Skin changes

*Vinage hates Apollo's squished avatar. :ph43r:

I quite like the little flag.... might just be me though
 
The little flag is nice, that's true.
 
I changed the ad section in the header to something simpler. I can potentially also add back the icons (the # for IRC, anchor for Navy, etc., not the entire image button) to the left of each cell.

I think a fully-colored square looks better than what we had before. Also, this is much easier to maintain, since changes now can be done through code, without the need for new images to be created.

Please let me know what you think.

EDIT: I also changed the color scheme a little.
 
r3naissanc3r said:
One thing to note about the new icons (all of them): I uploaded them on a relatively low resolution, 72 dpi, to reduce load time. They appear very sharp on all monitor screens. However, I noticed that, when browsing from my iPhone, they appear annoyingly blurry, especially when compared to the vector-graphics used elsewhere (rendering fonts and boxes).

I tried increasing the resolution to 300 dpi, which fixed the problem on my cell phone, but unsurprisingly caused details in the icons to appear aliased.

I will experiment with intermediate resolutions over the weekend. There is also the alternative of using HTML code to serve different icons to different browsers. However, given that these are often edited by other admins, I would prefer to keep the page code to the bare minimum.
Click to expand...
This has now been fixed for the majority of images used by the forum, by having them replaced with HTML equivalents. This should also improve loading time a little bit. It also means that color and fonts are more consistent, and that the maintitle still covers everything when the forum is stretched. Other benefits are that buttons can be edited very easily, by changing their code; and that we get to delete a few image files from our server that we no longer use.

I have yet to replace the "Add reply" etc. buttons, but I will try to do this next Friday when I touch the skin again.
 
I will agree that the green for the Assembly button could be a different shade. But the overall format/layout is great.
 
Lethen said:
I will agree that the green for the Assembly button could be a different shade. But the overall format/layout is great.
Click to expand...
I should have been more specific. The bars that act as headers for each "area" of the forum. We went from solid blue to a blurry Europeian flag. I don't mind the buttons in the header.
 
Wait, solid blue? The flag has always been there, and at the same resolution as now.

The only thing I change in terms of the maintitle (or header bar as CSP calls it) is that, instead of having a long image with the flag strip to the left and then a blue bar of fixed length, now we have only the flag strip, at the same dimensions as before and always pushed to the left, and then the rest of the width being filled by the same blue color. Basically, it's like an adjustable length version of the exactly same bar design we had before.

As for the new buttons in the header, I think only Swak doesn't like them (sorry Swak :p ). The green for the assembly could be improved, I agree. I just hadn't had the time to experiment with it properly yet.
 
OK, just quickly replaced the green with that used in our flag. Not sure if it's great, but I'd say it looks better than the old one.
 
Looks great.
 
r3naissanc3r said:
One thing to note about the new icons (all of them): I uploaded them on a relatively low resolution, 72 dpi, to reduce load time. They appear very sharp on all monitor screens. However, I noticed that, when browsing from my iPhone, they appear annoyingly blurry, especially when compared to the vector-graphics used elsewhere (rendering fonts and boxes).

I tried increasing the resolution to 300 dpi, which fixed the problem on my cell phone, but unsurprisingly caused details in the icons to appear aliased.

I will experiment with intermediate resolutions over the weekend. There is also the alternative of using HTML code to serve different icons to different browsers. However, given that these are often edited by other admins, I would prefer to keep the page code to the bare minimum.
Click to expand...
I have replaced all of the skin buttons, except for the euro button itself, with CSS versions (i.e., they are now code that is rendered by the browser, instead of being loaded images). This means that they are now vector graphics, and so of practically inifnite resolution. Try it on your cell phone, everything should appear sharp even at very close viewing.

Also, this means faster loading time; better cross-browser compatibility; and that, when the forum is stretched, the maintitle bars and (normal) banner are also stretched gracefully.

Furthermore, buttons can now be edited very easily, as instead of having to create new images we can just edit the corresponding code.
 
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