The DnD Sanctuary

Th-hh. Well, I see 1 point to 'report' now, but it may be needed in the future as well - should some roughnesses or inconcistencies are noticed...
For example, with 150% zoom on Chrome, I now have the "Logout" link directly beneath the "Home" one (which I use quite often).  Unless logging out here requires sort of confirmation (haven't checked that so far), it'll be not very convenient to mishit a button there...
I suggest we could lose "My" in the bookmarks link.

By the by!  I've checked - in the poll options - the box allowing you to change your voting, so...  Let's see - and let us check that thing as well, oki?
The poll here is locked: please proceed to the new thread: https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=88.0

The title at the very top and the "DnD Sanctuary" link both above and below a topic also lead to the same location as "Home".

I'll remove the margin-bottom from #upper_section and I'll add a margin-top to .dropmenu li. That way the navigational items won't be so close together if they become two lines.

Edit: and done. Does that do the trick?

Looks legit.

You may lose that back, it looked cosier.
And in your forum description line, when broken (by zoom), the "second line" hangs too far - the interval, I guess...
I wonder if somebody else uses the forum in such a zoom... ?

Well, Frans, I've found where to 'send a PM' from the members list.

• It doesn't look obvious - not quite.


• The URL is not too simple to discover this, and the tooltip shows "offline/online" - which is brilliant :P but other messaging buttons show messaging tooltips ;D

(PSST: Wouldn't it be sensible to make the "list" paraphernalia a bit more laconic?)

Wouldn't it be sensible to make the "list" paraphernalia a bit more laconic

I think it's just fine, but then again I can usually glean any info I need or want via other methods.....but again, for what it is, I think it's quite fine.  Want to send someone a message.....middle-click their name from anywhere & select Send PM (if available) .....  (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/yesyesyes.gif)      (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/cheerskj4.gif)

BTW......anyone notice?  Who is test ? 

Opened an account with a questionable name --for what reason-- a coupla days ago, & hasn't done squat....I don't get a warm & fuzzy there --- fails the sniff 'test' .... (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/smellyfish.gif)

BTW......anyone notice?  Who is test ? 

Opened an account with a questionable name --for what reason-- a coupla days ago, & hasn't done squat....I don't get a warm & fuzzy there --- fails the sniff 'test' ....

It's me. I opened it after you said the My Bookmarks wasn't working. ;)

Quote from: SmileyFaze on 2013-12-21, 02:16:24

BTW......anyone notice?  Who is test ? 

Opened an account with a questionable name --for what reason-- a coupla days ago, & hasn't done squat....I don't get a warm & fuzzy there --- fails the sniff 'test' ....

It's me. I opened it after you said the My Bookmarks wasn't working. ;)

Good then....glad to know it ain't no suicide bomber  .....  (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/Watching%20You.gif)
(https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/chuckle002.gif)

I played around a little with how the quote looks.

Before:
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpolymathicmonkey.smugmug.com%2FFrans%2FScreenshots%2Fn-d5sFT%2Fi-Q3xZ7nd%2F0%2FO%2Fscreenshot-quote-before-12222013-fs8.png&hash=5b17f0f5aee16118371269bf7f5e7644" rel="cached" data-hash="5b17f0f5aee16118371269bf7f5e7644" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/Frans/Screenshots/n-d5sFT/i-Q3xZ7nd/0/O/screenshot-quote-before-12222013-fs8.png)

After:
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpolymathicmonkey.smugmug.com%2FFrans%2FScreenshots%2Fn-d5sFT%2Fi-Q4BNjPb%2F0%2FO%2Fscreenshot-quote-after-12222013-fs8.png&hash=e364853422152adb0b9494c1b4d606da" rel="cached" data-hash="e364853422152adb0b9494c1b4d606da" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/Frans/Screenshots/n-d5sFT/i-Q4BNjPb/0/O/screenshot-quote-after-12222013-fs8.png)

Comments?

I like the after, much neater and tidier.  :)

Thanks, that was the intention. I thought the quotes were insufficiently distinguished by default. The two primary options I see are a proper left margin (classical print) and a thicker border on the left (wastes ink but this isn't print). I also thought the name was a bit too removed from the quote itself.

I was thinking maybe the "tab" should get a slightly more distinct bg color, but besides that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

ׂ

How did you get your second PNG image at 11kB while maintaining the right colors? I pushed my Gimp-generated image (at maximum compression already) through pngcrush -brute and it managed to get the after screenshot down from 21.1kB to 19kB. The pngquant lossy PNG I posted here came in at 8.4kB, but that's why the background color looks off.

Why isn't there a border on the right side?

I like the look, although the effect mostly depends on the border-radius. In the Opera 8 screenshot it looks somewhat silly.

I was thinking maybe the "tab" should get a slightly more distinct bg color

Yes that would make it stand out more from the actual background.

I like the general looks of it, just as long as the statements of the one who's making the actual post is not 'boxed', only the quoted quotes should be 'boxed'  --  preferably with a shade or two darker background for emphasis that it is a quote.

I reused the color from around the Quick Reply in the little tab. It seems to work fairly well.  I'd probably want to implement a completely custom color scheme at some point, but that'd take significantly more time than a quick quote change.

I like the general looks of it, just as long as the statements of the one who's making the actual post is not 'boxed', only the quoted quotes should be 'boxed'.

The point is to distinguish quotes better from posts, so I think we're on the same page. What do you think of the way it looks on My Opera?

ׂ

The posts look okay in both cases. I'd rather wish they didn't have a chance to "pour out" on the right side, but it's a minor issue.

How about the 1px dashed border?

Updated with 7.77 kB using no prefilter (as opposed to 'sub' or 'paeth'). Screenshots work best without prefilter, but I don't usually bother with small pictures. Few programs offer the choice.

pngcrush should work out that kind of thing automatically with the -brute option, surely?

I reused the color from around the Quick Reply in the little tab. It seems to work fairly well.  I'd probably want to implement a completely custom color scheme at some point, but that'd take significantly more time than a quick quote change.

Quote from: SmileyFaze on 2013-12-22, 20:49:49

I like the general looks of it, just as long as the statements of the one who's making the actual post is not 'boxed', only the quoted quotes should be 'boxed'.

The point is to distinguish quotes better from posts, so I think we're on the same page. What do you think of the way it looks on My Opera?

Fine, always were easy to follow, but I prefer a distinctive BG color scheme...just a shade, at most two if using the same base color.....not necessary if using a contrasting alternate color on a direct quote, but similar to what you've done with your 2nd level+ quotes. Personally though, too much contrasting becomes confusing to follow -- especially when your viewing a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote.... (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/imthinkin6.gif)

Well, well, the people you come across (http://irfanview-forum.de/showthread.php?t=2270&s=d348dc5cedbacfc761148f024b9b87a1) while searching for keywords like PNG and prefilter.

similar to what you've done with your 2nd level+ quotes.

It's just the default theme. :)

Personally though, too much contrasting becomes confusing to follow -- especially when your viewing a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote....

Quoting more than two to three levels deep is questionable for that and other reasons. It'll also use up more space for me (not much, but still) and result in slower page loading times for everyone (again not much, but still). But that's why we want quick quote. ;)

Very nice. I think the quote had wrong font size before, but it's fixed now.

By the way, I didn't change anything about that. However, I did create a potential workaround for the user-defined font-size dilemma:

var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
iframe.style.display = 'none';
document.body.appendChild(iframe);

var iframeWindow = iframe.contentWindow || iframe.documentWindow; // the latter is for old IE
var iframeDoc = iframeWindow.document;

var fontSize = getComputedStyle(iframeDoc.documentElement).getPropertyValue('font-size');

if (fontSize === '16px') {
  // assume the user didn't change the default
  // set font-size to 13px
}
else {
  // respect what the user said
  // Also this is stupid. It shouldn't have to be this hard to provide some proper user choice. >_< This is your fault, everyone who ever used 67%, and this is also your fault, browser makers who implemented rem (as opposed to em) over a decade too late.
}

Before you all complain again that the font-size is too large, I just made it a server-side setting in the looks and appearances (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=profile;area=theme) area of the profile. I think this means one extra DB query, but having to set it all through JS on every computer you use sounds somewhat annoying.

Makes sense doing it that way. Now we can all have the size of font we prefer and are happy with.
Don't change it to 10e though like I just accidentally did.  :-[  Thank goodness for User mode in Opera.  :D

Haha. :) In practice 1em is equivalent to 100%, 1.5em to 150%, etc. Although it just occurs to me that 1.5 em is not an accepted value so I might need to work on that too. I'm trying to figure out a bit of a balance between allowing configurability and not letting people shoot themselves in the foot by setting e.g. 0% (which is currently possible).

Btw, I'm still working out some kinks so it might not be completely stable yet.

Edit: while I was at it, I also disabled the ICQ, MSN, AIM and Y!M profile fields because no one was using them anyway. I don't really care either way, but it looked a bit silly with all those columns being completely empty in the memberlist.

Before you all complain again that the font-size is too large, I just made it a server-side setting in the looks and appearances (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=profile;area=theme) area of the profile. I think this means one extra DB query, but having to set it all through JS on every computer you use sounds somewhat annoying.

Quotes are ok and everything is brilliant! Take a dough nut!
I just came and got surprised by the view...  And I thought it was too large, and I dezoomed back a step - to 125% -- and it all looks just as it should! Take a doughnut and keep your fingers ON IT, ok?

Edit: while I was at it, I also disabled the ICQ, MSN, AIM and Y!M profile fields because no one was using them anyway. I don't really care either way, but it looked a bit silly with all those columns being completely empty in the memberlist.

Basically it's allright.
But one guy seemed to have some of that schate.

Frans, in the poll, I checked some stuff that the guys can revote. What about "where's the button?"? By now, I've only found "Remove vote".

 And "View results" doesn't work when I haven't voted (I've removed the vote).

Frans, in the poll, I checked some stuff that the guys can revote. What about "where's the button?"? By now, I've only found "Remove vote".

So you remove your vote and revote. What's the problem there?

I thought it would look more like on Facebook...
Maybe you're right...

Two things,
one - why changing for such a big font? yes, I went to preferences and defined 14px, but unless someone has specifically asked for this, the older font seems to me to be perfectly  acceptable. No web site uses such a big font anymore.
two - I notice the change in quoting that I'm not sure that has any benefit. What  I think to have a benefit is to eliminate the date/time stamp that seems to me useless and to create automatically a space (or half space) between the quote and the beginning of text.

75% = [glow=red,2,300]Perfectalamente[/glow]

ׂ

one - why changing for such a big font? yes, I went to preferences and defined 14px, but unless someone has specifically asked for this, the older font seems to me to be perfectly  acceptable. No web site uses such a big font anymore.

That's not quite true. Many, including Opera's, choose a font-size of 100%. What 100% means is not up to me.

Simply put, 14px can be large on one display, medium on another, and small or even illegibly small on yet another. On the other hand, 100% should always be legible. 80% of course should also be legible, but it still seems iffy because that's the "small" compared to the user's choice.

82% seems to hit the normal web font size of 10pt, although I'm not too familiar with Trebuchet MS to tell for sure (Verdana / Tahoma definitely would have fallen apart on anything but 8pt, 9pt or 10pt).

While theoretically points should work on any medium and result in the same physical font size, in practice points are only dependable in print. Or perhaps you're confused by the ancient Mac bug where pt and px were equivalent?

Reasons why? I guess the effective pixel density of modern screens has increased, and modern fonts no longer have bitmaps or fine hints in them to target exact pixels, and then we need type big to look good.

Seeing pixels never looks good. To get something that looks mostly good, you need at least 200+ppi. On my phone, type is legible at what would be a completely illegible 3px or so on my desktop monitor. Don't confuse using more pixels and larger type.

As an aside, DejaVu Sans is reasonably legible at 8px and fully legible at 9px. Of course it can't beat a true 8px pixel font (http://various.font-cat.com/font-en-43089-xpdr01-Regular.html), which will also be fully legible at 8px.

(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpolymathicmonkey.smugmug.com%2FFrans%2FScreenshots%2Fn-d5sFT%2Fi-8wCKQ3K%2F0%2FO%2Fscreenshot-dejavu-sans-9px-12242013-fs8.png&hash=bdc93d5949997fe86fa540a4d8663392" rel="cached" data-hash="bdc93d5949997fe86fa540a4d8663392" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/Frans/Screenshots/n-d5sFT/i-8wCKQ3K/0/O/screenshot-dejavu-sans-9px-12242013-fs8.png)
DejaVu Sans at 9px.

What's this have to do with Facebook? Last time I was there a couple weeks ago, it had many small panels around, and small buttons on them with small labels.

While it probably doesn't apply to everything, I'd say you can generally do the opposite of Facebook without giving it much thought and you'd probably be doing the right thing.

ׂ

I recognize that technology has changed, and displays have become larger. But the web has used the same 10pt font for so many years that is hard to change my reading habit.

10 points is 10 points is 10 points. Except on buggy computers, which I believe is still all of them. :P Incidentally, a CSS pixel is technically also a physical size (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#length-units):

in: inches — 1in is equal to 2.54cm.
cm: centimeters
mm: millimeters
pt: points — the points used by CSS are equal to 1/72nd of 1in.
pc: picas — 1pc is equal to 12pt.
px: pixel units — 1px is equal to 0.75pt.

That's theory. In practice, point is unstable and a pixel is mostly the physical pixel—except on an Apple Retina display where I believe it might be 4 physical pixels.

What's the average screen size of portable devices ("phones") today?

Mine is 3.3" with a resolution of 854×480, which is about average. Most phones sold today tend to have bigger screens and even better PPI. Like I said before, I'd totally use the iPad display (or two of them) as a desktop monitor.

Why do all the good screens come with locked down POS software?

http://www.google.be/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/

Although in this case it looks like you can work around it:
http://vger.kernel.org/~davem/chromebook_pixel_linux.txt
http://lab.uchicago.edu/2013/06/04/chromebook-pixel-with-fedora-19/

While it probably doesn't apply to everything, I'd say you can generally do the opposite of Facebook without giving it much thought and you'd probably be doing the right thing.

I too think you could get far if you consistently applied an anti-Facebook design pattern. If I were a web designer and had time to spare for it, it would be fun to do this just see how far it would get. And write an article about it afterwards, obviously.

"View results" still doesn't work in this poll before voting.

That would be the expected behavior seeing how it's set to "Only show the results after someone has voted." :P

Considering English - SOMEONE HAS.

I'd like this thing to get less fonted:

An international discussion forum for debating everything under the sun and then some.

For it looks now I've already pointed out how.

I've just found a trouble, Frans. With the polls.
Decided to adjust this poll with an additional option, didn't change much, but it occurs that after editing, the poll has lost the option for users to change the vote altogether.
I'll return to the tinkering a bit later: maybe it could be that something depends on other options - eg results visibility (which I changed to "everyone" from "after someone voted").

Here's the full manual: http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Posting#Poll_Options

There's nothing new there, Frans, as to which I didn't know or get before. At least that part doesn't explain this particular behaviour.

I'll return to the tinkering a bit later: maybe it could be that something depends on other options - eg results visibility (which I changed to "everyone" from "after someone voted").

Well, I've tried rechecking the 'visibility' back to "after someone".
No help...

I've just found a trouble, Frans. With the polls.
Decided to adjust this poll with an additional option, didn't change much, but it occurs that after editing, the poll has lost the option for users to change the vote altogether.

I'm splitting the topic and locking the poll in this thread.
This thread may remain as the beginning of the coming and be considered "beta";)

The "gamma" thread ("general feedback"): https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=88.0

Wow! so pretty! I like the new look!

Thanks. :) It's just a couple of colors changed here and there, but I like it too. Soon we'll have the new logo in place, too.

I don't like the colors and I'm right.

Something along these lines will probably remain for the time being, but you can always write a user CSS. What kind of colors would you have?

Blue is the easiest to look at on screen, for me. Most of my themes lean toward those shades of blue/teal.

What kind of colors would you have?

As ensbb3 said, blue's nice. What I don't like are the tones being used, specially the header and the page's bottom layer. Also the orange is difficult to match with such blue tones. Being a complementary color doesn't mean to be harmonic.

See? It doesn't work in my opinion.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi1293.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fb587%2Flisbonyellowtram%2FDiv%2FScreenshot_3.png&hash=5e05d6235b1f4d3eed7501e9c6e0f765" rel="cached" data-hash="5e05d6235b1f4d3eed7501e9c6e0f765" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i1293.photobucket.com/albums/b587/lisbonyellowtram/Div/Screenshot_3.png)

I would go more along these tones (http://colorschemedesigner.com/#3L11TffgwvysO).

The orange looks pretty decent to me. I mean, it's not like I picked it just because some stupid theory claims it's complementary. However, my screen is a cheap LCD and your screen probably isn't calibrated either. :) As far as it goes it actually looks better on my higher quality phone screen.

Anyway, I'd forgotten to add linear-gradient support for older browsers (do you use Opera 11 or something?). You may or may not like it better now.

What Bel referred to looks rather pinkish to me. I don't like it either, but I can go with it.
What I meant (in another thread) is a set of chooseable colour schemes - either preset or customiseable. For example, if I don't like something, I could tinker about it - either choosing another preset or something like "x=1, y=2, z=3" (see how a user can choose his car's colour in this racing game (http://www.arcadecabin.com/play/free_gear.html)).

Thanks to the changes I made it's easier to create a userstyle now.

What?
Is it in the settings?

No, I mean there's less that needs to be overridden. Userstyles are a browser thing. I've already added one aspect of userstyles as a site preference, but I don't want to slow down processing too much. In any case I don't have the time.

O'k!:)

@Frenzie


The new Logo looks great, & the colors are comfortably smooth to the eyes now. (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/hatsoff.gif)

Good Job Fran!! (https://www.smileyfaze.tk/slides/cheerskj4.gif)

I would go more along these tones (http://colorschemedesigner.com/#3L11TffgwvysO).

I like those too.