News:

Want to get involved in developing SMF, then why not lend a hand on our github!

Main Menu

Has anyone improved /main_block.png to have transparent rounded edges?

Started by Biology Forums, August 30, 2019, 11:35:58 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Antechinus

Yeah everyone fell in love with it. MayDay's detailing was brilliant stuff. Actually one of the things that got me into hacking templates was that I wanted a BoardIndex.template.php that was clean enough to do that theme justice. The standard 1.1.x template was all "little boxes on a forum, little boxes made of ticky tacky".

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 10:54:41 AM
Yeah everyone fell in love with it. MayDay's detailing was brilliant stuff. Actually one of the things that got me into hacking templates was that I wanted a BoardIndex.template.php that was clean enough to do that theme justice. The standard 1.1.x template was all "little boxes on a forum, little boxes made of ticky tacky".
Ah the good ol days. Tho, them themes used be fully loaded with custom images. These days i only use colors. Not even gradients, just flat.

Antechinus

Yeah but they were really good custom images. I like some eye candy sometimes. I can't do plain flat all the time., Not my thing, really.

Antechinus

Oh hey, here's something you might not have seen. I think I only posted it in the team boards. This was me getting bored with having to jump through corporate hoops for the SMF powers that be, and saying "F#$k it" to the official colors back with the first 2.1 Alpha builds. I always rather liked this version. Might have to turn it into something.

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 11:00:50 AM
Yeah but they were really good custom images. I like some eye candy sometimes. I can't do plain flat all the time., Not my thing, really.
oh yes, them two had Photoshop pat down.

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 11:03:59 AM
Oh hey, here's something you might not have seen. I think I only posted it in the team boards. This was me getting bored with having to jump through corporate hoops for the SMF powers that be, and saying "F#$k it" to the official colors back with the first 2.1 Alpha builds. I always rather liked this version. Might have to turn it into something.
Disaster Area, Bahahahaha!!! I like it. Tho not a fan of them text shadows but concept looks great.

Mick.

Looking at the difference, i dig the gradients and fonts used brother. noticed you rid the menu icons too. A plus.

Antechinus

Yeah they got me into it too. Not that I had MayDay's skills, but it was a start.

Quote from: Mick. on October 05, 2019, 11:06:57 AMDisaster Area, Bahahahaha!!! I like it. Tho not a fan of them text shadows but concept looks great.

Yeah the text shadow on the forum name is not really a success. I'm going to try and convince them to do something about that before 2.1 goes Final. It still has some of my trial code in it (speaking of gruesome experiments and all that).

But yeah the rest of it is pretty tidy. I always liked this one more than the official version. The official version was (don't tell anyone) never really one of my favourites.

And I have to say that pigging around with this latest mutant has renewed my appreciation of Curve. I remember when we first saw it running live on a secret team test site. We all thought it was the most awesome thing on the planet. :D

Antechinus

Quote from: Mick. on October 05, 2019, 11:09:35 AM
Looking at the difference, i dig the gradients and fonts used brother. noticed you rid the menu icons too. A plus.

Ah yes. My old favourite: Segoe UI in 600 weight. Its a bastard that 600 weight has so little cross browser support, because aesthetically it's vastly more appealing than the standard 700. It has some nice extra oomph over 400, but without getting crude.

And yeah, menu icons. Bleh. The Silk set (I think that is what is used) are a bit too "kid's box of crayons" for my liking. I don't think they were in alpha, or at least not on the main menu. I think that came later.

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 11:12:41 AM
Yeah they got me into it too. Not that I had MayDay's skills, but it was a start.

Quote from: Mick. on October 05, 2019, 11:06:57 AMDisaster Area, Bahahahaha!!! I like it. Tho not a fan of them text shadows but concept looks great.

Yeah the text shadow on the forum name is not really a success. I'm going to try and convince them to do something about that before 2.1 goes Final. It still has some of my trial code in it (speaking of gruesome experiments and all that).

But yeah the rest of it is pretty tidy. I always liked this one more than the official version. The official version was (don't tell anyone) never really one of my favourites.

And I have to say that pigging around with this latest mutant has renewed my appreciation of Curve. I remember when we first saw it running live on a secret team test site. We all thought it was the most awesome thing on the planet. :D
I always used 1.0 series. When 2.0 came out, it pushed me to learn how it worked, make themes and mods for it. Curve 2.0 was the chit then lol.

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 11:16:27 AM
Quote from: Mick. on October 05, 2019, 11:09:35 AM
Looking at the difference, i dig the gradients and fonts used brother. noticed you rid the menu icons too. A plus.

Ah yes. My old favourite: Segoe UI in 600 weight. Its a bastard that 600 weight has so little cross browser support, because aesthetically it's vastly more appealing than the standard 700. It has some nice extra oomph over 400, but without getting crude.

And yeah, menu icons. Bleh. The Silk set (I think that is what is used) are a bit too "kid's box of crayons" for my liking. I don't think they were in alpha, or at least not on the main menu. I think that came later.
...and i made a menu icon mod for 2.0 bahahahaha. These days i hate it to only settle with fontawesome on my own site.

Antechinus

Yeah it was very cool at the time. I never liked the old Core theme at all. That's what got me into themes in the first place. I just thought Core was too damned ugly to use*, so I went to find something nicer.

And 1.1.x markup was horrible stuff. I know I ****** about 2.0.x markup, but it's still streets ahead of 1.1.x. That was nested table insanity. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I built my first mobile theme out of it. I was going cross-eyed just trying to keep track of which damned tr I was inside and where the hell that was in relation to the top level table tag. :P

*Bloc disagrees with me on this. He's quite proud of what Core was at the time it was designed.

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 11:22:25 AM
Yeah it was very cool at the time. I never liked the old Core theme at all. That's what got me into themes in the first place. I just thought Core was too damned ugly to use*, so I went to find something nicer.

And 1.1.x markup was horrible stuff. I know I ****** about 2.0.x markup, but it's still streets ahead of 1.1.x. That was nested table insanity. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I built my first mobile theme out of it. I was going cross-eyed just trying to keep track of which damned tr I was inside and where the hell that was in relation to the top level table tag. :P

*Bloc disagrees with me on this. He's quite proud of what Core was at the time it was designed.
Yup, the good ol days. Man I remember breaking my 1.o site on a daily. Bigguy from smfhelper helped me out when I was a noob. He came to my rescue every single time hahahahaha.

Now I just search and read or trial and error until stuff works.

Antechinus

Lol. :D I used to call it "learning by parse error".  I had no idea about PHP, and was not at all interested in RTFM because I just wanted to make stuff that looked cool, so I learnt basic PHP syntax by crashing test sites and live sites until I figured out where all those apostrophes and things had to go. :D

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 11:31:01 AM
Lol. :D I used to call it "learning by parse error".  I had no idea about PHP, and was not at all interested in RTFM because I just wanted to make stuff that looked cool, so I learnt basic PHP syntax by crashing test sites and live sites until I figured out where all those apostrophes and things had to go. :D
Ha! this----> '; killed me everytime. .....and using this ' instead of " or /'  lol

Antechinus

Oh hell yes. Drove me bonkers half the time. And those question make thingies with all the weird stuff each side of them. WTF is all that supposed to do? Oh I get it. It's supposed to crash my site when I mess with it.

It's even funnier now, because it seems so easy. Although there is a still a lot of PHP that I don't know, but I know enough to do just about anything to a template and get away with it.

Anyway, I was playing with Curve's log in form today. It has always given me the irrits because it's such a mess in default form. Nothing really lines up or anything. I think this is a decent look that suits the old theme.

This is me wanting to get proper clickable labels for a11y, but also wanting it to look clean.

Mick.

Quote from: Antechinus on October 05, 2019, 11:41:50 AM
Oh hell yes. Drove me bonkers half the time. And those question make thingies with all the weird stuff each side of them. WTF is all that supposed to do? Oh I get it. It's supposed to crash my site when I mess with it.

It's even funnier now, because it seems so easy. Although there is a still a lot of PHP that I don't know, but I know enough to do just about anything to a template and get away with it.

Anyway, I was playing with Curve's log in form today. It has always given me the irrits because it's such a mess in default form. Nothing really lines up or anything. I think this is a decent look that suits the old theme.

This is me wanting to get proper clickable labels for a11y, but also wanting it to look clean.
Nice! Yup. I too wanted to do something on the sign up page. something really pretty but havent found the time. https://codepen.io/idesignsmf/pen/zJrKdX

Antechinus

Yeah that's clean. Were you thinking of doing it like a splash page, with the background covering the whole screen? Or is that just the background for the trial run?

I was thinking about that page today myself. One thing that always used to bug me when I dropped the forum into maintenance mode was that I'd be running an update or installing a mod, and everyone would be hammering the log in form and filling up pages of the error log with failed log ins. Not the sort of crap I want to deal with when I'm tweaking critical code, y'know.

I had the idea that it would be cool to have a secret staff log in form, with hidden inputs, so that the average mugs would be staring at a page which did nothing (and didn't fill your error log!) but staff still had some sneaky way of signing in when necessary. I don't think it would be hard to code either, although obviously everyone relevant would have to know the tricks in advance.

Antechinus

Oh about placeholder text: I was thinking of using that myself to clean things up, but then I read this earlier today:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/form-design-placeholders/

Wouldn't matter so much on some sites, and the SMF login form is pretty simple anyway, but handy to know for general use. So I decided to go with labels instead, then had to think of a way of styling them.

Mick.

I wanted to replace this old template with a sweeter one https://www.idesignsmf.com/index.php?action=login

I always find myself redoing stuff that other have made. Like the contact mod, i made mine responsive and cool looking https://www.idesignsmf.com/index.php?action=contact

even my member list lol   https://www.idesignsmf.com/index.php/topic,552.0.html

Advertisement: