For Rikki... Skinning Suggestions

[skinbydragonfly]

This follows on from the discussion in the Customer Lounge regarding skins.. specifically my objection to there being no backgrounds and or borders on a lot of CONTENT areas of the board.

Dearest Darling Rikki....

It would appear that there are a large number of areas of Content blocks within the Default skin (upon which all skins are based) that do not have backgrounds specified.. they are relying on the body background, which is not best practice imho...If you could see your way clear to changing this, I am sure the community of skinners, and individuals trying to skin would be hugely grateful :)

Here is a visual example for you....

1. New Blogs screen in the IPB Default skin.



2. New Blogs screen with the base IPB default skin, but just a different darker body background - as you can see the lack of a background behind the content areas is significant when you start making any changes.. there are a lot of areas of the board like this too.


3.... You might say "well just add a background colour and a border to that div wrapper"... in this case #main_column, however that just gives one an ugly box of colour, without any ability to style it without changing the functionality of that div. (and god forbid if it is a class used elsewhere as well) It also breaks in Firefox in this case... so then you have to fiddle around adjusting margins/padding... and hope and pray to various Greater Entities.. that it works in all browsers, and doesn't create 10 other problems in other areas.

To work around this I have included my own wrapper class in all those areas of the board thus affected (and there are a number).. however that has led to a huge workload whenever upgrades roll around, as then every template I have edited to add this wrapper has to be manually upgraded, in every skin. Additionally the blogs no longer supports this (that I can find..) I spent days trying to get it to work before giving up.. but not before much screaming and pulling my hair out and generally turning the air blue around me in the process.


4. This is something like I (and my customers) would WANT it to look like... far more styled and in keeping with the rest of the skin.. only problem is this is proving to be almost impossible to achieve (in the blogs anyway). The other areas throughout the board the look can be achieved, but only with a lot of work.



imho... having easily adjustable and editable backgrounds to content areas is a must - I think it is pretty fundamental to have a background behind content areas, not rely on the body background. Same with borders to content areas... I haven't checked lately because I have been using my wrapper everywhere instead.. but last time I tried it you couldn't add a border attribute to the main content areas because of the border-collapse: collapse - has this changed? If not.. could it... you should be able to add a border to content areas without drama.

To close dearest Rikki, I know I am not the world's greatest coder, and perhaps I have missed some blatantly obvious way of achieving my aims without all this rigmorole... (Highly likely - But if so you got to ask how total noobs are feeling!!!) and I also know that many of the youngie skinners and grooovsters don't feel borders or footers etc to be totally cool and web2ish etc etc.. but most of us grown ups quite like those things... as my customer base and queue for custom skins says.......and rully trullly it would be most excellent to not have to cry everytime IPS releases a new update because of all the useless non productive, non creative work it creates.

:)

Edit to add other areas...

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[Tom Christian]

I'd also like to point out that this heavily applies to the profile :)

[Amy T]

Very well put could not have said it better my self. ;)

[.Immortal]

This would be a major win.

[Bryan Sammers]

I highly prefer black on white for the content text to "gray to gray" for content text.




White background is the modern design of 2009+.

[Lewis P]

Something else I'm going to throw in: if a .border class could be added to all areas like the classic .borderwrap, it'll make things easier to give the content boundaries, instead of being 'free flowing'

[bfarber]

I highly prefer black on white for the content text to "gray to gray" for content text.

White background is the modern design of 2009+.

The topic is not pointing out use of specific colors or looking for feedback on the visual aspects of any part of the skin. :P Kim is trying to point out a technical limitation to our skinner (in the hopes that he will add code to IPB to help skinners overcome this limitation easier in future releases).

[Bryan Sammers]

Thanks for pointing that out. That is indeed a good suggestion! The style here on ipb.com is by far the best forum software provides today (both standard and mobile!), but of course there is always more potential.

[skinbydragonfly]

Something else I'm going to throw in: if a .border class could be added to all areas like the classic .borderwrap, it'll make things easier to give the content boundaries, instead of being 'free flowing'

Ahhh good old .borderwrap.. how we miss theeee :whistle:

[Rikki]

Something else I'm going to throw in: if a .border class could be added to all areas like the classic .borderwrap, it'll make things easier to give the content boundaries, instead of being 'free flowing'

Last time we added a classname for convenience (ipbwrapper), there was nearly a riot ;) People have different needs, wishes and opinions, and it's difficult to accommodate them all unfortunately.

Regarding your suggestions, Kim, I can certainly see how that'd cause problems for anything but the default skin. We'll take a look into it, although it probably won't be for 3.1 (it'd likely be in a Blog update, anyway).

[Tom Christian]

Ahhh good old .borderwrap.. how we miss theeee :whistle:

Yes! Definitely this as well! The only workaround I know at the moment leaves an annoyingly, LARGER gap but only in IE :/

[Enkidu]

<p style ="align:sarcastic;">
after reading this topic and Evanescence's, I now know that the skinning community is really pissed.


Rikki, you should seek asylum on another planet for your own safety.

</p>

[Rikki]

<p style ="align:sarcastic;">

after reading this topic and [url="http://www.ibskin.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3323-skinning-has-become-a-total-nighmare/"]Evanescence's[/url], I now know that the skinning community is really pissed.

Rikki, you should seek asylum on another planet for your own safety.

</p>

There's many incorrect points in that topic. The templates are changing very little in 3.1. We hardly release templates every week or two. I realise that some style of skins are going to be more difficult to accomplish now that we use CSS instead of tables for layout, but unfortunately that's the required standard these days, and people need to move with the times.

[Amy T]

<p style ="align:sarcastic;">

after reading this topic and [url="http://www.ibskin.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3323-skinning-has-become-a-total-nighmare/"]Evanescence's[/url], I now know that the skinning community is really pissed.

Rikki, you should seek asylum on another planet for your own safety.

</p>

I love the skin she has on that site. Very cute. I read the article and agree. In all my years of using ipb ipb 3 is the first time the admin cp has confused me.
I get lots very easy in the admin cp on ipb3 reminds me of how hard ocprotal was a few years back, before they listened to my feed back and complaints by other users.

[Heyhoe]

EDIT: Overlooked that this had already been posted!!!!!!!! IGNORE BELOW.


The skinning site i use, Ibskin.com just posted this message as a new thread entitled "Skinning has become a total nightmare"

Oh My Gawd! I have upgraded the blog, gallery and download manager on my local host to get the candie skin completed for all the components and you would not believe the B.S. in these templates and css. What was IPS thinking ..??!!! :blink: This just makes me want to tuck tail and hide. LOL It use to take me about 4 days to make a skin for all other versions of IPB dating back to 1.3 when I started, but now, no matter how hard I try, I can't get one done in under 10 days. This is ridiculous. Now I find out IPS is about to release IPB 3.1 which is suppose to completely change the skin templates and css all together, yet again. So this means all skins I have done up to this point will have to be rewritten all over again. AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! I think they are trying just a little too hard to be better than VBulletin and all the others, that they have lost sight of what's important here. It takes a freakin' rocket scientist to just perform normal tasks in this software now. These people have lost their minds, I'm tellin' ya. I use to wake up every day and look forward to sitting down at my computer and making these skins. I really looked forward to it. I would wake up early just because I was anxious to finish up my next skin. Now.... it is safe to say, there is no enjoyment in it anymore, there is no sense of satisfaction when skin is done anymore, and trying to come up with designs for this mess of crap code is mentally exhausting. I'm gonna have to get down a different skinning system if I'm gonna make this work, but I'm tellin' ya, there is no way we can keep our prices this low if it is going to take this long just to make one skin. It's just not possible to stay in business this way. Having the knowledge to do this is not the problem. Having the patience and tolerance for total stupidity IS the problem. It's like they have just slapped a bunch of code together and given no regards to what the finished product has to offer their customers.

Okay... I feel much better now. I'm gonna go get my allergy shots and I'll be back to skinning in a few minutes. I just had to get that off my chest.

And don't worry, this isn't gonna effect any of you as far as new skin releases and such, I just wouldn't expect more than one or two skins a month for a while. This is my career, my only income, so I'm here to stay and I will continue to bring you my best work, no matter what. I'm just tired of IPS making my life difficult. Come to find out, I'm not alone in this. The other skinners are pretty ticked about all this stuff too. I have noticed that MANY skinners, including myself, have stopped taking on custom skin jobs. After we get all our current custom skin orders finished, we're not taking on any more custom orders. I'm not sure I ever will again.

This was posted in house, but thought you might be interested in what she had to say. This is NOT MY OPINION as i do not have skinning experience but is the opinion of a skinner on her own forum.

[Amy T]

There's many incorrect points in that topic. The templates are changing very little in 3.1. We hardly release templates every week or two. I realise that some style of skins are going to be more difficult to accomplish now that we use CSS instead of tables for layout, but unfortunately that's the required standard these days, and people need to move with the times.

Yes we do want tableless structure.
How is the curved corners done? is it 3 images and 3 div tags like this.

<div class="standardbox_panel_top_left">

	<div class="standardbox_panel_top_right">

		<div class="standardbox_panel_top_middle">&nbsp;</div>

	</div>


	</div>

Each of those div tags have an image connected to them in the css.
This I feel makes templates easier to edit. Not sure and have not looked how curved edges are done in ipb3.

[Rikki]

Yes we do want tableless structure.

How is the curved corners done? is it 3 images and 3 div tags like this.

<div class="standardbox_panel_top_right"> <div class="standardbox_panel_top_middle">&nbsp;</div> </div> </div>

<div class="standardbox_panel_top_left">

Each of those div tags have an image connected to them in the css.
This I feel makes templates easier to edit. Not sure and have not looked how curved edges are done in ipb3.

Yes, you can do curved corners like that if you want. However we're not loading the default skin up with those kinds of things 'just in case' someone wants to use them. The default skin uses CSS3 to do curved corners.

[Amy T]

Can you post an example?
How easy is it to make the images for it and do you still need 3 images?

Oh and the code I used was what I was thought when I started making skins. It was how I was told to do tableless curved edges.

[Rikki]

You don't need to use images if you use CSS3. You just use border-radius: 8px;. It isn't supported in IE though, so it'll show square corners.

[Amy T]

Ah might be why I was taught the other way as it does show correctly in IE.

[Amy T]

How did you do the curves on the green tabs as I see that works on IE and I know in a few skins I made I used the code I listed above for tabs that look like that.

[Heyhoe]

I'm pretty sure thats an image

[Amy T]

That looks like one of the 3 images I would make for the code I posted above. So that might be done the same way or close to it. I can not tell by the source code.

[Guest]

The tabs at the top of the page use a technique called "sliding doors". You have two images, a small left hand image only big enough to show the curve, and a right image that is larger than the expected width of the tab content. :)

[Andy Rixon]

You don't need to use images if you use CSS3. You just use [font="Courier New"]border-radius: 8px;[/font]. It isn't supported in IE though, so it'll show square corners.

I use this in my designs (not just for ipb). I hate it when things don't work in IE :(