Themes/Skins

[Buster's Uncle]

You must have voted a day or so ago, then.  SMACX.



                       BU, who sees all, tells some.  Keeps people's secrets when he has to.

[Vidsek]

   Both my parents worked for "The Company".   Fortunately for you, even they would have found humor in your sig on that last post.   You'd still be on a list....

[Buster's Uncle]

In have a first cousin once removed who was an 'analyst'.  (I don't believe him, 'cause he's CRAZY fit for a dude that old, way too buff for a desk jockey from a family that doesn't run to athletic.)

(Also both parents just born detectives from whom it was never possible to ever! keep a secret long.  And now I find myself doing the same thing to people.)

(People really freak out sometimes when you sherlock them real good.)

[DrazharLn]

Bear in mind, BU, a lot of folks may be pulling up your site with smartphones with crap 3G/4G service. Particularly at break on work.

Lots of themes tend to make sites load like crap on these devices. Embedded stuff and java makes it worse.Your front page would destroy a low end android with chrome.

I recently improved performance on mobile for the forum by enabling client side caching of assets. The number of themes should not affect performance on mobile unless the user chooses to switch between themes often.

AFAIK, the site doesn't have any embedded Java, though it does try to use flash on the front page (which is a mess, we know). Even if it did have Java, pretty much every browser has it disabled by default anyway.

Something odd's happened to that Front Page template  since I posted a test (Draz?), so going to take another pass at that, then work on the guide.  Nothing in need of urgent attention left in the themes that isn't out of my tech league, anyway.

The original template I put up is unchanged. I haven't modified your one. For the front page template, it's probably easiest if I finish it up according to the last mockup and we work from there. The template I did before is about half the way finished anyway and these "html editors" you use produce the most awful output.

...The thing about this work is, you often can't change something without affecting something else you didn't intend. Also, the type the .css code displays in is about two sizes too small, like some Grinch's heart font.  So everything takes five times longer, minimum...

There's no inherent reason why .css code should display small. You can change the fontsize in whatever editor you're using. If it's the browser inspector window that's a problem, that can probably be fixed too, but I won't look into it unless it is the problem.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, I'd rather see that kind of effort go into overhauling the display of the results up top - it's too narrow, something weird's been going on with displaying crap form themes other than the one I'm working one, and WYSIWYG editors that aren't, really, are just crap and burn my butt. -But the strain on my weak eyes from the code display is mostly done, I'll probably never need to spend this kind of extended time on themes again, so no big need in either case.

I just wrote something about what I've done with the front page template in the Staff Room, but disregard.  Yeah; I've shown you my basic design, so take it from there and we get a competent job ready for service in THIS lifetime.  The top background and button art is in the Junk folder.

[DrazharLn]

Oh, I'd rather see that kind of effort go into overhauling the display of the results up top - it's too narrow, something weird's been going on with displaying crap form themes other than the one I'm working one

Wut?

[Buster's Uncle]

The window that shows the theme and the changes in it as you change code/values - it's too-often false WYSIWYG, and too narrow, those two shortcomings sometimes and sometimes not related.  The &^%$#@! thing ought to at least always have a bottom scroll and just show part of the true width at a time and let you scroll right when you need to.

Or if you mean the something weird's going on part, lately, all the themes I'm working in show the top and read/unread buttons from the Firaxis theme in that inadequate window, because I haven't had enough crap in my way while I toiled and toiled.  It wasn't doing it until roughly around the SMAC default Sunday -and that was the theme-top showing for weeks- but it's been doing it since.

[DrazharLn]

I don't see that bug with an incorrect header bar or odd read/unread buttons.

Try ctrl+f5, maybe. Send a screenshot if that doesn't fix it.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, first thing I tried.  I think the Chrome account is still in Thanksgiving - let me boot it, up and get you that screeny.

[Buster's Uncle]

I scrolled down and got the read/unread icons showing and pasted in to get it in one shot.  The rest is as I found it as I enter the .css edit page.

The wrong top goes away -usually, mostly- if I take the view down into a subforum.  It's still gone when I go back up a level - except those read/unread icons.

-I suspect it's related to times I've changed theme folder names and typoed or forgot the master filepath line on the Current Theme page.  I've also done it on purpose a few times to get at fields a mod has taken off that page, like the slogan line - that's how I got one in Winter, but the only time that's actually worked/displayed.

Anyway, both Firaxis and the previous invader, SMAC, have had their folder names changed...

Roughly Sunday while I was working on the top for Thanksgiving, I set the height for the logo too low, and the logos in the default stopped displaying for approximately the same time the value was too low in Thanksgiving.  That freaks me out, 'cause I wonder if it means themes are somehow contaminating each other...

[Buster's Uncle]

I meant to mention the I usually see the menu for FOS, too, in the display.  It doesn't even bork up consistently...

[DrazharLn]

Can't reproduce, but oh God! Everything is underlined in thanksgiving on firefox for some reason!

Edit: I'm not going to try and fix the underlining. It's bizarre and digging into this mess will just annoy me. The theme works well for other people, apparently, so. Leaving.

[Buster's Uncle]

No, no.  Valka has been reporting it all along, and deeply cares - she might would use if that was fixed.



Were you trying to reproduce the logo cross-contamination with the default by setting the height for it too low in Thanksgiving a few hours ago, by chance?  I did get the logos not loading a refresh cycle or two this morning shortly after you'd been by, and wondered about just that at the time...

[DrazharLn]

I haven't fiddled with anything on the server. Nor do I get (or perhaps just don't notice) these errors.

If something doesn't load it's possible that it's just because of the load on the server. I reduced it a bit with the caching, but I might not have matched all of the previous tweaking, or more modern apache could just not work so well on very low end machines.

I do get "Your session timed out while posting. Please try to re-submit your message." a lot, though.

[Buster's Uncle]

Nothing on the server I'm talking about - normal stylesheet editing.


Posts not wanting to go through on the first try is sporadic - usually, it either has gone up anyway when I try again, or the text isn't lost when I back up and try again and it goes right up, usually.  It used to happen much more, we upgraded the server package, and that helped a lot.  Being as I live here, I have to assume I get it more, whatever the malfunction, and have trouble assessing how much is too much for everyone else, especially when there's no reports.