Display.template.php proposal (custom/fun stuff).

[Antechinus]

Some shots of my latest bit of fun/swearing-at-monitor/grumbling-about-cross-browser-compat/etc.

This is just me playing around with ideas for my PoD theme and is not for dev trunk. I'm only doing it for the site I run. We have things set up the way we like them so I can take a few liberties. The coding would have to be more full of crap for default. Anyway.....................

1/ Ditched a lot of crap. Yay! Profile icons are back in profile where they belong. Custom fields have been scrapped. Markup revamped of course.

2/ Quickbuttons have been moved to after the post, but still before the sig. This is the best location for looks and functionality IMO.

3/ Quote and edit buttons are widely separated, with quote in the most natural location for the most often used button. This should eliminate the tired-moderator-editing-post-by-mistake-thing.

4/ Moderation options are in a drop menu to save clutter. Yes, I know it wont appeal to everyone but it'll suit us for our site. I like it. It uses the same Superfish js as the main/admin menus so there is very little extra code required.

5/ Post selection checkbox has a nice big label to click when you're tired/drunk/wasted.

6/ The post promotion link is a PortaMx feature for mods and admins, so that went in the drop menu too since we'll be running PortaMx anyway.

7/ When a user is moderated, the warning status/moderation button appears under the post count.

8/ Report to moderator and ignore buttons are under that. Ignore button courtesy of Arantor's mod (restyled and relocated to suit). Report and ignore buttons do not display in your own posts.

8/ Online/offline icon incorporated in a nice big button, which links to "send pm" for other users' posts BUT links to your own inbox for your posts AND tells you how many new messages you have. Much more useful than the old SMF arrangement.

9/ When a user is ignored, buttons change to only display an unignore button. None of these buttons display to guests.

Tested in FF7, Chrome and Opera 11 on Windows XP. Code still needs a little tidying up, and rtl.css hasn't been done yet.

[Robert.]

Nice work

[ARG01]

Looking good. 

[Eliana Tamerin]

When can I get one?!

[Antechinus]

Oh that's easy. I can post the template and css if you like. It still has a bit of inline css and other crap though as it was WIP, so give me a day or so to clean it up.

Incidentally this uses a really nifty CSS3 feature that doesn't involve roundy corners and other eye candy: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_box-sizing.asp

This is a very useful thing to have in your toolkit if you're doing fluid-width templates.

[Joker™]

Really loved the idea of moderation button having all those options. Nice work sir.

[rocknroller]

good innovation Mr. Antechinus  drop down menu is cool should be more dd menus. 

[Angelina Belle]

That's got some nice elements in it.

[Antechinus]

Played with it a bit more. Minor changes to the posts themselves, just to tidy up a few details. Also added go-up/go-down icons to each post (top right corner) as I've used those on other sites and find them quite handy at times. One of my members requested them for SMF too, so it seemed sensible to add them. They are coded with a simple CSS3 opacity change on hover for minimal code. They also really do go to the top and bottom, unlike the default SMF links. This means you can click one and be able to access the main menu, or the quick reply or whatever without more scrolling.

The big changes are the functions above and below each topic page. Buttons, page links, next/previous topic links, etc. I've never liked these in SMF. They've always looked a bit of a mess and I wanted to make them look smoother and more integrated, without compromising functionality or making the arrangement radically different. I think this is pretty good, and I can call Display.template.php sorted. Now I just have to do the others.....................

[Joker™]

All looks good except those group of buttons killing the look in the bottom.

I mean these -> "Reply", "Add poll" etc. "Move topics", Remove topics" etc.

Why not to move them also under single button and name it as some crazy moderation button?

[Antechinus]

Could do that if you wanted to. Would be easy enough. Best place for that would probably be at the left end of the Jump-to bar. I don't mind it the way it is though.

[Joker™]

Could do that if you wanted to. Would be easy enough. Best place for that would probably be at the left end of the Jump-to bar. I don't mind it the way it is though.

Personally I never liked those many button upfront. It'd be nice even of we can trim the bottom moderation buttons like "movie topics" etc in a single dropdown menu and clear up the page a bit more.

I'm not sure whether everyone is going to like it or not but if you like you can give it a try .

[Antechinus]

Yeah well whatever you do, you can absolutely guarantee that somebody wont like it. So no, everyone is not going to like it. Fundamental law of the universe.

[Joker™]

Yeah well whatever you do, you can absolutely guarantee that somebody wont like it. So no, everyone is not going to like it. Fundamental law of the universe.

Exactly. BTW playing with templates is a lot of fun, specially when it involved some nice JS with it.

Have a nice time with it ant, going to sleep. Right now even my eyes are abusing me .

[Antechinus]

Y'know what I could do is throw in a nice little show/hide div for the moderation buttons, that defaults to open if js id disabled. The theme is running jQuery anyway. I think I'll try that just for fun. Might be a better option than another drop menu.

ETA: Tried it. TBH I'm not that keen on it. I rather like it just with all buttons displayed. jQuery is nice on the quick reply collapse/expand though. Would be good for the info centre and a few other places too.

[Joker™]

Y'know what I could do is throw in a nice little show/hide div for the moderation buttons, that defaults to open if js id disabled. The theme is running jQuery anyway. I think I'll try that just for fun. Might be a better option than another drop menu.

JQuery, thats the culprit language due to which I was on the verge of forgetting php just a couple of weeks ago.

TBH JQuery is one of the most amazing thing I ever saw, of course after PHP .

ETA: Tried it. TBH I'm not that keen on it. I rather like it just with all buttons displayed. jQuery is nice on the quick reply collapse/expand though. Would be good for the info centre and a few other places too.

Quickly throw my suggestion out of the window.

For sure JQuery can add nice effects in collapse/expand for categories too .

[Antechinus]

Yes that occurred to me. It would work very well, but the coding would need to be more complex to handle that function well. It would need to store the state as a setting in the db, and it would need some way of calling the content when the cat was expanded again (assuming you don't want to call content when collapsed, to save server load on large sites).

[Joker™]

Yes that occurred to me. It would work very well, but the coding would need to be more complex to handle that function well. It would need to store the state as a setting in the db, and it would need some way of calling the content when the cat was expanded again (assuming you don't want to call content when collapsed, to save server load on large sites).

I think right now also we have a table in DB which manages all of this collapse thinggy. How about to use it?

[Antechinus]

Sure. I was just pointing out that it's not as simple as just putting a basic hide/show on the category. There's actually quite a bit extra to deal with.

[Joker™]

Sure. I was just pointing out that it's not as simple as just putting a basic hide/show on the category. There's actually quite a bit extra to deal with.

Of course JQ with SQL and some tint of php can become a nightmare easily. If you don't found it worth working on, dump it .