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Darkness - The Dusk of a New Skin


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Sumply put, widescreen monitors are not the norm. 1024x768 is only just becoming the base level.

 

A design maximized for a wide monitor will look terrible on a smaller one but the reverse is not so traumatic for the user.

 

I do agree that a variable width layout generally works better on a forum, but it wouldn't be possibly with this design.

 

I beg to differ. Widescreen IS the norm.

 

Try checking out www.newegg.com - a popular web based retailer for computer hardware.

 

They currently offer 71 monitors that do not fit the "widescreen" description - I.e. 4:3 aspect.

 

This is a tremendously important aspect of skinning. Very likely the first thing to consider in fact. Naturally a designer wants everyone to enjoy the design equally which is quite a challenge when such a large range of resolutions need to be considered. Add to that the great debate of Fixed vs. Fluid. I'm on the Fluid team and gogo is on the Fixed team which makes for interesting conversation. ^^

 

dreeft makes a valid point wolfie and you should consider his post more carefully. He's a designer as well and follows the trends. Granted, even though widescreens appear to be the norm when browsing for a new screen, store windows don't exactly reflect actual use. Remember, the whole planet is online though some parts of it are using the most basic of technology. Luckily we designers have a number of resources that allow us to watch trends in action. Screen Resolution popularity is something I check every so often and unfortunately dreeft's mention of 1024x768 is an important consideration. Sites like THIS ONE and THIS ONE show us what resolutions are in use. Even better though is that we can look at our own stats manager to see how much of each resolution is being used. In our case about 26% of all the people that come to darkmatters are not using widescreen. Quite a substantial amount... An amount that can't be ignored.

 

popularres.JPG

 

And again dreeft is right in saying that a fluid, wider, layout won't be happening with this skin. It is possible but it would take a ton of editing.

 

I read everyones comments and let me assure you that the things some of you didn't like are all things I noticed as well. The next one will be different but for now this was definitely the best we could find. :)

 

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to try this skin out on my ITouch. :D

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Just wanted to put my 2 cents in here. I use a 4:3 monitor at home and at work. So does Daemon Rocks. I have a choice this spring, a netbook or a new monitor. Since my 21 inch monitor works fine I'm getting a netbook (or a new ipad when the new version comes out I'm still going back and forth on that). You may not be able to buy many 4:3 monitors anymore but there are a lot still in use out there.

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Great job on the login box, Thanks Schot. Ohh btw the new skin looks and works great on the iphone. There is no dead space on the sides.

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Wolfie, have you tried going to the default skin? It's fluid and so should give you the style you are accustomed to.

 

:)

 

gogo

 

Yeah.. I'm using it now.. Ugly as it is.. Somehow feels too corporate somehow...

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I mostly browse this site from my Droid with the mobile skin, but tonight I was actually on my desktop so I decided to check out the new skin. It looks good. The dead-space on the sides is typical for forum sites, but I consider it to be a non-issue since I seldom run maximized windows.

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OK guys.. So why is it the link to "Go to the first unread post" icon always seem to take me to the 1st post on a thread? It's fine and dandy if there's only one page - but if you're going to the Related Word Game post - it's like 806 pages off... This is using the IP Board theme. You'd think the default theme that ships with the software would be working 100% properly.

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Ask and you shall receive! (You might actually trying to ask for help) Well... Sometimes. ^^ Link is fixed. As for why it was that way it was actually because I changed it. I had intended to only make the title always go to the first post though I must have applied the change to the icon as well which wasn't part of the plan. Fixed!

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Heya Schot. Doing great work here. Finding the screen to work very well for me now........ but you said yourself

Ask and you shall receive! (You might actually trying to ask for help)
So I be asking, can we get a link to the Wiki placed on the home page somewhere like it used to be? If it's possible that would be great, if not, no worries.

 

Doh, :tomato: Sorry, guess I didn't open me eyes enough to see that HUGE shield that says "SacredWiki". Can I get a rain check on the "Ask and Ye shall receive"?

 

Good Job Schot, your the best! :resp:

Edited by Furian67
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Heya Schot. Doing great work here. Finding the screen to work very well for me now........ but you said yourself

Ask and you shall receive! (You might actually trying to ask for help)
So I be asking, can we get a link to the Wiki placed on the home page somewhere like it used to be? If it's possible that would be great, if not, no worries.

 

Doh, :tomato: Sorry, guess I didn't open me eyes enough to see that HUGE shield that says "SacredWiki". Can I get a rain check on the "Ask and Ye shall receive"?

 

Good Job Schot, your the best! :resp:

 

lol. No no. You were right to ask. I'm pretty sure I put the shield up after you asked. Oh heck, you can still have a rain check anyway. :D

 

Actually...I noticed that pictures don;t get resized to fit the forum anymore, they stretch all the way out to the right...is that something that you can fix?

 

eg. see this.

 

 

Noticed that too. Doesn't look nice at all. The curse of the slim forums, I say ya...

Maybe some lightbox magic or something?:bounce:

 

Rain check fulfilled! ^^ gogo asked me about this today so we had a look at it and were able to tweak the resize function to suit the skin nicely.

 

 

Cheers guys!

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I love the new skin Schot but sadly it's a no-go for me :(

 

The SIF and DA both have skins that are really cool but don't scale to widescreen. I still use the S1 skin at the SIF just because it makes everything more readable because it resizes to your screen.

 

Sorry to criticise Schot cause this forum is awesome and I love what you guys have done for us :bow:

 

This is how the darkness skin looks for me

 

th_Darkness.jpg

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I love the new skin Schot but sadly it's a no-go for me :(

 

The SIF and DA both have skins that are really cool but don't scale to widescreen. I still use the S1 skin at the SIF just because it makes everything more readable because it resizes to your screen.

 

Sorry to criticise Schot cause this forum is awesome and I love what you guys have done for us :bow:

 

This is how the darkness skin looks for me

 

th_Darkness.jpg

You do not have to run with your browser maximized.

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Thanks Schot! I think appreciation for your work really shows when people take time to feed back to you. The fact that you can fix a lot of our requests gets you a huge high five!

 

High fives back at you dude! :D

 

 

Thanks schot! Works/looks heaps better now :)

 

My pleasure dudey. :)

 

Another problem may be the position of the Sacred Wiki/Donate Button. I was thinking -

forum.jpg

 

This way the forum window can be stretched to the max possible.

 

Ah! Good thinking Graeystone. I'll give that a test. My only concern would be that there would empty space on either side if I were to put it there and that it would push content down. I'll give it a try on my test skin though. :agreed:

 

I love the new skin Schot but sadly it's a no-go for me :(

 

The SIF and DA both have skins that are really cool but don't scale to widescreen. I still use the S1 skin at the SIF just because it makes everything more readable because it resizes to your screen.

 

Sorry to criticise Schot cause this forum is awesome and I love what you guys have done for us :bow:

 

This is how the darkness skin looks for me

 

th_Darkness.jpg

 

Ok, at this point I'd just like to say that I didn't design the skin, lol. *relinquishes self of any shame to do with creating the skin* I'll be honest here and say that I'm very likely the one that is most annoyed about that. When gogo and I bought the skin I just assumed that the skin would have a flexible width that I could either set a size or allow it to be fluid and thereby stretch according to everyones screen widths. Nope! No dice there. So unfortunately we're stuck with the width until I create a new skin. I've considered fixing the width of this one but after checking under the hood I realized it wouldn't be worth it. Too much to fix.

 

All that to say is that I understand Dobster. No need to apologize. In fact I'm glad you were honest. :)

 

I love the new skin Schot but sadly it's a no-go for me :(

 

The SIF and DA both have skins that are really cool but don't scale to widescreen. I still use the S1 skin at the SIF just because it makes everything more readable because it resizes to your screen.

 

Sorry to criticise Schot cause this forum is awesome and I love what you guys have done for us :bow:

 

This is how the darkness skin looks for me

 

th_Darkness.jpg

You do not have to run with your browser maximized.

 

That's a great solution lujate. :) I never even thought to try that until I read your post. So I have been all morning. The only problem really is that I usually have many tabs open in my browser of which I prefer to view full screen. It gets to be a pain changing from fullscreen to windowed mode depending on what tab I have open. :blink:

 

 

Needless to say, the next skin will be fluid.

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I'm glad you took no offence Schot, it was only meant to be feedback :)

 

Having saved up for this monitor it's nice to have everything at full-screen. It would be like having a sports car and then never getting above second gear :P

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I had quite a shock when first saw that there was a new skin (I thought I was at the wrong place), but I really think this skin looks cool (in fact, I couldn't stand the Christmas skin anymore, I was about to send an e-mail/open a new topic about when the Christmas skin would change.

 

Good find on the new skin! :)

 

 

Max

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I'm glad you took no offence Schot, it was only meant to be feedback :)

 

Having saved up for this monitor it's nice to have everything at full-screen. It would be like having a sports car and then never getting above second gear :P

 

I noticed how small your text was in comparison to the size of the screen, And I hope maybe I can help. My 23" monitor is also 16 X 9. My fix was quite simple actually.

 

Hold CTRL and Roll your mouse wheel until the forum fits you screen. Everything will scale nicely and makes the grey on black print really easy to read. It's quick and easy and can be undone for other sites just as quick.

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Schot -

 

When you get a few mins to spare (yeah... I know fat chance of that), can you throw a little love towards the stock IPBoard theme as well? It's like there's nothing that says Darkmatters on it - except the teeny, tiny bit of small print below the tabs that says "DarkMatters" so unless you're paying attention to the URL up top, you wouldn't have a clue that you're here.

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