Forb's spring site wishlist

Forb's spring site wishlist

Discuss the source code and development of Spring Engine in general from a technical point of view. Patches go here too.

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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by Forboding Angel »

ÔÇóGoogle sitesearch integrated into the wiki
ÔÇóMobile friendly forum theme or integration with tapatalk or similar - Patch submitted, devs never implemented it. It is possible to post from a phone at the moment, but it is irritating to say the least. Browsing the forums is also rather annoying when compared to using tapatalk (like with androidforums.com and xda).
ÔÇóProper RSS feed for entire forum system (including feeds for each individual forum so that the community news forum could actually serve it's purpose)
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AF
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by AF »

Stretch the forum to a minimum of 960px on desktops? PHPBB wasnt designed for the 760px width. Moving the header to right align above it should sort out the stretching issue (by not stretching the header banners)
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by Forboding Angel »

AF wrote:Stretch the forum to a minimum of 960px on desktops? PHPBB wasnt designed for the 760px width. Moving the header to right align above it should sort out the stretching issue (by not stretching the header banners)
Oh, yeah, that too. I have a greasemonkey script overriding it all to make the forum 1000px wide.
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smoth
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by smoth »

AF wrote:Stretch the forum to a minimum of 960px on desktops? PHPBB wasnt designed for the 760px width. Moving the header to right align above it should sort out the stretching issue (by not stretching the header banners)
Not this shit again.
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AF
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by AF »

It isn't shit, half the control panel pages break the layout of the site because they've forced it wider than the design allows under the assumption that 952px not 760px is the commonly accepted width.
Last edited by AF on 06 Jul 2011, 00:47, edited 1 time in total.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by Forboding Angel »

The table based layout for this site makes me giggle :-)
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AF
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by AF »

Moving to div containers shouldn't take too much work ( and it should make the greasemonkey scripts easier =p )
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smoth
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by smoth »

Af your post is a bunch of wild acusations and rather than derail forbs thread with my rebutal of your attack on me I ask that you delete your post and move it to pm. forbs thread does not deserve a derail of that level.

no my reason for not wanting 900+ width is this:


knorke removed:
some long text making the forum go yo momma wide so you have to horinzontal scroll


I find this hard to read.
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knorke
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by knorke »

deleted the posts that contained no information on topic. :roll:
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knorke
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by knorke »

In other forums a long line get broken into multiple lines instead of breaking the layout or making you scroll horinzontal:

Image
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smoth
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by smoth »

so your solution is I should HAVE to use a half screen browser? or that the forum should fit the text to the current width? I don't follow.
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knorke
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by knorke »

smoth wrote:or that the forum should fit the text to the current width?
this, yes.
If I open a 1200 pixel wide browser window, I want the page to use the full width and not break textlines when half of the screen is still unused.
Why would I want to look at a several hundred pixel wide color gradient on each side? I would rather have text there.

If I open a 600 pixel wide browser window, I want the page to adjust in a way that makes sense ie not having to scroll horinzontal.
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smoth
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by smoth »

I would rather have the gradient on the side instead of the wall of blue that I see in your example.
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knorke
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by knorke »

What difference does it make if you are looking at the backgroundcolor of the page or at the background color of the post's text?
The empty space is just because of the <code> tags in that example anyway. Of course text in those does not line break.
I think it is a difference if there is empty space because the layout says or if there is empty space because the content does not fill it.
(like a new line for formatting or a short posting or a short code line)
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FLOZi
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by FLOZi »

The fixed width makes it much easier to read, but I wouldn't object to it being a little wider. 960 is after all becoming something of a de facto standard.
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smoth
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by smoth »

it focuses the eye on the center where the text is. With a wider layout I feel it makes me have to scan back and forth across my entire screen eventually I start to get mild eye strain from it.
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MidKnight
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by MidKnight »

I like Knorke's idea.
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AF
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by AF »

If we go by the print standards, then we should raise the width to ~920-970px so that it fills what is normally the defacto standard screen width.

Then we should use a serif font, most likely Georgia as its common but it isnt Times New Roman *shudders*. Although I imagine that the backlash would result in us opting for a font stack more like the following:

helvetica nueue, arial, helvetica, sans-serif

With perhaps Droid sans mixed in there

The font size should then be adjusted to ensure the average line of text containers ~15 words or ~100 characters. Slightly better linespacing, and a slight boost to the padding at the top of posts.


I also agree with smoth regarding Knorkes variable widths. I would suggest that we do what some sites do and allow code sections to expand and break out of the existing layout when hovered over, so that they do not interrupt the layout of the site, and keep things consistent.

The layout interruptions that would result would leave the forum looking buggy, disrupt the vertical flow and result in horizontal scrollbars in some cases.


I would also take the darker row alternate colour of the threads and make it slightly lighter, and desaturate it more.
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FLOZi
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Re: Forb's spring site wishlist

Post by FLOZi »

If you guys are really itching to improve a Spring site, please feel free to overhaul the amateur mess which is S44 site and forums. 8)
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