Hello PHers and welcome to your new look forums!

Hello PHers and welcome to your new look forums!

Author
Discussion

zarjaz1991

3,487 posts

124 months

Friday 5th May 2017
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Desktop view is now a lot better and I am close to preferring it to how it was before.

Mobile view I don't use that much but I have found no major issues so far.

I think given the challenges faced, this is turning into a not half bad job, as it goes.

K12beano

20,854 posts

276 months

Friday 5th May 2017
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Where's the bold-for-thread-updates-I-haven't-read-yet gone!

No idea why you need to make it so difficult, this coasted along quite nicely for donkeys years.....

Now I can hardly face the challenge of "what have they gone and changed today". It's a war of attrition!!

Dan_1981

17,406 posts

200 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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If I open a new thread from what's new it takes me to the last page even if I've never been to the thread before.

Doesn't happen in my stuff with threads I'm already reading it takes me to my last visited spot

iPhone.

anonymous-user

55 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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Dan_1981 said:
If I open a new thread from what's new it takes me to the last page even if I've never been to the thread before.

Doesn't happen in my stuff with threads I'm already reading it takes me to my last visited spot

iPhone.
Same here.

Doofus

25,850 posts

174 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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What does this signify in My Stuff?



It seems to suggest that I have posted on each page of the Horizon Zero Dawn thread, and since then, there are unread posts on each page, which isn't possible, surely?

This thread shows up differently, and also incorreclty, as I've read all the posts in this thread right up until the one before this.

miniman

25,015 posts

263 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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It shows that you have visited every page of that thread by clicking the 1 2 3 4 5 links but not the thread title link. If you hover over them, you'll see the links are different even though the title and link 1 take you to the first page.

It's nothing to to with whether you have posted, just whether you have visited.

Doofus

25,850 posts

174 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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miniman said:
It shows that you have visited every page of that thread by clicking the 1 2 3 4 5 links but not the thread title link. If you hover over them, you'll see the links are different even though the title and link 1 take you to the first page.

It's nothing to to with whether you have posted, just whether you have visited.
Ok, thanks. I'm not a stupid person, but I really struggle with this new look. Mind you, I've never found this site very intuitive.

zarjaz1991

3,487 posts

124 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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They tried ditching the "visited links" being a different colour, and there were howls of protest. Now there are howls of protest because they haven't ditched them.

Design-wise the condundrum is:

1. Things look nicer if visited links stay the same colour as unvisited ones...but...
2. People tend to complain if visited links don't change colour.

thegreenhell

15,429 posts

220 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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I don't think the issue is about whether links change colour or not. Visited links always changed colour in the Classic skin, but they turned a subtle grey colour, not an ugly stand-out purple that looks like my-first-website-circa-1995.

ClockworkCupcake

74,622 posts

273 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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zarjaz1991 said:
Design-wise the condundrum is:

1. Things look nicer if visited links stay the same colour as unvisited ones...but...
2. People tend to complain if visited links don't change colour.
Since things like this are easily controlled by CSS it would be a simple matter of letting the user choose from a range of CSS files via a drop-down box.

But what to call it? A presentation layer? Hmmmm... a thin outer cosmetic layer.... I know, you could call it a "skin".

zarjaz1991

3,487 posts

124 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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ClockworkCupcake said:
Since things like this are easily controlled by CSS it would be a simple matter of letting the user choose from a range of CSS files via a drop-down box.

But what to call it? A presentation layer? Hmmmm... a thin outer cosmetic layer.... I know, you could call it a "skin".
Too many options, too much complication. That's the trap they fell into before, and have been trying to extracate themselves from - multiple skins, multiple options.

As soon as you offer an option to change the visited links colour, someone else will want an option to change the non-visited links color. Then someone else will want a combination of the two. Then it'll be font size, but someone else will want the larger font size with the three options on link colours. That's four skins (fnar) straight away. Then it'll be background colour....

Get a good design and stick with it. One skin. That's what they're trying to do here. You can debate about how well they're going about it, but the aim is sound.

PoleDriver

28,649 posts

195 months

Saturday 6th May 2017
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bigandclever said:
aR53GP said:
Anyone else have huge typing lag on Chrome on iOS?
Yes. It's worse if you hit 'delete' once and it just starts removing everything, arthritically. I've resorted to typing up replies in Notes and copy/pasting them in laugh
Still!

ClockworkCupcake

74,622 posts

273 months

Sunday 7th May 2017
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zarjaz1991 said:
Too many options, too much complication. That's the trap they fell into before, and have been trying to extracate themselves from - multiple skins, multiple options.
That's not the case at all. The trap they fell into before was having completely separate websites onto the same database backend. They weren't skins at all.

zarjaz1991 said:
As soon as you offer an option to change the visited links colour, someone else will want an option to change the non-visited links color. Then someone else will want a combination of the two. Then it'll be font size, but someone else will want the larger font size with the three options on link colours. That's four skins (fnar) straight away. Then it'll be background colour....
Yes, and...? Do you actually understand how CSS works?

Edit:
It's like car manufacturers with a configurator on their website. They haven't built millions of cars beforehand that represent every permutation of the options. You configure a car and then it gets built. That's how skins are meant to work - what pops out at the end is a CSS file which contains instructions like "when you display a visited link, use this colour" and "when you need this type of text, use this font and size". They are very simple lightweight instructions and easy to generate in a configurator.

Edited by ClockworkCupcake on Sunday 7th May 12:19

rscott

14,773 posts

192 months

Sunday 7th May 2017
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ClockworkCupcake said:
zarjaz1991 said:
Too many options, too much complication. That's the trap they fell into before, and have been trying to extracate themselves from - multiple skins, multiple options.
That's not the case at all. The trap they fell into before was having completely separate websites onto the same database backend. They weren't skins at all.

zarjaz1991 said:
As soon as you offer an option to change the visited links colour, someone else will want an option to change the non-visited links color. Then someone else will want a combination of the two. Then it'll be font size, but someone else will want the larger font size with the three options on link colours. That's four skins (fnar) straight away. Then it'll be background colour....
Yes, and...? Do you actually understand how CSS works?

Edit:
It's like car manufacturers with a configurator on their website. They haven't built millions of cars beforehand that represent every permutation of the options. You configure a car and then it gets built. That's how skins are meant to work - what pops out at the end is a CSS file which contains instructions like "when you display a visited link, use this colour" and "when you need this type of text, use this font and size". They are very simple lightweight instructions and easy to generate in a configurator.

Edited by ClockworkCupcake on Sunday 7th May 12:19
Can you imagine how many complaints there'd be if they introduced skins - they'd never produce enough variants to keep everyone happy.

Probably better to work on cleaning up the markup on the existing single theme, then people can use Stylish (or similar addons) to override that theme as required.

ClockworkCupcake

74,622 posts

273 months

Sunday 7th May 2017
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rscott said:
Can you imagine how many complaints there'd be if they introduced skins - they'd never produce enough variants to keep everyone happy.
As I said in the text you quoted, they don't need to produce loads of variants. They just need a configurator, with maybe a few presets. It's a pretty common thing to have.

rscott

14,773 posts

192 months

Sunday 7th May 2017
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ClockworkCupcake said:
rscott said:
Can you imagine how many complaints there'd be if they introduced skins - they'd never produce enough variants to keep everyone happy.
As I said in the text you quoted, they don't need to produce loads of variants. They just need a configurator, with maybe a few presets. It's a pretty common thing to have.
So users 'roll their own' ? I can imagine the nightmare supporting that on this site..

I don't think any of the forums I use regularly allow any changes of theme, but then most of them use the Lithium platform.

ClockworkCupcake

74,622 posts

273 months

Sunday 7th May 2017
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rscott said:
So users 'roll their own' ? I can imagine the nightmare supporting that on this site..
No, I don't mean allowing users to submit their own raw CSS files.

In "My Preferences" you already have a radio list for whether you want Ascending or Descending order, a droplist for whether you want a page length of 5, 10, 20, 40 or 80 posts, and a list of which forums you want as Favourites, etc. It wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to have further options like link colours, font sizes (small, medium or large would be fine), quote style (a simple checkbox for bubbles or no bubbles), and the like.

rscott

14,773 posts

192 months

Sunday 7th May 2017
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ClockworkCupcake said:
rscott said:
So users 'roll their own' ? I can imagine the nightmare supporting that on this site..
No, I don't mean allowing users to submit their own raw CSS files.

In "My Preferences" you already have a radio list for whether you want Ascending or Descending order, a droplist for whether you want a page length of 5, 10, 20, 40 or 80 posts, and a list of which forums you want as Favourites, etc. It wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to have further options like link colours, font sizes (small, medium or large would be fine), quote style (a simple checkbox for bubbles or no bubbles), and the like.
I didn't mean raw CSS either, but the same as you - a bunch of config settings for the user. However, they'd then need to test each combination of font sizes, quote styles, etc when making changes. Not something I think they've got the resource to do.

ClockworkCupcake

74,622 posts

273 months

Sunday 7th May 2017
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rscott said:
I didn't mean raw CSS either, but the same as you - a bunch of config settings for the user. However, they'd then need to test each combination of font sizes, quote styles, etc when making changes. Not something I think they've got the resource to do.
True. You could be right there.

WinstonWolf

72,857 posts

240 months

Monday 8th May 2017
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There's still a (significant) discrepancy between the font size/spacing on the landing page depending if you are replying to, or watching a topic.