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Post by Desi Baggins on Jun 7, 2005 18:11:18 GMT -6
Calling all artist or creative beings! You don't have to be able to draw to do this just be creative. With the proboard upgrades each person has the ability to change the look of this forum to their preference.
Right now we have the following working of skins: Stormrider -- Rohan skin Desi Baggins -- Shire skin
If anyone else wants to try please reply and let us know the ME land you are doing your skin of!
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Post by Magpie on Jun 7, 2005 18:45:19 GMT -6
Well, I guess I'm thinking on Lothlorien. Is there a place to practice the application. What I mean is, for example, in yahoo groups you can mess with the colors of different parts of the site and then apply them and see how it will look.
I can design a new banner. Find or create a background image to go with it. Then do I just find a dark color where a dark is used on the thread... and a medium color and a light color? What else can we change? The font color for the titles of thread and the disclaimer at the bottom? New buttons for Home - Help - Search - Members, etc?
I'm used to working with a program that lets me play with applying colors. I just have to see them in use to know if they work. I could try downloading a page and editing it in FrontPage to see it.
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 7, 2005 20:49:48 GMT -6
Here is the information everyone who is interested in helping with skins will need to know: All images seem to work better here if: We make them quick loading -- so a 72 resolution seems to work well for that. Gifs seem to look clearer than jpgs. We have to load the images into the TR Mgmt Photobucket and it seems to distort jpgs more than gifs. BannersThese should be anywhere between the sizes of 5.847" w x 1" h to 6.25" w x 1.25" h A banner looks nice if it is buttonized or raised a bit. It can be animated or not. Background tileThis is the golden leather image you see now. I did the one I am working on for Rohan as a 6"x6" image. I don't have tiling ability with my program, so Majah was gracious enough to make it into a tile. I did it in a jpg because a little bit of blur seemed nice. If we can try to make the backgrounds not too busy, I think it will be easier on all of our eyes! Although the Rohan background is a mosaic tile look, it is not something like animated stars twinkling on a black background (ouch!) Forum ButtonsThese should be 0.889" w x 0.389" h The buttons needed should say: Admin Calendar Help Home LogIn LogOut Members Notification Profile Register Search SignIn Also a button 0.583" w x 0.389" h that says New Two Images pertaining to your Place of METhese are the images that will appear on the left hand side of the forums which indicate if you have gone into that forum or not. (the Rings on the Gold Leather skin -- one is still the other sparkles) They should be from .75" x .75" to 1" x 1" in size. They can be animated but it is not necessary. Forum Color schemeThis is really a management function and it is really a hassle to do. It would be nice if you could see the area in edit mode that you are changing a color on. You can't do that until you save it and then go out to the forums and look to see what you did. And most of the time you don't like it! Then you have to go back in and try again. It is a slow process! Anyway, what you can do is post a list of the html colors that you think you would like for your skin and what part should be what color code. For example, there is the background area of the forums and that is called Window BG. In the Gold Leather look it is FFFFCC (pale yellow) and the text color is 660000 (dark reddish brown). If you can just try to indicate the areas as best you can and what color you want, I will do the dirty work of going back and forth in the skin to see how it is turning out. If you have any other questions, ideas, or comments, just post them here. Thanks for your help!
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Post by Magpie on Jun 7, 2005 21:59:10 GMT -6
This is a perfect answer, Stormrider. Very organized thinking.
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 8, 2005 6:25:31 GMT -6
Magpie: A screen shot altered in Front Page would be very helpful when we change the forum colors for your skin...great idea!
The Rohan Skin is completed! Well, I am having trouble changing the mouse over color when you move your cursor over the forum areas. It won't change from the pukey pinkish gold color to the green that I want! I am also going to have to do something about the Tolkien's Ring Link area at the top of the page. The one from the gold leather look does not meld well with the Rohan look and I imagine it will also clash with some of the other skins. I may have to change the links to the other parts of TR to text and change the "Let the Hobbit Happen" banner to just plain text, too!
To see how the Rohan skin turned out, just go to your member profile and update it. There is a drop down area for skins toward the bottom of your information. Just change it and save (or do they call it modify) your profile.
If any of you do check out the Rohan skin, let me know if you like the dark text for postings or whether you think white or light grey would be easier on your eyes.
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 8, 2005 6:39:56 GMT -6
OK....what place in Middle-earth should I create next? How about an evil place....like....MORDOR! muhahahaha! This should be interesting! I bet it is going to be very hard on the eyes!
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Post by Magpie on Jun 8, 2005 17:54:51 GMT -6
To see how the Rohan skin turned out, just go to your member profile and update it. There is a drop down area for skins toward the bottom of your information. Just change it and save (or do they call it modify) your profile. If any of you do check out the Rohan skin, let me know if you like the dark text for postings or whether you think white or light grey would be easier on your eyes. Here's a mock page that displays different colored fonts with the Rohan skin. I pulled all the images and icons off of the page and only left the background wallpaper image and the table colors. Otherwise I would have had to upload all of them to my site or let them show as broken image links. To see the Rohan skin with all the icons and images you have to modify your profile. I've put the hex colors after each example. I left a few in that I really wouldn't choose because one always wonders, 'how about...?' and I thought it was worth showing that they wouldn't work. To my eyes, the FF, FF, CC cream color seems to work best, although I don't dislike the last one which is a little more gold. www.geocities.com/magpie930/index.cgi.htmhmm... I perhaps should have had a quote example in there... Storm has gold font for quotes and urls and I'm not sure how they would look with the examples. Perhaps I'll go back and copy and paste examples of quotes and urls into my exemplar.
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 8, 2005 19:44:55 GMT -6
Magpie!
That is great! I can see all the different colors for fonts to get a better idea on how they will look!
What say you, members? Light text or dark text? All of you will be reading the boards, what is easiest on your eyes and pleasing to yours senses? lol!
FF, FF, CC is rather nice. It is bright enough without being harsh...somewhat soft and not glaring.
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Post by Desi Baggins on Jun 9, 2005 9:52:11 GMT -6
I like the current or {FF, CC, 66}
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 9, 2005 10:48:19 GMT -6
FF, CC, 66 is also nice. Actually they all look pretty good except for the grey text. I don't care for that one at all!
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Post by Magpie on Jun 9, 2005 13:36:41 GMT -6
On repeated looks, I like how the colors of FF-FF-CC look with the color scheme... but I don't know if it reads well for me. I think FF-CC-66 reads a little easier, but I'm not sure how well it goes with the color scheme (I will leave that up to the designer, Stormrider - it's her vision I do like the dark green just fine so that gets an okay vote from me.
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Post by Desi Baggins on Jun 10, 2005 11:15:56 GMT -6
The Shire skin is done so check it out!
I am going to now work on Gondor!
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Post by Vanye on Jun 10, 2005 13:36:27 GMT -6
I may be dense as a post but--Where or what do I click to see these marvelous things of which you speak Vanye
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Post by Vanye on Jun 10, 2005 13:42:34 GMT -6
P.S. I still want my Rohan banner back! Vanye
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Post by Stormrider on Jun 10, 2005 17:52:07 GMT -6
Vanye:
You must click on the Profile button at the top of the forum. It will take you to your profile. Then at the top of your info page, there will be a link to modify your profile. Click that. Scroll down your information and almost to the bottom is a skin selector drop down box. You click on whichever skin you want to see and then save your profile way at the bottom of your page.
You will then be in a new skin. To see other skins, you have to repeat the updating of your profile.
Have fun! I'm working on Mordor right now! Muhahahaha
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