DKC Atlas Forum

[Qyzbud]

In celebration of DKC Atlas' first anniversary, I've released a forum style which matches the Atlas home page design. There will be many changes and improvements over the coming weeks, but it's quite functional in its current state, so feel free to make use of this new style.

To use the new 'atlasite' theme:

1. Open your User Control Panel
2. Click 'Board preferences'
3. Select 'atlasite' from the 'My board style' selection box
4. Click Submit

Eventually I plan to have this become the default style for the forum, but there are plenty of design/feature improvements to make before that happens.

Feel free to provide feedback/requests here.

Enjoy!


My to-do list:

• Increase width to suit 1024+ displays
• Enable clickable smilies when posting
• Enable post avatars, etc.
• Fix cut-off headings (IE issue)
• Many, many more things

I'll mark these off as I complete them.


--
Thanks to everyone for making this forum a success!

[Gnawzooka]

It's nice, but way too thin. I say get rid of the black space on the sides and then make everything wider.

[DKCplayer]

Beautiful!
I agree with Gnawzooka about making everything wider.
Also, where did the bar with the spoilers and all that go?

[Simion32]

I also agree that the new forum style is way too thin - it needs to stretch to the size of the window. I'll be sticking with the current one until the atlassite style is improved. Will you still be keeping the old style around Qyz?

Good Points:
-Signatures are still gone. It needs to stay this way.
-Fits nicely with the main site

Problems:
-PAGES ARE TOO THIN, this is a waste of monitor space. Needs to stretch to window size like before.

-The post/forum name headers (such as "New DKC Atlas Forum style!" used as topic title, or "DKC Projects/Fanworks" as displayed in the forum index) text should be black or a dark brown, not light-brown. The sections don't stand out enough. The same goes for the sections' text in the User CP.

-There needs to be a global font size option. The post text is too small. Actually, it looks OK, but might be a little out of place with a wider page. The font size that atlas1 is using is already OK.

-What on earth happened to avatars? They are such an easy method of identifying a poster!

[PotoGamer]

I miss the little icons that appear to the left of a topic, they were good for showing when there was a new message.

I like the theme anyway, but I think it's too dark, it's hard to distinguish usernames and posting times. And it should be stretched out to fit the avatars and everything else. This is just the first version, so I can't wait for the many updates to come.

By the way, I dislike sigs more than anything else. so they should ALWAYS be kept off the forum...

[Jomingo]

Well, I do like it, but it sure could use some improvement. For instance, it should be much wider; I'm getting the first letter of some headings on the left side cut-off slightly; and Avatars are a must. They are the quickest way of identifying someone without being too flashy or space consuming(well, most of the avatars).

Whoah, I also just realised that I can't use these smilies. I just keep clicking and nothing happens...

Besides the problems it just seems very, very different. It looks a whole lot better than the previous design, which I guess is a fair tradeoff for the less comfortable and unfamiliarity of this new one...

[old_buzzard]

I like this new board skin, it matches the main site. Although, I do agree that there is room for some improvement.

[Qyzbud]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. All of the points you've brought up will be addressed, and many are already being worked on. DKC Atlas has always been 800 x 600 optimised, but I'm developing a 1024px wide redesign for the site and forum. Should be a lot nicer for 99% of users. Those with old monitor setups will just have to scroll a bit.

I have an awesome idea for avatars, so please bear with me. I must say I actually really like the clean, uncluttered avatar-free look, but I can see that's not the popular choice.

I'll need to fix a few things for IE users, and get the smilies clickable again for posting. Keep the suggestions coming, I'll aim to address all requests unless I have a good reason not to.

Cheers guys.

[gamer_boy997]

I like this skin, but it can be improved.

-By making it wider
-Bringing avatars back
-I don't know why, but part of the first letter in usernames and topic names seem to have disappeared.


Other than that, I think it's awesome!

EDIT: Oh wait, you already listed these problems, and several more I didn't notice.

Will you also make sure you bring back the buttons for spoiler tabs, font changes, etc.?

Most of these problems occur with IE .

[Jomingo]

Another problem I see is that everything is just so unnoticeable. The print is so small and unappealing that you can barely tell any of the information on the topics, like most recent poster/post time/even the topic title doesn't really stand out much.

[Tiptup Jr.]

Ahaha, too many toasters!

Qyz, I love it, but I'll just go ahead and kill the party by agreeing with the fact that it needs to be wider. I have a 1680 x 1050 monitor, so I guess it's a justified complaint. Otherwise it's fine, as long as you eventually include Avatars and whatnot. Also... the Smilies bar on the side is grey and I had to manually type that one up thar.

...I'll stick to this new Atlasite theme, because it's 100% QYZ-APPROVED!

[edevore]

I kinda like the new theme but the layout still looks very bad and un-aligned for us IE6 users, (both new forum layout and atlas site.) It's alignment shows black or some kind of dark boxes and no corners also the bars and text is half hidden including other layers of the page mismatched and just won't show up correctly, I will post a screenshot if everyone is unsure what I am saying.

The spoiler is the screenshot:

Spoiler!

One more note: The Atlas site has some problem with the html code, here is the other screenshot.

screenshot_00002.jpg (32.77 KiB) Viewed 52467 times

[Gnawzooka]

Why not download FireFox or at least IE7?

[edevore]

I don't like the GUI on those browsers.
Why don't you downgrade to IE 6.0 or download Phirefox 9000, Gnawzooka?
...
....
.....
(I'm Just kidding with you, Gnawzooka.. Nothing towards you, I just like to joke around with anyone!)

[Gnawzooka]

I...don't know what GUI is.

[Kiddy14]

Graphical User Interface... just how the browser looks.
You can download an IE6 theme for Firefox, though.
Anyway, even though I didn't want to, I had to return to the default atlas skin; the only thing I didn't like was that there wasn't a New Posts Button, and like everybody says, it's kind of compressed in the center.
Not in offense, but I usually prefer something useful over something good-looking =P Still the theme is well done and I'll for sure inmediatily use it when everything is implemented! =D

[Donkey King]

I actually HATE the new layout. Don't tell me why, though...

[Rodent]

I thought it was ok. If those points are addressed, it'll be better. I like the layout of the place now though. :D