# Those Electric Blues...



## Michael Morris (Dec 6, 2004)

EDIT: Electric Blue has underwent it's transformation.

Well, PHB has underwent some modifications and now it's married to the mysterious new default style.  I'm relaunching it now, and it gives you a chance to speculate on what the new default will really look like.  Highlights of it's differences.


 The largest functional change is the navbar.  The staff has carefully evaluated what was being used, what wasn't, and moved some things about.  There are now more options on the navbar than before and it's moved slightly higher on the page.
 Tips of the day will now launch in this styleset, either in the page, or if you command it to do so, as a popup.  If a pop-up launches unbidden tell me *immediately*
 The post icons are now available again, though when I get the time PHB will get it's own set.  You'll note that different forums have different icons available, up to 24 in any given forum.
 You can now select from 7 new options that control various parts of the page display, including the ability to choose the postbit layout - new posts in bold, and so on.  The subscribed threads in italics feature though will still not function until after the server upgrade.

Please alert me to any display problems immediately, and enjoy.


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## cybertalus (Dec 6, 2004)

It looks awesome, man, just awesome.  Ads are back, and so is the new posts in bold feature, which I felt lost without.  Haven't put it through the paces by messing with the postbit options you describe, but I'll try to at some point.

The only thing that sticks out a little bit is the way the post times are in red.  The red sometimes draws my eye to that column.  If that's intentional so post times stand out, cool.  If not, well I thought you might wanna know.

Oh, and while I'm not a huge fan of the topic tags, the ones I see for here in meta look pretty clever.  If people use them here it's bound to make things easier for the people in charge.

I dunno if you get thanked enough for making EN World easier on the eyes, but thanks.  I spend a lot of time at the computer, so I'm appreciative of anything that reduces eye strain.


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## Truth Seeker (Dec 6, 2004)

*Looking around at the new stuff*

OKay...cool, and cool, and cool. 

But the menu bar for font, color and size, etc, etc...is still not working.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Dec 6, 2004)

Looks good Michael!


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Dec 6, 2004)

cybertalus said:
			
		

> The only thing that sticks out a little bit is the way the post times are in red.  The red sometimes draws my eye to that column.  If that's intentional so post times stand out, cool.  If not, well I thought you might wanna know.




Having looked around a bit more, I am also fining the red post times to be distracting. Can they be made another, less invasive color?


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## Desdichado (Dec 6, 2004)

I preferred the old black post times as well (as a dedicated user of the older PHB styleset) but it's not that big a deal to me.

Related to the new change, I didn't think the icons in the Storyhour forums were particularly useful.  Most of them were for a historical period, with only a handful of genres (in fact, I only remember Space Opera.)  I think concentrating on genres would work better than historical time periods.  I also didn't much like the white on white (with black outline) text of most of the buttons.  I kinda missed the older, more colorful ones like the old Grim Tales or Call of Cthulhu icons.

I also don't much like the shape of the icons.  They are too long, making the rest of the page feel a bit squished.


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## Knight Otu (Dec 6, 2004)

I like most of what I see, but I can't help but notice that Living Enworld receives only a single icon with its name - which, considering that it is a subforum of its own, isn't particularly helpful. I'm not sure if this is the final list to use, but over at the forum, we brainstormed a little to create a small list of possible icons:

 Adventure
   Announcement
   Archive
   Discussion
 Judge
 Proposal
   Record
 Tavern

 Archive and Record might be considered the same for our purposes.


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## Michael Morris (Dec 6, 2004)

Time color changed to orange.

The icons for each forum are still very much in the air.  As to the width, it's important that they remain visible at all screen resolutions Josh.  If I make them any narrower they become illegible at resolutions beyond 1024x768


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## Desdichado (Dec 6, 2004)

I actually liked the more blocky ones of the past iteration.

And I didn't mean to sound too negative; these icons are actually pretty good when you're in the post.  They make that column take up a bunch of room on the threadlist page, though.

As for the Story hour icons, have you also thought about including most of the main settings as options?


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## Michael Morris (Dec 6, 2004)

I had, but I only have room for 24 icons.  If I expand beyond that the expansion must go across every single forum.  There are easily more than 24 settings out there, so I didn't want anyone to feel like I was dissing their fav setting.


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## Knight Otu (Dec 6, 2004)

Michael Morris said:
			
		

> The icons for each forum are still very much in the air.



 I thought so, but I figured I'd bring it to your attention as early as possible in case it wasn't so.


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## Berandor (Dec 6, 2004)

Michael Morris said:
			
		

> I had, but I only have room for 24 icons.  If I expand beyond that the expansion must go across every single forum.  There are easily more than 24 settings out there, so I didn't want anyone to feel like I was dissing their fav setting.



 More than 24?

Homebrew
FR
Eberron
Planescape
Midnight
Dungeon Path
Scarred Lands
AU
Kalamar
OA
Greyhawk/Core
Dark Sun
Oathbound
D20 modern
D20 future
Adventure!d20/Pulp
Spycraft
Mutants/Masterminds

well, there would be some more than I can't think of right now... perhaps you're right.


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## Angel Tarragon (Dec 6, 2004)

Yipeeee!    Me likey!


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## JoeBlank (Dec 7, 2004)

Nice work, looks good. Thanks.


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## cybertalus (Dec 7, 2004)

Michael the orange is perfect, thanks.

One other thing I noticed today that seems odd (but may have been that way before) is the area below a message where the "quote" and online status indicator sits is a different color from the areas above it.  It doesn't look bad, it just struck me as slightly odd.

Oh, and I did try out most of the postbit options.  The ones I tried all worked.  It's very cool having that level of choice.


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## Truth Seeker (Dec 7, 2004)

Forgive me, but the mood has struck me, is it possible to get something in pink?


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## Michael Morris (Dec 7, 2004)

cybertalus said:
			
		

> Michael the orange is perfect, thanks.
> 
> One other thing I noticed today that seems odd (but may have been that way before) is the area below a message where the "quote" and online status indicator sits is a different color from the areas above it.  It doesn't look bad, it just struck me as slightly odd.




That's intentional, and in other sets it's more pronounced.


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## Arbiter of Wyrms (Dec 7, 2004)

*I don't get it. . .*

What's this thread about?


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## Desdichado (Dec 7, 2004)

Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page.  Look for a drop-down menu on the left hand side.  Pick Player's Handbook and watch the magic unfold.


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## Michael Morris (Dec 7, 2004)

Allow me to reintroduce Electric Blue...


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## DungeonmasterCal (Dec 7, 2004)

Ok...I'm wholly in the dark here.  What is this mysterious PHB?


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## Desdichado (Dec 7, 2004)

That new Electric Blue doesn't seem to be working; I've tried to select it and I keep getting booted back to ENWorld Default.

DungeonmasterCal; read the entire thread.  I just answered that question not two or three posts ago.


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## dpmcalister (Dec 7, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> That new Electric Blue doesn't seem to be working; I've tried to select it and I keep getting booted back to ENWorld Default.



Works fine for me (Firefox 1.0/WinXP). Having said that, it's too dark for my tastes (much prefer PHBII at the moment - although looking forward to Stealth's re-release )


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## Michael Morris (Dec 7, 2004)

Oops.. Forgot to pull the lock out of the include start file.  Try it again.


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## DungeonmasterCal (Dec 7, 2004)

**GASP!!** The Electric Blue is awesome!!!  **sniff**...Thanks, man!


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## EricNoah (Dec 7, 2004)

Electric blue is cool.  I'd love to see a large text version of it -- the normal text (of any style) is too small to read on my laptop...


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## Michael Morris (Dec 7, 2004)

Rather than write two versions of each stylesheet I'd like you to try this trick Eric.

If you're using IE this should work - Psionicist probably knows the same trick on Firefox.

Click on Tools>General tab, then click the accessability button.  Click the checkbox that says "ignore font sizes specified by websites"

Next upload the attached css file then clip the .txt extension off and put it somewhere out of the way.  Click "Format document using my style sheet" and select it.  This will not only affect this vbulletin site, but also all other vbulletin sites.


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## dpmcalister (Dec 7, 2004)

In Firefox it's View > Text Size > Increase (or just press Ctrl++)


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## EricNoah (Dec 7, 2004)

Hey, I didn't even need the style sheet -- your Accessibility trick worked.  I can now use IE's Text Size command.  Electric Blue here I come!


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## the Jester (Dec 7, 2004)

Wow, good work Michael!  The electric blue roxxorz!  (As always...)


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## Truth Seeker (Dec 8, 2004)

Michael Morris said:
			
		

> Time color changed to orange.
> 
> The icons for each forum are still very much in the air. As to the width, it's important that they remain visible at all screen resolutions Josh. If I make them any narrower they become illegible at resolutions beyond 1024x768



LOve the ORANGE...soooo...orange looking


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## Truth Seeker (Dec 8, 2004)

MYGOD!!!! *fighting to get back to PHB colors*

I almost got lost in the depths...I couldnn't find myself...it was...so...blue.


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## Desdichado (Dec 8, 2004)

That one always makes me sing cheesy 80s Icehouse songs, so it's best avoided.


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