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View Full Version : The "Styles" control panel


MovieJeff
Mon 26th Mar '01, 8:01pm
Ok, I think this is certainly one area in the control panel that needs improving, "Styles". First, it's way to complecated for doing simple tasks that shouldn't take long at all. A perfect example of this are the header and footer boxes.

This is VERY confusing and needs to be drastically changed for future beta/2.0 final code. You should not have access to ANYTHING that could interfer with verables that have already been set: table width, fonts, etc. but rather a BLANK input box for your header and footer code. The other code should be completly self contained for editing if wanted, like the CSS info, table content width, etc inside other boxes. Your headers/footers should simply be cut and paste from your html code to the header/footer boxes without worrying about any other code there that could cause trouble.

Am I making sense on this, I hope so because I find this all too time consuming for something that should be as simple as this. Those header/footer boxes should be totally blank and whatever code you put in there then becomes the header and footer self contained regardless of other variable details. Those other variables, like: fonts, table width, where to put the pm stuff, etc. should be in their own sections. Cut and paste should be all that's needed, then if you want to modify other items you do that in other content areas in the "styles" section or templates.

It should be much more straight forward with better labels, more divisions for the input boxes and their functions, etc. A user should not need to worry about templates unless needed and simply filling in the boxes or answering yes/no questions like "Size of your entire forum table- enter either percentage or pixes. Recommended sizes: 100%, 90%". Things like this would help a lot. There just needs a better styles interface without code confusion of worrying about where to put your header content in the code that's already there, etc.

A good clean design sure would be welcome with LOTS of details and examples stating the recommended setting.

Thanks, looking forward to the improvements.

Jeff

Wayne Luke
Mon 26th Mar '01, 9:13pm
If the header and footer were blank, everything in the purple (logo, toplinks, copyright, bottomlinks) would be gone.

BaldNut
Thu 31st Oct '02, 11:21am
cant beleive this guy got away with that post without severe beatz :D

imo Vbulletin is the easiest most comprehensive template driven software ever, and if it was suppressed as suggested, everyone would have a carbon copy of each others sites instead of unique, quality forums

hypedave
Thu 31st Oct '02, 3:30pm
the vb 2.2.X template system was very hard for me at first, but after setting up a test forum and fiddling around with the template system it all makes perfect sense to me now. Im looking forward to the new vb3 template system also

Wayne Luke
Thu 31st Oct '02, 6:41pm
You do know that the original topic is 19 months old right?