View Topic

What is happening

Edit: ok I'll change back to old theme and give you some time to do whatever you're doing because the entire site is going a bit wack rn

Now you've seen just a glimpse of the pain of working with SMF's theme code.

Today I revamped some old code that controlled the position of the link tree and menu to the right of it, which should give it more flow and hopefully fix the issue where on very low resolutions it was pushing out and creating blank space to the right of posts (the issue Gerrick identified earlier). I also removed the number of times a topic had been read from the topic title on the page...out of all the information to display about a topic, that's probably the least useful to see.

I don't believe there's much left to do on this page. I would like to remove the moderators from navigation tree and move that information elsewhere (I'm just not sure where yet). I would also like to revamp the buttons at the top and bottom of the topic pages...I collapsed some of the least used buttons into one earlier one, but now compared to the new buttons in the posts themselves the ones on the top and bottom look amateurish, and I'd like to change that. I'm also going to investigate further whether quick reply should be enabled by default, so that when you hit the quote button the quote appears in the quick reply box at the bottom of the page rather than going to an entirely separate page which also isn't mobile-friendly. Currently, it's available, but you have to uncollapse it in order to enable it in that way.

The spacing on the top is too big on winter-dev now I feel, though it's better than it popping into the page content as it was briefly.

I would greatly prefer if pageviews were not removed. I feel like this is still useful information that's occasionally used to gauge activity (for instance, Clickwar looks like a small topic until you see its pageviews) and don't want to see it disappear wholesale just to make the pages look slightly cleaner.

I also probably wouldn't like quotes in quick-reply, at least on desktop. That's now an extra button to press and wait for just so I can get use gui bbcode controls.

Tonight I'm experimenting with moving the top buttons and page links below the topic title, and changing the buttons to look more like the buttons below each post. I think it almost finishes up the cleanup of the area above posts (although the ... needs to expand down, not to the right). Once things are finalized there I'll apply the style to the bottom buttons/pagelinks too.

Will you also make these changes to viewing (sub)forums? If topics are changed and forums are not, that destandardizes the look and feel of UI buttons, which is certainly not a good thing.

Also, not sure how to feel about the button styling/coloring... it does seems to pop out a bit less to my eyes. Not sure why, but it also feels kinda... unmodern? which I wouldn't really care about except one of things people seem to like about this new theme is the modern feel. Maybe it's the pure black on medium gray (which I also found strange when you first added it to the initial winter-dev theme but which I've since gotten used to, though this gray is darker), or the return of a new highly visible black line?

And a suggestion, if you're still trying to remove redundant/cluttering info: maybe get rid of "Topic:"? It's fairly self-evident that the thing is a topic, and the breadcrumb also renders it redundant. (And it gives you space to add back page views )

(Sorry if my many posts/feedback are coming off as nitpicky and stuff)

Will you also make these changes to viewing (sub)forums? If topics are changed and forums are not, that destandardizes the look and feel of UI buttons, which is certainly not a good thing.

I would like to...eventually. Realistically I'm not sure if I want to make that my next project with so many other things I want to work on, but eventually, yeah.

Also, not sure how to feel about the button styling/coloring... it does seems to pop out a bit less to my eyes. Not sure why, but it also feels kinda... unmodern? which I wouldn't really care about except one of things people seem to like about this new theme is the modern feel. Maybe it's the pure black on medium gray (which I also found strange when you first added it to the initial winter-dev theme but which I've since gotten used to, though this gray is darker), or the return of a new highly visible black line?

I agree for the most part...structurally I think it looks good, but I don't think the colours are quite right. The buttons need to pop more, and I'm thinking of making the bar more blue than grey. I experimented a lot with the line...without it it looks visually confusing in the area of the buttons, the first poster topic, and the first poster time...the line at least breaks those elements apart. Maybe having the bar be more blue would allow the line to be less severe. I'm open to ideas on this one, I'll probably need some inspiration here.

And a suggestion, if you're still trying to remove redundant/cluttering info: maybe get rid of "Topic:"? It's fairly self-evident that the thing is a topic, and the breadcrumb also renders it redundant. (And it gives you space to add back page views )

That's a good idea...I'll implement it next time I'm working on the design.

(Sorry if my many posts/feedback are coming off as nitpicky and stuff)

I appreciate the consideration, but don't worry about it. I started this topic because I'd like to make this page as perfect as possible, with a lot of attention to detail.

Will you also make these changes to viewing (sub)forums? If topics are changed and forums are not, that destandardizes the look and feel of UI buttons, which is certainly not a good thing.

I would like to...eventually. Realistically I'm not sure if I want to make that my next project with so many other things I want to work on, but eventually, yeah.

Hmm, if the buttons remain changed in one place but unchanged in another in the long term on the default theme, I feel like that might not be good for the cohesiveness and learning curve of the site.

Today was a lot of nitpicky design work...a lot of time spent playing around with colours and different configurations, especially with the new topic options area that I changed around last update. I also spent some time making sure the new layouts looked fine on poll and Clickwar topics, and make some modifications.

I think we're getting very close to finishing this project and moving the new topic page over to the main theme.

Nice.

Some thoughts:
The new buttons look rather light. (The fact that browsers display colors differently means that it does look a bit better on Chrome and especially on Firefox though [more saturated colors in general I think].)

The timestamp color also feels light (this one isn't changed by browsers), the contrast with the background is a bit low. The new color of gray (it seems to have different color content, not just a different shade of the same color? correct me if I'm wrong) also feels like it clashes with the existing grays. (Same goes for the new buttons/pages bar a bit.)

It also feels somewhat unclear that the "..." is a separate button with expandable options, I'm a bit worried for people trying to learn the site in the future never realizing that those features even exist at all.

It's honestly hilarious right now opening each page and having the Reply and ... buttons be different colors every time.

Edit: hmm I like the one right now

@taulover: I hope the one you liked was the one I picked, cause I only noticed this after the fact. xD

I experimented with the colours some more, and got the box that opens when you click ... in order. I think we're getting very close to being finished.

@taulover: I hope the one you liked was the one I picked, cause I only noticed this after the fact. xD

I experimented with the colours some more, and got the box that opens when you click ... in order. I think we're getting very close to being finished.

I posted that about the color right before the one you settled on. I think this one is even better though.

The new shade of grey seems a bit too red relative to everything else, perhaps because the site is quite blue overall. (Both this color and the previous one are pretty decent though.)

The dropdown menu seems to be popping up in a weird place? Don't think that'd be where I'd expect the menu to show up. But I must imagine that working with the site CSS has to be very tricky for you to settle on that positioning.

(I also still think the functionality of the "..." is unclear; it's already a common criticism of hamburger menus, that people often don't even know it's a button, but at least the hamburger icon has the advantage of being a common part of modern UI/UX language.)

Edit: Also locked threads look super wonky, as I discovered when this thread got locked.

Also weird bug, there's white vertical lines showing up on the buttons of (sub)forum pages.

@taulover: Could you screenshot how the dropdown menu and locked thread pages look for you? I've tried it on different browsers and resolutions on my home and work computers, but couldn't find anything wrong.

Today was all about putting out detail and final touches:

1) When you like or unlike a post, the list of people who like the post will update along with the number on the like button. It's a minor thing, but I think it makes the page feel more dynamic when all relevant things update when you click something.

2) Based on a suggestion from @taulover earlier in this topic I implemented Font Awesome, and we are now using two of their icons: a clock icon by the post time, and a thumbs-up icon by the people who liked a post (which replaces the older outdated icon). Font Awesome was really easy to set up and use, and I imagine that I'll use it more as I update other pages and create new stuff. Thanks for the suggestion, taulover!

3) I started experimenting with the topic title area and trying to get views and posts on the page, so at least for now the topic title appears twice...in a new and old position. The new one is at the top of the page, has a larger font, and includes the post and view stats. I'd love to have feedback on whether it looks good on its own at the top, whether the new formatting looks good but it should go in the dark blue bar like it's always been, or whether it all just sucks, lol.

I would still like to move the list of moderators from the breadcrumb navigation to its own area somewhere, too. I tried putting it below the posts and view counts, but it made the space look too dense with different data. Any suggestions there would be awesome too.

@taulover: Could you screenshot how the dropdown menu and locked thread pages look for you? I've tried it on different browsers and resolutions on my home and work computers, but couldn't find anything wrong.

Ah, I think I spotted the issue after looking at the menu on the Underhusen, where I'm a moderator.

I think you're expecting the "..." to be the third item in the menu, after "Add Poll," but for most people on most topics, it's actually the second item on the menu. So it pops up not under the "...", but weirdly to the right:

Spoiler

Try testing on a non-moderator account, perhaps? (And also try testing on locked topics because on those, "..." is the first button, because you can't reply.)

Also this is a bit more nitpicky but the bottom menu basically grazes the floor of the webpage for non-moderators and weirdly expands it for moderators, leaving no margin. Maybe experiment with expanding it upward?

(And now that I'm seeing all the functions hidden in the menu, I'm thinking that in time we're going to end up with an Underhusen Speaker who has no idea how to lock or move topics because they didn't know that the buttons even existed.)

1) When you like or unlike a post, the list of people who like the post will update along with the number on the like button. It's a minor thing, but I think it makes the page feel more dynamic when all relevant things update when you click something.

Niiice

That's one of those things that I've always wanted but never really thought about in detail or thought about requesting because of how minor it seems

3) I started experimenting with the topic title area and trying to get views and posts on the page, so at least for now the topic title appears twice...in a new and old position. The new one is at the top of the page, has a larger font, and includes the post and view stats. I'd love to have feedback on whether it looks good on its own at the top, whether the new formatting looks good but it should go in the dark blue bar like it's always been, or whether it all just sucks, lol.

My personal preference would still be to put it in the blue bar. If you don't want the view count to be on the same line as the title, maybe you could put it underneath (but still in the blue bar perhaps?) as you did in this new title?

If you want to put the title up there for some reason, I might suggest integrating it into the breadcrumbs? For all its faults, I think Tapatalk's website does a good job of that.