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	Satisfaction about the precompiled software v3.3

	Rider Partaker	#1 \| Posted: 28 Oct 2018 12:42
		I am very satisfied about the precompiled software of MiniBB 3.3. I haven't found one single bug and everything works as it should. How great this is! At this moment I am in the process of making several minor changes to the forum software to let the forum meet with the standards of the rest of our website. I thought it would be a good idea to post some of these changes here, they may come of use to others. One of my goals is to keep the compiled software as default as possible and to only make changes in files which usually had to be personalized already, like the stylesheet and main_header.html and main_footer.html. Here we go: The forum's background color The background color of .gbody is default white. But since the bars left and right of our website are dark grey I wanted to change it to dark grey. So I did. Now the bars left and right of the forum are dark grey. But the new color also appears in places where I don't want it to appear, like in between forum posts in a thread etc etc. When it used to be white it just didn't show that clearly, but now it's dark grey it does. That's why I created a new div in the stylesheet (#my_container) to make the background of the forum itself white again. In main_header.html I therefore put <div id="my_container"> right under <body class="gbody">. And in main_footer.html I put the closing div-tag right above the closing body-tag. This way the entire forum is wrapped in the new my_container and is white again. And the bars left and right still dark grey. The specs of my_container are: #my_container { display: table; background-color:#FFFFFF; margin: auto; border-radius: 10px; } Responsiveness top menu bar They new my_container I mentioned above led to the disadvantage that the postedtext box wouldn't become narrower than the top menu bar. That's why I made the top menu bar responsive. Now the postedtext box behaves like default and is fully responsive again. For details on how to make the top menu bar responsive check this topic: https://www.minibb.com/forums/specific-20/responsiveness-top-menu-bar-6940.html. A modern look with rounded edges I made use of the "border-radius" property in several places in the stylesheet, to give the forum rounded edges and a subtile modern look. Like for example in the quoted textbox: .quote{ border-left:7px solid #900; border-right:1px dashed #CDCDCD; border-top:1px dashed #CDCDCD; border-bottom:1px dashed #CDCDCD; background-color:#FFFFFF; border-radius: 5px; } Things to do: Make the unread icon clickable As far as I know the indicator for unread messages (unread.gif) is not clickable. I replaced the default gif for a larger image saying "New message". I therefore had to remove a snippet from bb_plugins which forced the image to be only 8x8 pixels (style=\"width:8px;height:8px\"). But I want it to be clickable so you go straight to the latest message. I'll have to find the best way to do so. etc. (more to come? I don't know yet...)

	Paul Lead Developer	#2 \| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 16:13
		Rider: I am very satisfied about the precompiled software of MiniBB 3.3. I haven't found one single bug and everything works as it should. How great this is! Thank you. We appreciate your positive feedback and the good choice of the software :) Rider: The background color of .gbody is default white. Not exactly... it's slightly yellow-to-white i.e. #F9F7F2. Overall, it would be great to see a screenshot of what you did and what the problem is/was about. Hard to compile your code just in a head without visuals :) Rider: I made use of the "border-radius" property in several places in the stylesheet, to give the forum rounded edges and a subtile modern look. Well, some of the current elements do already have a radius, like form buttons and text forms. But since the whole layout mostly belongs to a "quadratisch" one, I've intentionally left many elements without shaped corners. Of course it's up to you if you change them for your forum. Rider: But I want it to be clickable so you go straight to the latest message. That's not available in this add-on. Currently only the Checker add-on handles the relocation straight to the latest unread message in a topic. It's a heavy calculation process. The Indicator add-only only keeps a combination of the topic ID and the latest read post ID in this topic. Then when displaying topics, it's possible to compare the latest post ID with the earlier read post ID and put an unread icon or not. But if we'd need to calculate the earliest unread ID, then for each user, for each topic the script should make a standalone select request to calculate it. It's a very greedy process and on large busy forums, it's something standing closely to impossible on execution, image about 30 select requests for each topics page, even if 10 users are online, that means there could be up to 300 requests and so on... I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible to implement, but then you need to add such selections on your own :) it's out of my coding concepts to build such code. Actually, I'm not considering this add-on as an effective way of checking the unread messages. I have plans to implement similar algorithms in the Favorites add-on. Then they would be much more effective in terms of checking only the things you really need, not everything at once those in a limited mode.

	Rider Partaker	#3 \| Posted: 7 Nov 2018 17:36
		I understand it would cost too much resources to have it perfect. Could it be a good enough alternative to put the same hyperlink under unread.gif, as there is under ">> >>"? Then clicking on unread.gif brings you to the latest post in the thread, which may not actually be the oldest unread post for that user, but often it wíll be. That would be a fair enough solution for me I think. I changed the default unread icon for something else. Let's see if I can get a picture here to show it to you.

	Rider Partaker	#4 \| Posted: 7 Nov 2018 17:42
		Here some of the rounded edges which I like: The left bottom of the forum. Notice the grey bar on the left, which in fact is a grey/white stripe repeating gif-file. The forum posts with rounded edges.

	Rider Partaker	#5 \| Posted: 7 Nov 2018 17:50
		Without the extra div-container I put in main_header.html, the window looked like this: But now wíth the extra div right below body class="gbody" it looks like this;

	Rider Partaker	#6 \| Posted: 7 Nov 2018 18:07
		But the new div-container introduced new problems. The post text areas became not responsive because the top menu bar wasn't responsive. So I made the top menu bar responsive. Which now looks the way I want it: But there are still some other issues I am solving.

	Paul Lead Developer	#7 \| Posted: 7 Nov 2018 20:03
		Thanks for explanations. Yes, putting a common background layer for the whole forums outlook is the best solution, if you have sort of specific background. As about this: Rider: Could it be a good enough alternative to put the same hyperlink under unread.gif, as there is under ">> >>"? Then clicking on unread.gif brings you to the latest post in the thread, which may not actually be the oldest unread post for that user, but often it wíll be. That would be a fair enough solution for me I think. I suppose, it could bring even more confusion... and it's quite possible to achieve this, but there's no easy way for it. As you may check in bb_func_vtopic.php or bb_func_ldisc.php, building the code for $LinkToLastPostInTopic and specifically for its URL kept under $lmurl1 is not a simple one. Basically, you just need to duplicate the code from those scripts to the code for Unread Indicator, but it's also not simple as 1-2-3. You need to adjust it properly fitting the new database fields... overall, I'm not sure if it all is worth of this job.

	Rider Partaker	#8 \| Posted: 7 Nov 2018 23:14
		Paul: Yes, putting a common background layer for the whole forums outlook is the best solution, if you have sort of specific background. Yes I hope so. But all in all it is still not perfect. The layer takes over the width from all what's inside of it, which in itself is good, but on the subforum topics index page all contents are narrowed down to the minimum width, that's not what I want. The forum's width should be the same on every page like in the default software. I'm working on that. Paul: I suppose, it could bring even more confusion Yes I think so too. It is a sort of semi-solution. But I've seen worse on other forums so how bad can it be, lol. I'll see if I can get it to work and see how visitors react to it. Thanks.

	Paul Lead Developer	#9 \| Posted: 8 Nov 2018 19:51
		Rider: The layer takes over the width from all what's inside of it, which in itself is good, but on the subforum topics index page all contents are narrowed down to the minimum width, that's not what I want. You could use a regular table like it's everywhere used in miniBB templates. Tables have a different drawing algorithm comparing to a layer, and it could be adjusted properly for all widths. So you could just put an initial table with the background you want in it's cell, and "place" all other forums layout "in" this table. Rider: But I've seen worse on other forums so how bad can it be, lol. I'll see if I can get it to work and see how visitors react to it. Like to repeat, I myself find this way of checking topics the worst one, that's why I am out of big support of it. I know the Checker tool we have seems unusual to common users, that's why they rather are not tied to it. But the new messages checking certainly should be provided only for those who really need it, not for all but for certain users. I have plans to unite the Favorites add-on and the checking mechanism, but this is for the nearest future, right now I have enough of jobs on the main core.

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