KCRag Forum

Mean and I have installed a new theme for the site, to keep it more in tune with the front page. As with all themes, you can switch back to the Legacy theme as you wish.

I'm looking into fixing the incongruity of the blue now that we've gone more grayscale. If there are any swank graphics people out there willing to make an imageset for the forum... go for it! 

I like it and I'm glad it matches the front page.

It only looks half-finished to me.  Is it supposed to be mostly just blank gray and white space with a few buttons in the old colors?  Wondering whether something is wrong with your style sheet.  I mean the color scheme isn't actually any different from the front page (except the blue buttons from the old theme), but the forum looks far less clean than the main site, and the reply page in particular looks pretty buggy to me.  Here's what I'm seeing:

Main thread http://i55.tinypic.com/2v0oikp.png
Post reply http://i56.tinypic.com/105nwhh.png

Is this how it's supposed to look?  I'm guessing "no" on at least the buggy parts of the reply page, but the rest of it?

i like the color palette, but the layout is all wonky for me.  some posts show up, and some are just a narrow column of gibberish.

like....esp the old trolley car mast head.

I FEAR CHANGE!!!

I'll second the masthead. Looks really sharp.

I have really wide margins in Firefox - seems like a lot of wasted space. Just my nitpicking though. I like the marriage of the blog and forum.

Way too narrow even on my low resolution screen

I like how this brings the Blog and Forum together, I agree with folks about the margins (but that may just be a question of getting used to it).  All in all a great direction, and with a few tweaks should look great.  Good job guys!

The attempt at unifying various elements of the site is a welcome one.  It could lead to more tabbed content off the masthead, which would be very welcome.

Aesthetically, I would recommend shortening the height of the masthead (it is nice, but a little overbearing) and reformatting the blog to follow the theme of the forum, if possible.  I say this because the forum is quite familiar to many, where-as the blog is relatively new.  It may be a better idea to adjust the front page to match the theme of the forum, instead of the other way around.

All told it is refreshing that forum leadership is making positive steps to orient the overall site as a repository for knowledge.  Good work.

edit to replace blog with forum

mean wrote: I'm looking into fixing the incongruity of the blue now that we've gone more grayscale. If there are any swank graphics people out there willing to make an imageset for the forum... go for it! 

What all you looking for.

phuqueue wrote: It only looks half-finished to me.  Is it supposed to be mostly just blank gray and white space with a few buttons in the old colors?  Wondering whether something is wrong with your style sheet.  I mean the color scheme isn't actually any different from the front page (except the blue buttons from the old theme), but the forum looks far less clean than the main site, and the reply page in particular looks pretty buggy to me.  Here's what I'm seeing:

Main thread http://i55.tinypic.com/2v0oikp.png
Post reply http://i56.tinypic.com/105nwhh.png

Is this how it's supposed to look?  I'm guessing "no" on at least the buggy parts of the reply page, but the rest of it?

Yes, for the most part; obviously the css for the quoted section beneath the reply box was wonked. I mostly fixed it. There are also some issues with images not showing up.

Which is to say, this is (unfortunately) going to be a work in progress for the moment. It's very easy to switch back, temporarily or permanently, for those who don't like it or don't want to be beta testers.

Love it. If it's to narrow just zoom in. CTRL+Mouse wheel

can the home to logout bar be made any bigger?
Because of the color difference, I actually noticed I had a message, which was pretty cool.

Ez Street wrote: What all you looking for.

Really, nothing fancy... as you can probably tell, the whole idea here was to go completely minimalist. Replacement menus in grayscale and new grayscale notification icons. Perhaps even KC-centric ones.

Ok, I think that I'm pretty much done messing with it. I've fixed all the issues that I found to be actual issues (post box size, CSS error for Topic Summary). If anyone notices any weirdness or things just don't look right, post here or PM me.

chrizow wrote: i like the color palette, but the layout is all wonky for me.  some posts show up, and some are just a narrow column of gibberish.

Screenshot?

voltopt wrote:Aesthetically, I would recommend shortening the height of the masthead (it is nice, but a little overbearing)

Noted. Another possible solution might be to use the minus button on the right immediately below the header image. That will collapse everything down except the header image and the nav bar.

voltopt wrote:and reformatting the blog to follow the theme of the forum, if possible.  I say this because the forum is quite familiar to many, where-as the blog is relatively new.  It may be a better idea to adjust the front page to match the theme of the forum, instead of the other way around.

I thought about that, but man, the default SMF blue theme is just hideous. I couldn't stand looking at it anymore.

I love the theme.....it feels like it should be wider but maybe that's just me having really wide screens?  Is it set to take up a percent of screen or fixed pixel width?

No idea. CSS is an admired mystery to me, for the most part. This has mostly been mean's project. I've just been running things on the server for him to help make it happen.

KCPowercat wrote: I love the theme.....it feels like it should be wider but maybe that's just me having really wide screens?  Is it set to take up a percent of screen or fixed pixel width?

It is fixed width to match the blog and the header image. It is intentionally quite narrow relative to how it was before. My idea here was to create an old-timey black and white "newspaper column" vibe, both on the blog and the forum.