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MusicallyInspired Group: Musicians Posts: 1445 Joined: June 2001 Posted: Mar. 18 2006, 03:08 Y'know what'd really be nice? To come to Tubular.Net's forums and have a nice Songs of Distant Earth forum scheme waiting for you. Background could be dark with stars maybe and have the crescent and the ray on the top left. Words in blue, yellow, and white. Anyone agree? If not just pick an album and visualize. Is it possible to create custom skins for this forum? It'd be really nice. Of course there'd have to be someone who'd be willing to create them. Could always have 1 new one every month or so. I'd really like to see some Hans Claesson artwork put to use, too..... -------------- BrandonBlume.com "The beauty in life is in the embracing of the variety of things. If all the world was blue there would be no colour blue." Back to top

hiawatha Group: Members Posts: 2391 Joined: Mar. 2004 Posted: Mar. 18 2006, 06:29 As long as they are optional. There's nothing worse than those web sites with dark grey on black color schemes, and you have to highlight the main text in order to read it. -------------- "In the land of the Dacotahs, Where the Falls of Minnehaha Flash and gleam among the oak-trees, Laugh and leap into the valley." - Song of Hiawatha Back to top

Jammer Group: Members Posts: 643 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Mar. 18 2006, 08:12 I would like this idea. I wrote about it back here but there was no word from 'the top'. Have a look on the Ikonboard website for any resources about creating themes. Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Mar. 18 2006, 11:25 Ikonboard accepts different skins, so it's possible. If anyone wants to make any, we'll take a look at them. It takes a long time to create them though, and we'd obviously want things of a certain quality (so, not just making everything green, sticking a moon at the top and calling it Crises). I think we'd also have to reserve the right to alter them in whatever way we wanted, particularly with regard to making it look obviously like a part of tubular.net still, and ensuring that everything is easily readable. If you're thinking of doing it, bear in mind that this version of Ikonboard (3.1.2a) isn't compatible with the latest one (3.1.3), which I believe in turn won't be compatible with version 3.2. That means that any skins created for this current version will have to be made from scratch once we upgrade (we'll go straight to v3.2, which hopefully will be compatible with all that follow...). Back to top

hiawatha Group: Members Posts: 2391 Joined: Mar. 2004 Posted: Mar. 18 2006, 16:52 As long as we don't deviate from "black letters on white background", a tried-and-true standard of readability for many hundreds of years. Anything else just hardly ever works in a web site. The logo area gives plenty of room to play. -------------- "In the land of the Dacotahs, Where the Falls of Minnehaha Flash and gleam among the oak-trees, Laugh and leap into the valley." - Song of Hiawatha Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Mar. 18 2006, 18:11 That rather depends on your definition of white. Take a novel printed on white paper and hold it up next to a monitor displaying white. The book is likely to suddenly appear rather less white, depending on the ambient lighting and the exact nature of the book (novels tend to be printed on paper that's closer to a cream colour, glossy coffee table books are usually a purer white). I actually find the stark, bright white from a computer monitor very tiring to look at after a while, so I welcome colour schemes that soften that. I think there's actually something to be said for white on black for certain applications (it's actually a very common standard for display screens - indicator boards at stations and airports are often white on black, as is teletext, and computer screens were green or white on black for a long time). I have no problems with the current black on blue scheme - if you want black on white, there's no reason you can't create a skin for it. I don't think we need set any rules for colours in skins. If we find that a particular submitted skin is impossible to look at for one reason or another, we'll alter it or ask the creator to modify it. They'll be entirely optional anyway. Back to top

Jammer Group: Members Posts: 643 Joined: April 2000 Posted: Mar. 18 2006, 18:50 Also, a white background would only really work if you were trying to create a theme based on the US version of the Islands cover. Back to top

MusicallyInspired Group: Musicians Posts: 1445 Joined: June 2001 Posted: Mar. 19 2006, 01:12 Of course the skins would be optional. I know many people love the current theme of the site and it works rather well. That's how all custom skinned forums are (all the ones I've visited, anyway). I just have a tendency to get bored with such things after a while and I like a little deviation. I'd like to give it a try but I haven't the foggiest idea on where to begin! I've downloaded the development tools for customizing an ikonboard but all it really is is a bunch of fonts and a photoshop PSD with the button designs and other things that you can change. I don't really know what dimensions for images etc I should be using as well as color codes etc. And I can't really make a test page to view it and see what it looks like. -------------- BrandonBlume.com "The beauty in life is in the embracing of the variety of things. If all the world was blue there would be no colour blue." Back to top

hiawatha Group: Members Posts: 2391 Joined: Mar. 2004 Posted: Mar. 19 2006, 04:09 Quote (Korgscrew @ Mar. 18 2006, 18:11) That rather depends on your definition of white. Take a novel printed on white paper and hold it up next to a monitor displaying white. The book is likely to suddenly appear rather less white, depending on the ambient lighting and the exact nature of the book (novels tend to be printed on paper that's closer to a cream colour, glossy coffee table books are usually a purer white). I actually find the stark, bright white from a computer monitor very tiring to look at after a while, so I welcome colour schemes that soften that. I think there's actually something to be said for white on black for certain applications (it's actually a very common standard for display screens - indicator boards at stations and airports are often white on black, as is teletext, and computer screens were green or white on black for a long time). I have no problems with the current black on blue scheme - if you want black on white, there's no reason you can't create a skin for it. I don't think we need set any rules for colours in skins. If we find that a particular submitted skin is impossible to look at for one reason or another, we'll alter it or ask the creator to modify it. They'll be entirely optional anyway. Thanks for the explanation. I didn't mean to denigrate the current colour scheme of this site. Black on very pale blue is close enough to black-on-white. As for the white-on-black sites, many of those that I've seen use some sort of narrow font so the letters end up looking dark grey on the black background. That's when you have to hilight in order to read the site. High contrast is the most important thing. I also was not sure that the skins would be optional. -------------- "In the land of the Dacotahs, Where the Falls of Minnehaha Flash and gleam among the oak-trees, Laugh and leap into the valley." - Song of Hiawatha Back to top

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