Theme Development and Updates (688 views)

[Baronessa]

Hoi,

We're (that is to say, I am) working on a new theme that would make the forum a bit easier on the eyes and I thought it'd be a decent idea to share updates regarding the development of such a thing. The reason I'm doing this is because the Metro Stripe theme we have as our default now is extremely difficult to modify, because of how the creator of the theme constructed it in the first place.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Demo}

This theme is courtesy of Smangii at the Slightly Insane forum.

Here's the itinerary so far:

1. relocate the navigation bar
2. change the colour scheme
3. change the font
4. design a TRP logo
5. design a background

I think doing these things would make it much more our own, so I'm not just downloading someone else's theme being like "here you go you're welcome."

I'll be updating this thread with screenshots occasionally, whenever I feel like I've made significant enough progress to report on it.

[Baronessa]

Bit of an earlier update than I was envisioning, but our friend 'S found another theme template and I am currently seeing if I can make the switch into that.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Breathe by Elli McCale}

I've already made a bunch of modifications to it, but the formatting of this theme is particularly unfriendly to range threads, so I'll be working on that for the foreseeable future.

Much thanks to 'S and BAZanine for giving their feedback on the formatting and helping me develop this theme into the best one yet.

[Homelander]

With all due respect, what is wrong with our current design? Is there really a need to change it?

[Baronessa]

I figured some people might be questioning the need for a change. Okay, so:

From a purely development-side perspective, the code is chaos. Whenever you make changes to one thing it changes another thing that should be completely unrelated to the thing you were modifying in the first place. I've wanted to change a lot of things about the formatting of this theme many times, but you basically have to rebuild parts of the CSS if you don't want to cause unintended consequences on the rest of the theme. Call it laziness if you wish, but the difference between Metro Stripe and Breathe in terms of the quality of the code is honestly staggering.

One of the terms of downloading Metro Stripe was that you are not permitted to make any changes to the theme without the permission of the creator himself. This is extremely tedious considering the guy seems to be online biannually at best. Moreover, themes are copyrighted material and I don't want to be beholden to a single guy who might decide at any time that he's moving on is not going to update his theme anymore. Breathe is a Creative Commons theme, which means everything except the copyright you may modify with no red tape and no green lights needed.

Regarding the look of the theme itself, people have pointed out even back on TRP 3 that the themes are always looking too bright. In lieu of a dark mode, which would not be possible to execute considering the way we code range threads — the main draw of our forum — with primarily black text and smatterings of blue, green and grey, I'm seeing this as a very reasonable middle road. Breathe doesn't make your eyes light on fire every time you open the forum late at night. It's also a very legible theme, it uses Open Sans for the default forum text, which is what the entirety of Metro Stripe uses, just with some added pizzazz for the main titles in the serif Steelfish font. Range threads are much easier to read with the increased padding between the text lines, and it doesn't make the rest of the text lines bounce around when you add a bolded link to your text.

Breathe is just a very stylistic, spacious and expansive theme — munificent, if you will. It's not the opposite of Metro Stripe, it's not even the opposite of the old default theme, in fact I've already made changes to Breathe that would make the front page board layout look more like a default ProBoards forum. Making the theme easier to access for everyone is much easier for all the reasons I mentioned above. The way I'm seeing it, it's the best of every theme we've had since TRP 2 with none of their drawbacks.

Although this theme has its unique downsides as well of course, but those won't be in the final product.

TL;DR — yes, according to all the feedback I've been getting throughout the years there's a lot of reasons why we will want to change this theme.

[Baronessa]

Hello friends, update. You can try the theme out now. It will not be made default yet, but it is now technically functional so that you can see it and actually use it.

If you don't know where you can change themes, just go to your profile page, select Edit Profile and then go to Settings. From there find the Forum Theme section and select 'BREATHE WIP' from the dropdown menu.



Keep in mind, these things will change:
1. The Spoiler and Quick Reply plugins will be updated to their newest versions.
2. The colour scheme for staff members will be changed.
3. The bothersome banner ad that's been hanging around in the forum body for a while will hopefully move up to the top of the page.
4. The 'Site Info' bit is largely blank right now, but we're cooking up some ideas for it.

Among other tweaks that involve spacing and other boring shit like that. If you have questions about it you can ask.

Hope you have fun with it.

[イ𝑜ⳏⲁ𝑧 𝑅𝑜𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒]

The new 'Breathe' style is rather nice so far! 😃
Admittedly I find the default theme's font a bit clearer, but it's fine. 
One thing I was wondering was about the shoutbox - how come there isn't one for all the themes? 

[Macca]

Looks good wish it looked better on mobile.

[Baronessa]

I do too.

Feb 17, 2024 19:57:12 GMT イ𝑜ⳏⲁ𝑧 𝑅𝑜𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒 said:

One thing I was wondering was about the shoutbox - how come there isn't one for all the themes? 

That'd be because we had a chat room in a separate tab on the recent default before, but since we're doing away with Metro Stripe we're moving the shoutbox to the front page (where it normally is).

[Baronessa]

The post likes and buttons should no longer mess with the text and images of your posts on mobile.