurse (whose daughter is also a nurse), and the other lodger is a service engineer for a hotel, so that medical and engines covered... and I used to work for a bank, so maybe I could explain those things ;)
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7. Looking at the first page of the boards on our forum, there are only 4 (2 by me) threads with a non-Standard icon. Even wedge.org seems to be 90% Standard icons. So it's just a suggestion for how to prompt topic starters to pick one.
Well, the topic starter, maybe, but you'd be surprised how many of them aren't 'standard' when you factor in attachments and mobile icons.

spoogs

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #6, on February 26th, 2013, 02:43 AM »
1 - Agreed
2 - hmmm never even noticed that option :P
3 - makes sense
4 - only understood from your last explanation :P so I'm sure you'll do whats best in the end. As far as what to do if user deletes them.... what are the options, I'd say display nothing but I'm sure theres more to it than that.
5 - well my next statement would apply for me on this one but I guess it would be useful to some to be able to filter based on icon (assuming the icons are actually being used in a sensible manner)

Personally I've wanted to get rid of them completely before, I tend not to care if they are there or not. Cant think of a single time where the icon mattered to me.
Stick a fork in it SMF

Arantor

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #7, on February 26th, 2013, 02:49 AM »
2. That's the problem with it. Most people don't even know the option exists and only discover it when they want to change something. Make it more clear, more people will use it.

4. We'll figure it out, heh. I don't really expect we'll change it, it was more a speculative thing than anything else.

5. I think it depends on the forum. The vBulletin forum I used to moderate, it was a big thing for each thread to have an icon, though there were about 40 icons to choose from and the filtering was more important there.

Farjo

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #8, on February 26th, 2013, 04:09 AM »
"Well, I live with a lady who..." Oh gosh I thought you were going to ask about women :^^;: :^^;: :^^;:

Yes there are a few paperclips however 5. would surely work better if there were more variance.

Arantor

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #9, on February 26th, 2013, 04:16 AM »
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"Well, I live with a lady who..." Oh gosh I thought you were going to ask about women
Hahahaha no. It was more a case that my circumstances currently make life very interesting! I'm not doing the whole partner thing though, somewhat off the idea after last year)
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Yes there are a few paperclips however 5. would surely work better if there were more variance.
Sure it would. I forget the exact variety we had on the old forum, but there were loads of icons, plus a quasi-standing order from/to the moderators to actually change the icon if it was the default which was 'Stuff'.
Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #10, on March 12th, 2013, 01:03 AM »
Do message icons actually need a description? They have one right now, but I'm not convinced they *need* one. It would certainly save some DB effort in trying to store/manage/display multiple languages' worth. (Since there's a problem right now, a forum with non-default icons can't have a separate description for each language.)

Thoughts?
Posted: March 12th, 2013, 12:58 AM

Don't forget, actually, if you edit the icon in-situ, you don't get the descriptions.
Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #11, on March 12th, 2013, 04:59 PM »
Hmm, I wonder, should I push them out to CSS like the smileys?
Posted: March 12th, 2013, 04:59 PM

The downside to that is for SSI use, the CSS file generally won't get loaded :/

Farjo

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #12, on March 13th, 2013, 12:03 AM »
There's not much about our old forum that I miss, but here's how they display post icons (sorry, this is the least-worst example I can find).

Do the smilies' tool-tips have various languages? E.g :angel: this one's is "Hypocrite" and if so could the post icons have tips in the same way.

Cannot comment on the CSS / SSI :huh:

📎 post_icons.jpg - 71.5 kB, 1141x293, viewed 338 times.

Arantor

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Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #13, on March 13th, 2013, 12:38 AM »
Quote
There's not much about our old forum that I miss, but here's how they display post icons (sorry, this is the least-worst example I can find).
It's how vB does it and it's not bad at all. I haven't decided to or not to do it yet, though I won't deny I like the compactness of the current setup.
Quote
Do the smilies' tool-tips have various languages?
This is the problem. Right now they do not - but they didn't before unless you were using the stock set of icons. Note that I am NOT talking about smileys but the message icons (which, for no reason I can fathom, are in the same admin area)
Re: Message icons, some proposed changes
« Reply #14, on March 13th, 2013, 03:38 AM »Last edited on March 13th, 2013, 03:44 AM
So, here's what I've been working on. As you can see, the 'manage message icons' screen is largely untouched, but the bottom bit is the new bit.

This is stuff that isn't really configurable, but that I do want to show to users so they can be aware of it. I'm thinking about giving clip and the mobile icons an on/off option on it.

I don't know why I don't like it. I just don't like it.
Posted: March 13th, 2013, 03:09 AM

Also, anyone got any objection to putting in a Nintendo 3/DS icon as a mobile device?

📎 message_icons.png - 46.76 kB, 966x500, viewed 243 times.

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