Regarding xenForo 2.x

The biggest thing that I think would be helpful right now regarding both the light and the dark themes is to add some padding on the left side of the screen. As you can see in my screenshot below all of the elements are pushing up right against the edge of my screen. There should be a way to increase this padding by a few points that would still retain the readability with mobile users and improve the user expereince for desktop people.

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The other suggestion I have would be to rework the banner image for the dark theme. In my opinion this clashes with the rest of the theme and could be improved upon. But this is rather a minor thing.

Another suggestion that I would like to make is setting up a donation button for users who would like to donate to the forum and do so on a regular basis. There are settings that can handle this as well as addons that improve upon this.

In regards to forum addons, have the Admin Team made any decisions on which addons will be implemented on the forum and what sort of timeline we could see with those?
 
Artemis:
The other suggestion I have would be to rework the banner image for the dark theme. In my opinion this clashes with the rest of the theme and could be improved upon. But this is rather a minor thing.
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The mobile theme banner, as well, needs a look! It doesn't fit naturally; it's just an image that looks plopped in.
 
I will see what I can do re: padding. The major issue is that I am not a professional website designer and it is a challenge to balance side padding with mobile functioning. On the original forum I went with side padding, in the interest of mimicking the ZB skin as closely as possible - and it is my understanding that that did not translate well to the mobile version. Currently it sounds like the mobile one is working well, but people don't love the content stretching all the way to the edges on desktop.

There is likely a way to alleviate this, and I would hazard a guess that there is a way to make the forum dynamically determine how much edge padding to use depending on screen size... but I am not certain I'm capable of implementing that. I will endeavor to make it happen when I have a chance to sit down and really dig into the skin.

A different logo for dark skin would certainly be an improvement. Unfortunately, we lack a better quality image than the one we're using now as it predates SVG. If anyone wants to try their hand at altering it to work with Dark theme, or at providing a different image, I am certainly game to play around.

A combination of the issues is true for the mobile logo. I do not know how to have the mobile site use a different image than the desktop site, if that is even possible.
 
SillyString:
I will see what I can do re: padding. The major issue is that I am not a professional website designer and it is a challenge to balance side padding with mobile functioning. On the original forum I went with side padding, in the interest of mimicking the ZB skin as closely as possible - and it is my understanding that that did not translate well to the mobile version. Currently it sounds like the mobile one is working well, but people don't love the content stretching all the way to the edges on desktop.

There is likely a way to alleviate this, and I would hazard a guess that there is a way to make the forum dynamically determine how much edge padding to use depending on screen size... but I am not certain I'm capable of implementing that. I will endeavor to make it happen when I have a chance to sit down and really dig into the skin.

A different logo for dark skin would certainly be an improvement. Unfortunately, we lack a better quality image than the one we're using now as it predates SVG. If anyone wants to try their hand at altering it to work with Dark theme, or at providing a different image, I am certainly game to play around.

A combination of the issues is true for the mobile logo. I do not know how to have the mobile site use a different image than the desktop site, if that is even possible.
Click to expand...

I would suggest looking at purchasing a theme for the forum. One that I have seen on sites before that I like quite a bit is Uniform (linked). It is quite dynamic in the range of displays that it looks good on. If the fluid length is enabled, it still has some padding around the edges as to not have the edge-to-edge effect to the degree that we currently have. Overall there is quite a bit of customization that can be done with the Uniform theme that could be customized for our site.

I can take a stab at designing a new image that could be used for both the light and dark themes.
 
Re: Add-ons, the first one I'm hoping to implement is for joinable groups. Darcness, tech admin in Europeia, has graciously gifted us the add-on he developed for this. This will allow us to create joinable groups similar to how we had them on ZetaBoards where group leaders are assigned to manage individual membership in there respective groups. The hope is that this will cut down on masking requests and allow us to spend more time on other forum improvements.

Once a server admin has a chance to install this add-on, I will work on setting up the groups. Could be released as early as this weekend, but no guarantees.
 
Siwale:
Re: Add-ons, the first one I'm hoping to implement is for joinable groups. Darcness, tech admin in Europeia, has graciously gifted us the add-on he developed for this. This will allow us to create joinable groups similar to how we had them on ZetaBoards where group leaders are assigned to manage individual membership in there respective groups. The hope is that this will cut down on masking requests and allow us to spend more time on other forum improvements.

Once a server admin has a chance to install this add-on, I will work on setting up the groups. Could be released as early as this weekend, but no guarantees.
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So this would be used for Citizens, Residents, Executive Staff (probably would need a different role for each ministry), NPA, and perhaps a few others?
 
Something else that I have noticed on the dark theme, is that some user name colors are difficult to read.

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Artemis:
So this would be used for Citizens, Residents, Executive Staff (probably would need a different role for each ministry), NPA, and perhaps a few others?
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That's the vision, yes. At the very least, the same groups we had on ZB (i.e. executive staff, NPA, NPA High Command, WALL Leadership, Senior Diplomats, THO, etc.). We'll have to do some testing to see how plausible this vision is with things like citizenship and residency.
 
Quote tags seem to be appending the phrase " said:" to the end of them whenever there is a (quote="something") tag. Any chance the " said:" could be removed?
 
Artemis:
Something else that I have noticed on the dark theme, is that some user name colors are difficult to read.
Click to expand...

Good catch. I believe we have generally (?) tried to have usergroups be the same color on all themes, for consistency and ease of keeping track who is a citizen, foreign representative, government official, etc. The new dark theme uses different colors than the one on ZB, so the colors used in the past may not all work as well on both themes.

I will take a look at this when I look at the padding stuff. I may have to run new group colors by the admin team before implementing.

Sil Dorsett:
Quote tags seem to be appending the phrase " said:" to the end of them whenever there is a (quote="something") tag. Any chance the " said:" could be removed?
Click to expand...
I believe this is a hard code issue. @Eluvatar?
 
Artemis:
The biggest thing that I think would be helpful right now regarding both the light and the dark themes is to add some padding on the left side of the screen. As you can see in my screenshot below all of the elements are pushing up right against the edge of my screen. There should be a way to increase this padding by a few points that would still retain the readability with mobile users and improve the user expereince for desktop people.

View attachment 178

The other suggestion I have would be to rework the banner image for the dark theme. In my opinion this clashes with the rest of the theme and could be improved upon. But this is rather a minor thing.

Another suggestion that I would like to make is setting up a donation button for users who would like to donate to the forum and do so on a regular basis. There are settings that can handle this as well as addons that improve upon this.

In regards to forum addons, have the Admin Team made any decisions on which addons will be implemented on the forum and what sort of timeline we could see with those?
Click to expand...

I wanted to follow back up on the padding issue. Has there been any success with this?
 
Artemis:
I wanted to follow back up on the padding issue. Has there been any success with this?
Click to expand...

Yes! I have successfully added a bit of padding on desktop, and as best I can tell it has not harmed mobile browsing (aka I pulled it up on my phone and it looked OK :lol: ). Please let me know thoughts - too much padding, too little?
 
SillyString:
Yes! I have successfully added a bit of padding on desktop, and as best I can tell it has not harmed mobile browsing (aka I pulled it up on my phone and it looked OK :lol: ). Please let me know thoughts - too much padding, too little?
Click to expand...
I think its a tad much on the desktop. I notice the padding is increased on the thread view especially (desktop). On mobile there is a little bit of padding on the thread view but nothing drastic like it used to be.

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SillyString:
Yes! I have successfully added a bit of padding on desktop, and as best I can tell it has not harmed mobile browsing (aka I pulled it up on my phone and it looked OK :lol: ). Please let me know thoughts - too much padding, too little?
Click to expand...
Too much left padding and not enough right. Actually looks like there wasn't any right padding added at all.
 
Hm, ok. You are right, I did not add any right-side padding. For left, I did 3% - meaning that the amount it pads will scale based on screen size.

I did also notice that it pads posts in threads more than it pads the list of forums. Not sure why that is, but probably a setting I missed somewhere.

I will play with a smaller percentage. I don't think a flat pixel amount will work, due to mobile.
 
SillyString:
I've knocked it down to 2%, and added 2% on the right as well. Any better?
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I think that looks a lot better. The only thing that I would point out is the menu bar at the top now has padding where as before it did not.
 
Artemis:
I think that looks a lot better. The only thing that I would point out is the menu bar at the top now has padding where as before it did not.
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Is it better now? I've been playing with the settings to try to make it look good when viewed at the top of the page and hovering when scrolled down. Replaced margins with padding so the blue goes the whole way.

Darcania:
Might I also make a request for the left side of the forum list's cells have some inside padding on the left so the folder icon isn't pushed up directly against the left side? Preferably to the same amount that the thread list's padding is at.
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I have spent quite some time looking for this setting and I swear to flemingovia I cannot find it. It will be trivially easy to fix once I track it down. :mad:
 
Sil Dorsett:
Quote tags seem to be appending the phrase " said:" to the end of them whenever there is a (quote="something") tag. Any chance the " said:" could be removed?
Click to expand...
”Said” has been removed from the quote tag.
 
As seen in previous screenshots, the folder icons for subforums are uncomfortably close to the edge of the box. Any chance that could be fixed?
 
Gorundu:
As seen in previous screenshots, the folder icons for subforums are uncomfortably close to the edge of the box. Any chance that could be fixed?
Click to expand...
More than that, I would even say they're being cut off a little.
 
Gorundu:
As seen in previous screenshots, the folder icons for subforums are uncomfortably close to the edge of the box. Any chance that could be fixed?
Click to expand...
Syrixia:
More than that, I would even say they're being cut off a little.
Click to expand...

SillyString:
I have spent quite some time looking for this setting and I swear to flemingovia I cannot find it. It will be trivially easy to fix once I track it down. :mad:
Click to expand...

Answer has not changed. Still cannot find it.
 
One of the cool features of ZB that was lost in the transition to XF was the ability to pin the opening post of a thread to the top of every page. Is there any chance of this feature making a return?
 
Gorundu:
As seen in previous screenshots, the folder icons for subforums are uncomfortably close to the edge of the box. Any chance that could be fixed?
Click to expand...
Syrixia:
More than that, I would even say they're being cut off a little.
Click to expand...
Better? Those icons are a pain to move.

I've been working over the past few weeks to sort out the blemishes in our default forum. As you may have noticed, there were issues with forum margins, button placement, colors impacting legibility, etc. I think I got most of them tackled but please let me know if you see more. I haven't had a chance to work on the dark style. It is on my to-do list at some point.
 
The dark theme may prove to be more challenging to fix. I've therefore uploaded an external dark theme titled "XenDark". This theme will need some slight appearance modifications and a new logo image if you guys think it is worth keeping. Let me know what you think.
 
Oh hell yeah, this dark theme is way better. This should be the new sole dark theme.
 
Yeah, I like this new dark theme.
An issue with it is tables with long rows of text is it goes off the screen
 
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