I kinda liked having a black background with light text and the sidebar on the left. The light grey background is icky. Not to mention I also miss having the dropdown selections on the sidebar menu. Bring back user options for control of those features and I'll be happy.

I would like this as well. Hate the colours, really hard on my eyes :-(

We completely understand how you feel about the standardized forum colors. The look of the new forums will take some getting used to. It was fun that we used to be able to change colors with the old EZ format. But, the new PHP platform will give us a wider range of features in the long run. Unfortunately, customized colors are not one of those options at this time. Thanks

gnarg. stacey, this is now the third time i am seeing you trivialize this concern, and so i am gonna say something rather pointed about that. i suspect you're just fending off people because the PtB have told you this is how it is, so this is much more directed at them, and less at you; though you might want to reword your stock reply. changing display colours and font sizes is not about "fun", it is about comfort and health. i use a browser that allows me to override the often uninformed and silly design ideas of website owners, for the simple reason that sitting all day behind a computer is tough on the eyes, and i care about my eyesight. before opera came along, i often had headaches and my eyes ended up burning from the sharp contrast and the bad colour choices on so many websites. now i can switch to my own choice with a single click. but not everybody uses the same browser, and as of now, website owners need to still be concerned with good all-around design. good design pretty much spells "flexibility" when it comes to colour and fonts, because people vary widely in what is comfortable for them. this is not trivial. usability should always trump branding, and it is entirely possible to brand a site well without detrimental effects on the users. this is why stylesheets exist, and why well-thought-out sites offer a sensible selection to their users. some features are just bells and whistles, and yes, there will always people who complain about the smallest change -- this isn't one of those issues IMO. this really matters.

Maybe I don't know too much about PHP, but would it be too difficult to do this? :blink: Throw in a tag in the header somewhere. Where [username] would be the user's name, and [user defined css] would be CSS coding entered into a user options page somewhere at Renderosity. Also this setting would only be available through a user's login account. (To avoid long lists, confusion, or other messiness.) Seems like that would solve a lot of format and layout problems right there. Of course it would take a bit of documenting what classes and IDs and elements can be modded and such. (This would save the user from going through trial and error figuring out what each does.) Of course the user would have to understand CSS a bit. Also if the user defined .css is only limited to a Renderosity acct., then it should also be possible to filter certain settings so that some things can still be restricted. (To maintain visibility and placement of banners or whatever.) Then with use of alternate stylesheets, there could be a few other presets in additon to the user defined one. They could also be used to some advantage for printing, and perhaps special needs uses.

Quote - "We completely understand how you feel about the standardized forum colors. The look of the new forums will take some getting used to..."

Stacey, This is still all new, so i dont want to give you guys hard time, but if this is how Renderosity will look like from now on, im afraid i wont be around much longer. Youve really turned the clock back 10 years with the layout design. As for features, well honestly, they lack. As it looks to me, youre actually turning Renderosity more into DeviantArt-style, where toys such as avatars and smilies have a prominent role, while artwork comes second. With the new system the former easy navigation is getting screwed up, and the whole site has become slow as glue even on broadband. I really urge the staff to take a close look at CGtalk forums, and a setup that is by far more optimized for graphics purposes than what were witnessing here. Theyve set a standard of what it should look like.

Theyve set a standard of what it should look like. And 'who's standards?....so ya think we should just 'do what everybody else is doing' eh? Pffffttt...I say give it some time.

By every standard in terms of speed, navigation and choice of colors. (white background is a really bad choice when showing imagery) And no, you shouldnt copy what everybody else is doing, but you can do better than this. Much better in every aspect. Im just going to repeat what ive said, its going DeviantArt, and thats not a good thing. As for time, its irrelevant since the layout is obviously here to stay(as stated above by Stacey)

Just letting y'all know that if you go to the "my options" link you can now control the look, feel, design and colors of the forums for yourself. Keep in mind two things: 1) The header and sidebar are not part of the forums. They are part of the Renderosity Bondware 3.0 site. The forums still have to fit within the scope of this page, so you will not be able to change the colors of the header and side bar (yet ... you never know where around the corner that may or may not be in the community conversion ). 2) The interface for controlling your design isn't perfect ... yet. We have bigger fixes at the top of our priority list. However, we wanted to get some control in your hands right away. Later, we will change the way you control the look and feel of the forums so that it is friendlier and requires less tech-saviness. Hope this makes things easier on ya. sNw

You are doing a great job here. And you are answering people's questions/responding to their requests -- that's high praise. I'm impressed. Thanks.

I can't beleive you want a lot of members to look at that style sheet and know what to change in it. I do because I got a forum just like cgtalk and I have added a couple of styles in my forum that people can choose either dark or lite styles. Why can you not do the same because a lot of people don't understand the style sheet code and how to change it. At lest put a color picker so they can find the right code for a color if this is how its got to be. Reason I know is I have two people contact me already and asked what to do. I call this being lazy that a style sheet can not be made and have a dropdown box to choose from like other php forums.

Well, im not going to pretend i know anything about coding, but at least i can try my way to different colors. Thanks for the effort, this will definitely take care of some issues. But you also need to fix the speed issues. Im on a 10 mbit broadband and the forums are some of the slowest ive experienced. I still suggest smaller avatars(if at all necessary) as well as disabled stars and smileys. Once some people start to put 100+ smilies in their signatures, there will be serious speed issues.

:cursing: K - I've the colors & the fonts most of the way I want them...but how in the hell do I change the font size of the replies??? HELLO!!! This is the most important part of what I need to read?????? I've changed everything font to 15, yet the reply area remains tiny:cursing:

Okies, so which background do I change LOL The inner table?

I changed them ALL...that said the FONT color will NOT change. In addition, the actual guts of the forum area...where the replies are the font size & color will NOT change :cursing:

Ooooooook...Im gonna go play too :D

In addition, the actual guts of the forum area...where the replies are the font size & color will NOT change :cursing:

I found the bug. Someone left a bgcolor="#DEE3E7" in some

ok. thats insane. now you want users to code the way they want the forum to look? very good. not. not all of us can do that. hell there are users that cannot set their VCR clocks. I see that with this, your not considering ease of use at all. great advert for bondware this. costs a fortune.. and a FREE system out performs it...

I can change the values, but: you don't don't don't don't ever ever ever use pixels to define font size. EVER. 1) On Windows, 12px is not 12pt. It's something like 10pt. Which is small for some (a lot?) people. On Mac 12px does basically equal 12 pt. Still: 2) Hardcoding the font size is breaking the usability of a site. Why not use the percentage or em or something like that, which will allow people with a larger default font to have the intended ratio? Then, why is all the CSS in the head of the page and not in an external file? Finally, yeah, clearing the bugs like the one pauljs noticed would be nice. :-)

:b_upset: Oh I see how it is, it goes like this huh. 1)"nope you can't set the color scheme anymore." 2)"Gripe, gripe, whine complain and gripe some more by everyone" 3)" Ok, you can change them now, but only if you have a degree in programming." :b_unbelievable:

CSS option should get a decent interface. Common, put one single programmer on it for an hour or such. Should be easy fixing..

I have really really really tried to be way more laid back in life than I used to be when I first started coming around here, heck I've even given up cussin, well mostly that is, but this stuff is so ridiculous its almost, almost mind you, I haven't yet that is, cussed! And boy are they really trying hard to get me too do it!

Er, just an addition. I just noticed that not only one bgcolor is present in the page. Links have FONT and color set in the element itself. DIVs in replies have styles set in the element. There are FONTs and LINKs defined at the start of the body. In short, the CSS style set in the head won't work.

well, i am going to say "thank you!" for actually giving a quick fix for my main complaint re. colours and fonts, instead of the original "sorry, not gonna happen". i'm a programmer, and i can fix even broken CSS, so this works for me. tonight i am looking at the forums in exactly the colours and font sizes i need, which makes me happy. it also makes me happy that you respond so quickly, and keep communicating with your userbase. i imagine y'all realize that this won't do for the vast majority of your users. sorry. :/ i can imagine what this looks like from your side, and i feel for you. maybe next time some user input before a major change? wry grin.

btw, what the fuck is SO WRONG with the current layout that all u people dont like?? changing colors was a nice feature to have and hey, its back isnt it? A user friendly form for it should be easy to make too, so I support the request for one. but isn't the exterme bashing rather out of order?? 10 years back in website design? ever put this forum next to the old one?? what u want then? A flash interfaced multi-point-touch-screen optimized fully animated forum with fancy preload animations for every single object and button on it, xml feeds for ur own homepage, automatic spellingchecker in 50 languages, built in dictionary, 3d navigated, voice command driven messaging engine, automatic webcam driven face recognition login system, streaming webcam avatars, automatic crappy art removal script and built-in drag&drop bryce-related filesharing platform? Be realistic, geez.

~Bursts out laffin @RayRaz~....that is great! ROTFLMAO

Quote - "btw, what the fuck is SO WRONG with the current layout that all u people dont like?? changing colors was a nice feature to have and hey, its back isnt it? A user friendly form for it should be easy to make too, so I support the request for one. but isn't the exterme bashing rather out of order?? 10 years back in website design? ever put this forum next to the old one?? what u want then? A flash interfaced multi-point-touch-screen optimized fully animated forum with fancy preload animations for every single object and button on it, xml feeds for ur own homepage, automatic spellingchecker in 50 languages, built in dictionary, 3d navigated, voice command driven messaging engine, automatic webcam driven face recognition login system, streaming webcam avatars, automatic crappy art removal script and built-in drag&drop bryce-related filesharing platform? Be realistic, geez."

No, just something the common user can use, that doesn't burn one's eyeballs out the back of their head if they look at it too long. I for one don't think thats asking too much. Unlike some apparently.

It's practically a phpBB clone when it comes to visual interface characteristics... I'm not sure what exactly is so eyeball burning? If it's the colors u can adjust them now with the css window. Ok, I highly recomment the programmers to bring in a more efficient as well as user friendly css form, but I think there's a few more urgent bugs to take care of, such as automating the icons for read posts. It's a new piece of coding, ofcourse it'll have some bugs.

Rohr & Rayraz: Maybe not 10 years back into the past :) but definitely not preparing this community for the future. An out of the box php forum solution is already "old technology" in 2006. The design and information structure is poor but not my major concern. I'm more concerned about how this seems to work underneath. Practically every click I do genereates a database request to the server. Take a look on how for example Google maps work. It loads content all the time without you noticing it (minimal waiting time). Take a look at the ultra fast search functionality at CGtalk - it probalby uses som kind of DB-cache.

Well it's not out of the box it's custom programmed according to the 'rosity programmer who programmed it... (Inform urself before u start to call things 'out of the box') Ok, so it's not state of the art web technology, but you must understand we have a large community here visited by many people who are not all tech-savvy and thus dont always support all the newest web technology yet. (they use old os's with old browsers etc) For a community like this one it's better to go with something that's widely accepted (and tables and php are just that). Fast db's mainly run on fast servers, they use server sharing etc. A smaller database for recent posts and a larger archive database can speed up some things too, but theres no telling how the dbases are managed at 'rosity so i cant argue in favour or against 'rosity's db management. I'm not sure what thre is to preload about a forum because the navigation is not as lineair as it is with google maps. Finally, i'm a fan of tables too because browsers still have messy support with div's. ok granted, it CAN be done with div's but it still takes me way too much time to get it to work right compared to tables. Efficiency is important too.

It's a custom programmed php forum? Why re-invent the wheel.. Tables and Php? Tables (html) are interpreted by the client (browser). Php is just a "language" you use to tell the server what to do on the server side. You're not looking at php-code when you visit the forums but html (tables and stuff) that is generated by the server. Right click on this page and view the source. You will see html, css and some java script - but no php. What is happening on the server side and client side (browser) are two different things. You can develop smart solutions on the server side and still make it available for most users.

Ray, state of the art and the savviness of the users have no connection. Take a look at CG Talk source. PHP-generated XHTML, external style sheet, whatever. And I doubt that a tenth of their users could dissect their pages. I feel we got some kind of alpha version here, so I agree with bazze, why reinvent the wheel? You don't have to actually swipe parts of code, but you can see how others did something and then implement it.

uhm.. this thing IS php-generated xhtml... And it makes use of CSS style sheets too.... And you dont want an external stylesheet if you want users to customize their styles ;) For customizing styles on a per-user basis you want to be able to import the users style sheet fr0m the database and put it in the header of ur xhtml page (that's by far the easiest approach anyways). It's custom programmed because then they can make it specifically for the purpose of this site! So they can make it do whatever they want and have the code easily interact with any other bit of php site they might be programming whenever needed. Ok, theoretically you COULD program that onto an existing platform also ofcourse, but you would spend ages getting as acustomed to another persons code so why not spend that time coding something that exactly fits your own taste and style? Also, tech-savviness does have to do with state of the art. How often you hear people say "hey your site isnt working", because they dont understand they need to get a flash player/a newer flash player, or "the movie didnt work" because they didnt have an up to date codec at hand and didnt know where to get it. The same way with state of the art web architecture. With a large community like this one you just dont really want to have to tell your members "ok to view the new version of our completely css generated table-less website correctly you need to install mozilla firefox or internet explorer 6 because it doesnt work on internet explorer 4". Upon which your non tech-savvi user will say "but internet explorer already came with my copy of windows98". Oh, and i know that stuff about php and tables and client side and server side etc. I make a living building (custom made ) php sites. I named php and tables as tools to use for making your website. You can make a table based design or a css based design or a frame based design or combinations of it. State of the art would be completely css based. Traditional would be table based. p.s: 1st out of the box is old. then custom is re-inventing the wheel. is this a case of doing it wrong or wrong?

Er, no. Renderosity's not xhtml. This is from this page: !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" (I think the page should use the actual DTD link, not just an identification of HTML.) And does not use external style sheet. This is from head: style type="text/css" DAZ uses phpBB and also uses 4.01, but with external style sheets. CG Talk, as I said, uses xhtml transitional, but with a mix of an external style sheet and inline styles. Okay, tables will (should) work in most cases, but if you cannot see CSS (which old browsers mostly don't) you cannot see quite a lot of sites. Taking care of those old browsers is fine, but there comes a time when you simply have to move on. Eplorer 4 or Netscape 4 is now used by less than one percent of the people on the Web. Possibly even less than the margin of error. When you need the abilities newer standards/codecs/players offer, you have to abandon the old. Who uses Flash 4 now? So, yes, use tables, by any means. But also use a proper CSS and clean up your HTML. If the colours and fonts could be customized with the old layout, I don't see why not let the users generate their own external style sheets which would be then written into the preferences and used from there on. (That's what the offered ability to manipulate the styles is, isn't it?) I'd say it's easier than changing the style defined in head - just insert a link, one line of code. Or give people a choice between different style sheets, if that's easier. But the customization is what will give people most satisfaction. BTW, if out-of-the-box offers things you don't have in your custom version, is it old or surpassed? What we all want is the various things other PHP forums offer. Of course, we'd welcome new options, but not things that make surfing Renderosity harder. Like the list of old posts with the first line of the post instead of the thread title. When you try to create a new PHP forum (or whatever), first check what others offer, do not wait for your users to tell you.

Yea well if u delete the line "!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" it's 100% xhtml compatible lol. tags all closed with /> and they use css for styles. Also i know the style sheet isn't external, but i think i just wrote why especially for custom styling on a per user basis it's handy to do things internal. Why custom external sheets?? Internal is faster, easier and more efficient if you want users to have their own custom css sheet! That way u could put it in the database together with all their other user info and access all of it with one simple query. While external custom sheets would mean you have to have the server read, write or update external css files as well on top of that. Completely css generated means using only div's and css classes&styles btw ;-) which is something only the newest browsers support to a "somewhat acceptable" level. btw, i do agree all styles should be defined in the stylesheet in the header and not between the rest of the code, but isn't that the case already?

Quote - "Yea well if u delete the line "!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" it's 100% xhtml compatible lol. tags all closed with /> and they use css for styles."

No. There's tons of FONT elements and BASEFONT and defining table cells background color and breaks without the trailing slash and what not. Plus, when you remove the DTD, you get nothing. It won't validate. Quote - "Completely css generated means using only div's and css classes&styles btw ;-) which is something only the newest browsers support to a "somewhat acceptable" level."

There's been such a long debate on the use of tables for formatting that I won't go into that. I can only say that I think you can use them to format the page. But a proper CSS means no such things as defining the colors and font-family in the HTML. Quote - "btw, i do agree all styles should be defined in the stylesheet in the header and not between the rest of the code, but isn't that the case already?"

Nope: FONT color="#000000" size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color:E3EDF5" How's that? In every link in the sidebar. Not only there's a HTML appearance element, but it has a style defined. The fact that the style should take priority is beside the point. (I think that, since it was improperly written, nothing will happen, but I don't have the time to check now.)

1. On Windows, 12px is not 12pt. It's something like 10pt. Which is small for some (a lot?) people. On Mac 12px does basically equal 12 pt.

True. Depending on what OS a user has, the screen DPI (or rather PPI, but let's just stick with DPI for convention) may be user definable. On XP, I believe it's somewhere in desktop display settings. (Also note that "pixels=points" on the Mac could is considered an incorrect browser display behavior by W3C. This is because the true dpi for any given display device can vary widely.) The typical DPI for web usually is 72DPI, but with variety of monitor sizes and display resolutions this value doesn't really hold up anymore.

3)" Ok, you can change them now, but only if you have a degree in programming."

Not really (I have an Associates in Graphic Arts, not IT or CS), it just takes some time to figure out how CSS works. There are plenty of free resources online if you ever do become interested in learning it. It's not quite as complicated as a true programming language, but I suppose it does need some figuring out of logic (knowing the rules and how they're applied) and syntax (saying it in a way the compy understands). Hopefully the R'osity crew will figure out how to make most of the major settings definable via some simplified interface, yet still keep the CSS settings available for "power" users.

Then, why is all the CSS in the head of the page and not in an external file?

Good question? Instead of having php re-write all the user codes (I think that's how it's being done), the user code could be kept in a file and then loaded via linking or importing. There are some other things that seem sloppy in the code for being made by "professionals", but I'm not cutting any paychecks - so what do I know?

what u want then? A flash interfaced multi-point-touch-screen optimized fully animated forum with fancy preload animations for every single object and button on it, xml feeds for ur own homepage, automatic spellingchecker in 50 languages, built in dictionary, 3d navigated, voice command driven messaging engine, automatic webcam driven face recognition login system, streaming webcam avatars, automatic crappy art removal script and built-in drag&drop bryce-related filesharing platform? Be realistic, geez.

Who say's it's not realistic. If Google ever decides to get around to making a decent artist's community site... :woot: All I can say is if that ever happens, Bondware should be afraid... Very afraid... :scared:

No. There's tons of FONT elements and BASEFONT and defining table cells background color and breaks without the trailing slash and what not. Plus, when you remove the DTD, you get nothing. It won't validate.

ouch, basefont and font tags are a bit sloppy :-S I just quickly skimmed the source of the page i was viewing then noticed image tags ended with /> 'n such. didnt notice any basefont tags though.. not that i read every line of code ofcourse, im too lazy for that, but it looked ok, I've had far, faaaaar more crappy code forwarded to me from people. I'm not sure what u mean with removing the dtd? There's been such a long debate on the use of tables for formatting that I won't go into that. I can only say that I think you can use them to format the page. But a proper CSS means no such things as defining the colors and font-family in the HTML.

I did agree they should have that. If they dont its a little sloppy. Still, I think there was just not any attention paid to this kind of issues regarding "clean coding" because the initial idea wasnt to include user adjustable designs at all? I agree it's not really 100% clean, but I use css style properties throughout my HTML too when I know it's not going to conflict with other functionalities that have to be included in my site. After all, it's rather nice to have at least some of your styles propperties right there in your code in front of your nose instead of having to switch to external stylesheets every time and then switch back to your html or php file.

btw, google would so never make a flash forum crammed full of animations LOL google is obviously more about the clean and no nonsense method. "Then, why is all the CSS in the head of the page and not in an external file?" I just wrote earlier why its faster to put it in the header in this case where everyone seems to want to adjust the forum to various hideous personal color scemes demonstrated in some threads around 'rosity. (This is ofcourse provided they put ALL their css in there, but that would be the same for the external sheets too.)

Quote - "I'm not sure what u mean with removing the dtd?"

When you remove the DTD from the document, the browsers won't know by which standard to interpret it. I think they default to 4.01 Transitional, afaik, but that's far from certain. And so, by removing the DTD, you can possibly get all kinds of mess on the page.

I've never ever gotten any mess when removing the dtd. actually my teachers taught me that theres no browser that will trip over it if i take it away so it actually saves me a few bytes to not put it in there.

Quote - "Just letting y'all know that if you go to the "my options" link you can now control the look, feel, design and colors of the forums for yourself. sNw"

No you can't. I just tried to change the background colour, but it dosen't let you change ANYTHING! And my eyes are now killing me! {whine, moan, winge, sniffle} P.S. do not really understand programming, I just tried typing in the colours I wanted where it said "background-color:#EFEFEF" and other numbers/letters. (shrug)