The New Skin

[guddi]

Originally Posted by Comco

Guddi - That first pic is neat. I hadn't seen it before. Great idea and well executed. However, I did notice a typo in there... "Strenght" instead of "Strength". Very cool stuff though!

oh.. didnt noticed think its a... uhm... an error in the raiders programming

[Aceman]

Another skin has been enabled for your viewing pleasure. Called SFM08_white this is a LITE version of our new skin. It's actually very different and I hope you like it

You can select it via the Theme selector found at the bottom of this page on the lower left side.

Aceman

[Ozylot]

Hmm.... I prefer the dark one, I'd need to use sunglasses with the new one

BTW, it doesn't quite look like the picture you posted

[Samurai]

New thee looks nice Chris, but you have white text at the bottom of the thread pages (Currently Active Users/Need Help?) on a light grey background- might want to take a look at that.

Seems strange, not browsing a blue SFM.

[Aceman]

Samurai - Thanks. I noticed that this morning myself. That's a custom hack which I'll edit today for this theme. And - without giving too much away - I've got a blue version already in the queue.

BTW - I know every theme isn't going to be to everyone's liking, but my goal is to deliver a set of visual options that most people will enjoy.

[tobian]

Ace, I think the work you're doing on the themes is really nice: The graphics work is very attractive, and overall, I do like the new layout.

That said I think you might be moving away from your original intent: To let the users artwork become to the star of the show. Right now the themes are a little busy, and fighting for attention. You might want to try and create a more minimal and subtle skin. In many way minimalism is the hardest thing to design, but less is more!

Keep up the good work though!

[Aceman]

Good Point.

[B.J.]

Links within the post text are a bit hard to pick out now. For example, if I'm talking about SciFi-Meshes, it's hard to tell there's an actual link there. I *think* they were underlined and colored different in the previous site design.

BTW, thanks for the option to turn the flash header on & off!

[tobian]

FYI Ace, I love the animated header. I like it better than the normal header, because you are not limited by how many images you can put into it! (not least because it's totally pimping my images )

As an idea, can you make it so when you roll over an image it has a click-able link to the art. I believe later iterations of flash will give you AS much control over this as a normal hyper link (I.e. open in new tab, which is what most of us do, hence not wanting that silly popup image window thingy you disabled!) just so people can go and visit the pages these images belong too (be that the WIP area or galery etc). It's something several people have noted to me, that they see some images in the upper header, but you can't click on them (and that was of the old version specifically, in this case).

I am not trying to have a go at the work that's been done or anything, so far it is a lot nicer than the old style which I think was too busy, and as you said, inflexible. But several people have noted too me that SFM is quite a busy design, which is very distracting on the eye. Partly this is because forums in general have a HUGE information overload issue, but thinking of how the design of the site can help with that could help to make SFM an inspiring forum. To be honest a lot of forums need to make themselves 'look' interesting, because there's little else other than some text in here: SFM is incredibly image rich, so, in a way it almost needs to have less ego, it doesn't really have anything to prove!

[Tovette]

I actually like the white one more than the black. I'll be looking forward to the blue..