New styles for FluxBB-1.4 - A competition

Reines · 2010-01-12 13:19:24

FluxBB 1.4 is now nearing completion. Soon we will be transferring fluxbb.org to its new server, and the new website will go live, with the forums running FluxBB 1.4 RC1. However we have one last feature we wish to add before the final release of FluxBB 1.4; a new skin.

The old skin from FluxBB 1.2 is now looking rather old and out-dated, and could do with being updated and given a more modern look. We would like to get the community involved in this, and make a competition!

If the competition proves to be successful (i.e. we get more than just 1 or 2 entries) then we will ship the best entries with FluxBB 1.4. There will also be a cash prize of €50 (~$70) for the best entry (payable via Paypal only).

Rules

The entries will be judged by the FluxBB Development team. While we will take the communities view into account, the final decision is ours.
Members of the development team can enter if they wish, but they are not eligible for the cash prize.
We may tidy up some of the code before a skin is released as part of FluxBB.
Obviously the skin must be released under the GPL. Any artwork you use it in must either be your own, or released under a compatible license.
The skin should not include any extra copyright notices or advertisements.
Users may submit multiple entries if they wish, within reason.
Joint entries are allowed/encouraged (for example one person doing the CSS and one doing the graphics work)
Obviously you may not edit the core files (i.e. anything outside the style folder). If you need markup in the core altered to be able to do anything we may be able to do this for you, so let us know.
The skin will be judged using the latest SVN version of FluxBB 1.4. While there will only be bug fixes and small tweaks after RC1, sometimes these may affect markup (though shouldn't break backwards compatibility). We will list any changes to the markup at the bottom of this post.

Suggestions & Hints

Keep in mind FluxBB's philosophy. We are much more likely to be impressed by skins which are lightweight and clean.
Your code should be valid (though the use of things such as -moz-border-radius is allowed as long as it degrades gracefully) and tidy.
The skin must work in all major browsers (the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari, as well as IE6, 7 and 8).
The skin should be flexible enough to work with any language. Remember items of text will vary in length between languages (especially ones with a non latin character set).
1.4 now supports overwriting the template files, so if you need you can include modified copies of the templates in style/<skin name>/.

If you have any questions about whether or not something is possible, feel free to ask!

Judging

The skins will be judged on the following points:

Design: Does it look good?
Performance: Is the skin lightweight or does it use lots of images etc? Does it load quickly? This can be tested with tools such as Firebug/YSlow
Usability: Is it intuitive to use? Can all important aspects be easily reached without scrolling? How does it work on different screen sizes (such as 1024x768)? The web developer toolbar for Firefox may be useful.
Compatibility: Does it work properly in all browsers? If it degrades in older ones (such as IE6), does it still look acceptable? Does it use web safe fonts?
Originality: Does it look original or like a modified existing skin? For example don't just take Oxygen and change blue to green.
Completeness: Is it totally finished? Obviously we want skins to be finished, but a 90% finished skin wont necessarily be disqualified.

Obviously some of these are fairly subjective so I'm sure not everyone will agree, ultimately the choice lies with the developer team.

How to Enter

If you wish to enter then you can either email your skin to competition@fluxbb.org, or post it here - it's up to you if you want to keep your design hidden until the closing date or not. If you have already got a skin made that you wish to enter then feel free, but please first check it works fully on the latest release of FluxBB 1.4.

It should be common sense, but please note that submitting a skin which you did not make is not allowed. Anyone found submitting work that they don't have the appropriate permission to use will automatically be disqualified.

The closing date will be the last day in February, giving anyone wishing to enter just over 6 weeks to prepare their entries.

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Relevant changes to FluxBB since RC1:

2010-01-08 - r1236: Added a <div> wrapping the board description, this should make it easier to style the description without affecting the title.
2010-01-10 - r1246: Added a <div> wrapping the forum descriptions, this should make it easier to style the descriptions without affecting the titles.
2010-01-10 - r1246, r1247: Added a different class to the first post on each topic page, this means the first post can be more easily styled differently from the rest.
2010-01-16 - r1253: Added a <span> wrapping the offline label under users info.
2010-01-16 - r1256: Placed the separator (») inside <span> in the breadcrumbs. The link items are in <a> tags and the final non-link item in <strong>
2010-01-17 - r1257: Made the markup for an empty forum match that for a normal one so they don't need styled separately.
2010-01-17 - r1258: Adding the post number to search results so the markup is consistent with that in viewtopic.
2010-01-17 - r1260: Added the ability to override the base_admin.css file
2010-01-17 - r1261: Added breadcrumbs to the report page to be consistent with the delete and edit pages.
2010-01-19 - r1270: Added class "required" to required labels in forms.
2010-01-20 - r1271: Added id to footer debug elements to place them more easily
2010-01-20 - r1273: Added Atom/RSS feed links in the footer
2010-01-21 - r1276, r1282: Added class "imoved" to moved topics, added "Closed:" in front of closed topics but hidden in the default skins. Changed the "powered by" from a list to <p> and moved the debug info outside the footer.
2010-01-22 - r1285: Added a <span> around the jump menu label to make it easy to style.
2010-01-22 - r1289: Wrapped announcement and rule headings in a <div> to make it possible to style the heading in a way that wont affect any headings inside the actual contents.
2010-01-24 - r1295: Changed the "inew" class to "icon-new" in search.php so it isn't confused with the "inew" class in viewforum etc. Made the icon display on search results consistent with that in other places.
2010-01-25 - r1298: Making the post review markup consistent with viewtopic.
2010-01-27 - r1307: Added an id to the report form.
2010-01-27 - r1310: Added extra class to top and bottom links that have breadcrumbs plus pagination/postlinks.
2010-01-27 - r1313: Added a explanatory prefix to redirect forums.
2010-01-28 - r1318: Added classes to email and website links. Fixed a few missing and inconsistent classes in various places.
2010-01-30 - r1325: Tidied some markup on the change password form.
2010-01-30 - r1326: Added some id's to scripts that generate more than one type of page. Added a couple of classes to user profiles.
2010-02-01 - r1332, r1334: Fixing some inconsistencies in the markup and removing some pointless markup. Adding breadcrumbs to the user search results page.
2010-02-04 - r1342: Fixed a missing </td> in admin_forums
2010-02-04 - r1344: Fixed a missing </tbody> in admin_forums
2010-02-05 - r1345: Added missing <span>s inside headers in help.php
2010-02-06 - r1351, r1351: Added class "isactive" (when they are active...) to main navigation links.
2010-02-06 - r1352: Added missing class "warntext" and "buttons" in admin_prune
2010-02-17 - r1410: Added required labels to required input fields. These are hidden by default in the default stylesheets.

Last edited by Reines (2010-02-17 14:11:42)

Meow · 2010-01-14 14:37:27

I have two questions:

Could the designer decide the name of his/her style?
Would all styles be displayed to everyone after 28 February?

Reines · 2010-01-14 14:45:19

Meow wrote:

Could the designer decide the name of his/her style?
Would all styles be displayed to everyone after 28 February?

Within reason yes, though obviously we don't want any inappropriate or stupid names
Yeah we will post all entries when the competition closes and get input from the community before we decide on winners.

Luca · 2010-01-17 07:39:17

>as well as IE6, 7

Do you sure that it's good idea to support IE6?

jojaba · 2010-01-17 07:55:50

If you want users to create a new style, you should give them a complete liberty... In header.php I saw that the styling of the administration pages depends on a independant style sheet :

if (defined('PUN_ADMIN_CONSOLE'))
    echo '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style/imports/base_admin.css" />'."\n";

If you change this css, you change it for all themes. A way to fix that : move this file into a folder called by each theme name (like for the templates customization)...
I would also suggest to handle all stylesheets the same, each theme should have a folder containing the templates and this admin.css file, it would be easier for future retstyling, all files are available in the same folder, and the newbie will be aware of what they can do without looking to any documentation...
I don't know if I was clear on that message, sorry for my poor english !

Good luck to the competitor

Last edited by jojaba (2010-01-17 07:57:16)

jojaba · 2010-01-17 10:24:46

Luca wrote:

>as well as IE6, 7
Do you sure that it's good idea to support IE6?

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Reines · 2010-01-17 10:51:47

Luca wrote:

>as well as IE6, 7
Do you sure that it's good idea to support IE6?

Yes, much as I hate IE6 it has a higher market share than Chrome, Safari and Opera, so ignoring it would be stupid.

@jojabab: Yes that would be ideal, but we didn't want to break skins left over from 1.2 too much. Maybe we can make it accept them all in 1 folder, or the main file separate.

Meow · 2010-01-17 11:00:06

What? Is Firefox really the most popular browser now?

Reines · 2010-01-17 11:02:50

Meow wrote:

What? Is Firefox really the most popular browser now?

Depends where you ask, w3schools probably has less IE users than the average website due to who it's aimed at.

@jojaba: I've made it possible to overwrite the base_admin.css file by placing your own inside the skin folder as you can with templates. I haven't moved the main skin file in there though because that would break compatibility with 1.2, and supporting both is a bit of a pain when it comes to looking what skins are installed and available.

jojaba · 2010-01-17 11:11:46

Meow wrote:

What? Is Firefox really the most popular browser now?

I took the first resource I found on the Web, just to show that IE 6 still be used ...
On wikipedia you should see a larger statistic panel : The article on Wikipedia

Reines wrote:

@jojaba: I've made it possible to overwrite the base_admin.css file by placing your own inside the skin folder as you can with templates. I haven't moved the main skin file in there though because that would break compatibility with 1.2, and supporting both is a bit of a pain when it comes to looking what skins are installed and available.

That's what I meant, great, you understood !

jojaba · 2010-01-17 13:07:28

To the competitor : a tool that will help you to test your css on several IE versions : IE tester
A little buggy but could safe your time...

Last edited by jojaba (2010-01-17 17:35:12)

Scripter · 2010-01-17 17:05:06

Keeping a lightweight style is the way to go for sure. I might give it a go but the hard part I think for all is to make it work for the browsers mentioned.

Meow · 2010-01-17 17:31:29

You also will feel so pressured, because you are making a skin to the world.

Last edited by Meow (2010-01-17 18:10:27)

Luca · 2010-01-17 18:03:31

If you will be support out of date browsers you will help them to stay on the market. Even MS admit IE6 out of date and asked all to update it to modern browsers. Also world statistic not show real statistic. Very possible that on FluxBB forums IE6 would take about 1 %.
For example on my site I have IE share is only 14%, where IE6 take only 10%.
I really think that it would be more solid for you to drop out IE6.

Franz · 2010-01-17 18:07:18

Meow wrote:

You also will feel so pressured, because you are making a default skin to the world.

Default? Where does it say that?

Luca wrote:

I really think that it would be more solid for you to drop out IE6.

There's always offer and demand. It's a two-directional relationship, if that makes sense. Also, graceful degradation is fine for IE6.

Meow · 2010-01-17 18:11:47

lie2815 wrote:

Default? Where does it say that?

OK, not a default skin. Now I can't understand why people want to join this contest.

Franz · 2010-01-17 18:13:46

Meow wrote:

Now I can't understand why people want to join this contest.

The style being shipped with the package (if we like it that much, it could even be default)? Giving back to the community? And last but not least: a little money?

Meow · 2010-01-17 18:24:18

Please do not confuse us. A default skin is different from other skins. If you cannot be sure whether it will be default or not, why should people design a skin which seems default? Maybe money could courage them, but what else?

FSX · 2010-01-17 18:29:12

Meow. The best entries will be included in Fluxbb. The one who makes the best style wins ~$70. That's it.

Meow · 2010-01-17 18:34:00

Thus, there is no chance to make a default skin of FluxBB 1.4, and FluxBB 1.4 will still use the old Oxygen as its default skin. Now I have understood that fact, thanks.

Last edited by Meow (2010-01-17 18:34:40)

Reines · 2010-01-17 18:52:22

Meow wrote:

Thus, there is no chance to make a default skin of FluxBB 1.4, and FluxBB 1.4 will still use the old Oxygen as its default skin. Now I have understood that fact, thanks.

No, the default will be chosen from all the skins we decide to ship it with. There's no guarantee it would be 1 from the competition, but there is nothing to say it can't be. I would hope that having your skin included in the core with your name etc on it would be a good motive to give something back, if not then I'd hope some money would be.

jojaba · 2010-01-17 18:57:27

Luca wrote:

If you will be support out of date browsers you will help them to stay on the market. Even MS admit IE6 out of date and asked all to update it to modern browsers. Also world statistic not show real statistic. Very possible that on FluxBB forums IE6 would take about 1 %.
For example on my site I have IE share is only 14%, where IE6 take only 10%.
I really think that it would be more solid for you to drop out IE6.

And what about people who can't upgrade to newer browser because they don't know how to do, or they have not the minimal configuration to use them, or...
I think IE 6 compatibility is something that shouldn't be dropped.

Paul · 2010-01-17 19:20:28

While any statistics are unreliable what they do show is that on most sites most of the time IE6 users will exceed the total number of users using all Mac browsers combined. I don't hear many people saying support for Mac Safari should be dropped though I would dearly love to; those horrible glassy image ridden form widgets are a right pain.

Scripter · 2010-01-17 23:56:26

What if the winner decides that he/she does not want to take the money or he/she cannot take the money because they don't have paypal? Is it possible to refuse the money and would the winner get something else in return?

Franz · 2010-01-18 00:55:38

What exactly do you mean? I couldn't think of anything else right now...

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#1 2010-01-12 13:19:24