Forum Upgrade

[Smitty]

I seem to be having a hard time with searching the forums for a specific thing. Such as 'spline or spline component', or anything.
All I get now since the forum upgrade when using advanced search is that no posts can be found. :S

The search index is still rebuilding. It takes a while to index 5M+ posts. I just checked and I get results for "spline" now. We've still got a few messages to go.

[Sly.]

Is it just me or are there still maaany things missing?
Also, what is with the subforum designs, will they be gone forever? :<
The new style is not bad, but I to be very honest, I liked the old layout. Well, must get used to it it seems

EDIT: Whoooops! Seems like I skipped some sites.
Wow, what's up with the smilies!?

ANOTHER EDIT:

It feels akwerd to me

Basically this. Also, many useful threads which made use of white and grey letters must be edited now, which will be a pain for me and my tips lists... :'( Oh, and can anybody explain the "auto save" function to me while editing? What does it do? Does it already display your changes once they're auto saved in case your internet crashes and you were not able to save it?

[Smitty]

Is it just me or are there still maaany things missing?

What's missing? Are you saying content is missing or search results?

[cheesemoo0]

The search index is still rebuilding. It takes a while to index 5M+ posts. I just checked and I get results for "spline" now. We've still got a few messages to go.

Any idea when this will be finished?

Also it is annoying now when you use the search bar in a respective forum, the search defaults to searching all the forums.

[EvrythingUndone]

OMG. the forums looks so crazy right now.

[Prisoner 849]

Embrace the change

[Smitty]

Sorry folks. I understand what you were saying now. We were having some vBulletin CSS issues. We should be good now. Please let me know if you're continuing to have issue.

[LobotiCasta+ion]

Is the white here to say? Cause I think it's really bright.

[Smitty]

How about this... Why don't you guys mock up a color scheme you'd like and send it to us. That or recommend some colors to substitute (don't bother suggesting black). Don't just be a naysayer.

[Sly.]

What's missing? Are you saying content is missing or search results?

Sorry for the late reply. The buttons in the reply boxes have been added, content is still there, well, Flak already said she'll add the specific designs for the different subforums and Flak already told us she will add all the missing things, so that's not a problem anymore. However, I didn't get a response yet, but rule 13 in the forum rules is still missing. It was a new rule about code thievery. Sounded like "Do not share your code in the forum, do it via PM to people you trust." and it said that this rule has been added due to the code thievery here. I'm not sure whether it was removed by accident/as a side effect of the update or whether it's considered "useless" but it might be worth looking at.

[Baryonyx]

How about this... Why don't you guys mock up a color scheme you'd like and send it to us. That or recommend some colors to substitute (don't bother suggesting black). Don't just be a naysayer.

How about several designs that can be chosen from? It should incorporate some of the old designs, such as the dark-blueish of the old UT2003/2004 Forum. I always found that very comfortable to look at. Was better for the eyes than this glaring white now.
If that is not possible, I would suggest a darker tone overall. Perhaps a similar tone to what is surrounding the posts now, a dark grey with white letters.

[eVo suicide]

It looks better than the old one

[Sly.]

I would totally like to see this design for the Forum -> Epic Games section:

I always liked the red/white colour sheme for the "neutral" forum, imo it represented Epic Games quite well!

Apart from that, I'd like to see the old styles (at least colour-wise) for the game specific sections.
Anything else needed?

[Crusha K. Rool]

Not really a mockup but rather a comparison to another vB 4 layout. The buttons and elements are all nearly 100% the same, but there are some small details that could be improved here:

http://i.imgur.com/EAsSH.png


For the color theme would I also recommend that site (sorry Sly, but all that red on the sides, especially that bright, hurts my eyes even more than the current layout). Grey-black with white has proven itself successful.
If and how much red you incorporate is still up to you, but I honestly like the current black post headers better than any red suggestion. Especially with GoW, although I never had the chance to play it, do I rather associate a darker style than the typical red that is used with Epic themselves.
And UT3 was also everything but colorful. *caugh*desaturation*caugh*

But I also really recommend to have some optical differentiation between the several sub forums. The UT2k4 sub forum really doesn't deserve any red at all. It kinda reminds me of the Atari forums.


For the forum view… well, for the UDK section would I say that the thread icons got a lot more readable. However, that was never a problem with the other forums and the current thread icons look really generic (this isn't a Simple Machines Forum after all). And the big circular button-like icons in the are so oversized that it's almost embarrassing already.

[erwilly]

The udk looks like very teenager freak.

[Cher]

How about this... Why don't you guys mock up a color scheme you'd like and send it to us. That or recommend some colors to substitute (don't bother suggesting black). Don't just be a naysayer.

I like the way the Forum Rules page looks. Any chance of getting that color scheme on the forum as well?

[ArtofManta]

Too wide, make it fixed width! Right now the banner box at header looks too empty, you could fit 3 advertisement banners there.
Also, the white background of posts etc doesn't fit at all with the rest of the dark style.

I liked the old one more. Dark scheme is so much more eye friendlier.

edit: why don't you use the old style? If it isn't compatible with the current VBulletin version, why don't you just remake the old style? It was pretty basic, should be peace of cake porting it.

[Crusha K. Rool]

The new vB4 was indeed not compatible with the old style anymore, we had the same problem on said page UnrealEd.info.
With the old vB3 did that page also let the user choose between a fixed width and the full screen width. But that broke with the forum upgrade as well.

[Sly.]

Odd.. First, people complain, but when they are asked to give ideas for what exactly to change, most suddenly stop caring about that.
There's just a few people up there who posted ideas for the new forum design and said their opinion, but suddenly it's surprisingly quiet.

Seems like they're afraid of "voluntary work". O_o

[Ryuzaki]

I like the way the Forum Rules page looks. Any chance of getting that color scheme on the forum as well?

I agree. But I would give the text a slightly lighter colour to make it a bit easier to read. Also the white bars at the top and bottom of the rules should be a bit darker, so they don't stand out that much. I suggest changing them from white bars with black text to dark grey bars with white text.

And perhaps give each forum their own header, as in the previous design.

[ArtofManta]

The new vB4 was indeed not compatible with the old style anymore, we had the same problem on said page UnrealEd.info.
With the old vB3 did that page also let the user choose between a fixed width and the full screen width. But that broke with the forum upgrade as well.

fixed width:

#pageWrapper {
width: 980px;
}

[Matt Doyle]

The code entries are too hard to read - a dark background with similar color text. Can this be changed?

some code here...

[Crusha K. Rool]

While they are at it could it be nice to implement a specific syntax highlighter for UnrealScript like it's done here with [USCRIPT].
I know that there is [PHP] but that's still different.


Oh, and please get us the old smilies back. Those new ones don't express anything, I even confuse the with the .

[Sly.]

I can provide the old smilies if needed, I saved them a while ago to use them in MSN because they're soooo 1337!

[Flak]

Hey guys, you can choose your themes now. The dropdown is on the bottom of the forum.

Code tag background should be fixed.

Login box colors should be fixed.

Any other major issues?

[Sly.]

testcode

EDIT: Seems fine.

Any other major issues?

No, none that I can think of atm, but this explains why I couldn't connect to the forum yesterday.
Will the UT2004 and UT3 styles be added yet or will they be scrapped? The UT2004 style was so nice and it calmed me down

Btw, the picture with a link to the Gears facebook page is overlapping the header in Gears style, take a look at the "3", there you can see it.
And one last question: What is the difference between UDK and Epic Games style?

[Crusha K. Rool]

There is no difference between the "Epic Games" and "UDK" layout, is that intended?

Also, "Epic Games 2" still has the old problem with the code tag background.


Would have been nice if there would be more styles without the white background, currently seems only Gears of War useable to me.
But at least does it look good. A bit unusual and in a hard to grasp way off, but still good.


EDIT: Oh, now I see what the UDK theme is. It forces us to use that in the UDK forum. That's not nice. Would be good if we could choose for ourselves somehow which theme we want in which subforum.

Also, when using the Gears theme does the background color of the editing box for posts randomly switch between white and grey at times.


Now all we need is a blue theme for UT2k4.


@Sly: The header is not overlapping in a 1680er resolution, so I guess you run just a very low one.

[Sly.]

But no bright blue colour, should be a darker tone, like back then.

Hm... Makes me curious if my PM from the past is still there.

EDIT: YAY! It still is!

[Flak]

More styles are coming and UDK will be updated. Epic Games 2 is going away.

I won't abandon UT3 and UT2004, just give me some time.

[Sly.]

That's what I mean:

My resolution is 1024x1280 (I don't give a "you know what" about HD for PC and am still on my low resolution 4:3 monitor (it's flatscreen, don't worry! ), don't intend to switch, don't see a reason why I should do that).

EDIT: When responding to a thread or post or editing your messages with Gears theme, it looks a bit odd when the text field suddenly turns grey. Any possibility to keep it white with black letters and make just the posts' textfield grey with light grey letters?

And thanks a lot for your effort Flak! Looking forward to the UT themes.

[Jetpack_Jack]

I have struggled with the 'dark text' on 'light background' for some time, now!
as you have included a theme chooser option, is it not possible to make a theme available with 'light text on dark background' ? (like the old forum style
I also struggle to actually type text into a thread reply box, from my mobile, running opera mobile browser! I have to tap text edit options like 'font or font size' before the text field becomes active, to type in, with my on-screen qwerty keyboard. is there an issue with opera mobile on the new forum layout/ interface, as the old forum worked perfectly from my mobile
any reply would be helpful, tnx JP-J

[magicman2u]

Try this Jack...goto settings at the Top and then General settings on the side...scroll down to the Bottom and choose Gears of War skin!! Hope this helps!!