Check out the newest Theme Engine! (in General)

Okay, I think I got the final design of the theme engine down. Rather simple, and as requested, as little ID's as possible. The two following links are samples of the theme engine's flexibility. One is the existing BattleTech theme (a bit modified), and the other is the new Jet theme. Some of you have seen both of these before in the "old new" theme engine.

View BattleTech Engine
View Jet Engine

I need you guys to check for anything that may need work or fixing. If all is good, then I shall go on to the Battle Page as Jonathan requested.

'AC: invincible'

i love it

I ran the pages through the w3c validator, and it picked up a plethora of errors. You might want to do the same, and fix all those little things.

Both themes look great, but I have two questions:
1) Did you disable frame resizing, if so, why?
2) On the minions, why are all the stats scrunched together on the left?

I eagerly await the Jet engine, looks amazing. :)

Err, you may think of this as a stupid question but, is the average Joe gonna be able to play around with this, and customize, or will it require coding skills?

If it does, will it be easy to pick up?

w3c sucks.

1) I didn't disable it. It's probably just because I made the border of the frame 0, so there's no frame side to select, so it probably isn't resizable. Is there a reason it needs to be?
2) I can modify that as needed.

The average Joe is gonna need average CSS skills. All in all, this should be more customizable yet easier to learn than the current build.

I like the default theme better than any of the other ones . This new engine going to have a default similar to the old one??

W3C crap fixed. Mostly <br> whining and empty things I was going to have Jonathan filled in. However, the index.html is having problems. Why isn't there an attribute called "border"?

Not too sure on what the default theme will look like now. Maybe Jonathan would like to have a contest to create a default theme? Or should I just do it? (That comes AFTER I finish the new engine code).

Pix, sometimes I need to resize my frame to get Fex's script to fit in, or because the Log Out link occasionally slips too far into the frame for me to click it. I could send a Screenshot if wanted.

Jet rocks...

and nice favorite lol.

The log out link slips out because of Jon's current engine. That won't be a problem with the new one. As far as Verifex's script, I'll talk to him about that. It shouldn't be too hard to make it always fully viewable in the given sidebar width.

Why not just add the border back in? Because it can highly detract from themes and the overall color scheme.

Please please please please allow for a resizable border between chat and page, or get Jon or Verifex to brew something that allows for different chat sizes on different computers.
In settings, I've set the size of the chat window to the max, "25" (actually it's 15 for chat, 17 for PM (why fonts are different, I have no idea), as resizing chat breaks chat's scrolling and having the chat window that large is a sane thing on a 24" monitor. It is *not* a sane thing on a 15" monitor, so resizing chat is something I'd like to be able to do.
There are other reasons why you want to temporary resize chat (on systems where autoscrolling is not broken), for example to have a larger chat when you have trouble keeping up with an interesting discussion...

I vote for resiable chat as well. Is there a way to keep that enabled without having to have that darn line in between at least the sidebar and content?

Just have the border=2 (2, not 1...) on only the outermost frameset should do it.

Are you sure you can design the menu in such a way that it always fits, without the need for resizing? Even with very long character names in the opponents list? Even considering different font systems (ttf fonts like Arial, Verdana and friends are not installed by default on Linux systems, and even with the same fonts, things always size differently than on Windows. A 101x98 dpi may also contribute to it. No idea about Macs)?

I know I'm making things more difficult for you, but it's better to mention these things in advance instead of complaining afterwards ;)

Here is an example of a very long opponent name. It extends out of the border, but other things are uneffected. As far as the text size, the links would then just wrap around to the next line. The problem with the current theme engine is Tables. When an element extends the cell, it extends the entire table, so things like Log Out go out of the frame.

I'm still up for resizable frames if something can be done about that line that is drawn for the border. And Linux isn't installed with web-safe fonts by default? Madness!

Those are Microsoft fonts...
And what's web-safe fonts? You are supposed to list more than 1 font per CSS entry, ending with either (non) Serif.

Web Safe Fonts. Never new I was supposed to end with those =D

"The most safe option is to use the generic font families as defined by the CSS. These are: sans-serif, serif, monospace and fantasy. One of them should always be specified as a last resort for every font-family CSS property."


This would have been picked up by the w3c css validator, incidently.

"w3c sucks."

Yeah, how dare they put together a set of agreed upon standards! We should just like IE dictate how things will develop...........

That Wikipedia page is outdated. "Microsoft has started a Core fonts for the Web initiative." fails to mention that that same program ended in 2002, with the fonts no longer available from Microsoft.

courier, helvetica, times and other fonts from Adobe are the standard fonts on Unix systems.

It's a wiki. Update the page.

Whatever. Any font you use should wrap within its container, even if another element stretches past the container.

As far as resizing though... sidebars I made like Jet won't resize with it, which may pose a problem. So I think if possible, we only allow resizing the chat frame.

Well, we'll wait and see then ;)
Being probably your worst customer when it comes to browser compatibility, I don't mind help test it...

Use the links from the first post to see the latest update. Two things have changed.

First off is the sidebar. I rearranged things a bit (there aren't any drop-down links yet). However, Jon said he's "not really comfortable w/ the Places and Tools categories . . . the division of functionality and links". Thoughts?

Secondly, I've coded a brand new Battle page! You can see it by clicking "Fight" in the sidebar (and you can go back by clicking "Manage").

The fight page looks amazing with the jet engine!

As for the sidebar issue, this is what I was thinking:

Businesses
-Auctions
-Rentals
-Forge
-BS
-Tattoo
-Stores

Tools
-Clans
-Train
-Get more BA
-Loaned/rented
-Recent battles

Places
-Home
-Community
-Maybe even forums could go here

Thanks Mian, I'm running the list by Jon now. By the way, you can now click on Your Account (and as I recall this little link was highly requested =P)

I love the fight page. :)

good job.

Settings coded.

Inspect Activated.

Since View (your own character) and inspect (opponent character) is virtually the same, I made them both link to the same page.

I am using IE 7 and the theme is behaving in a weird way... Initially, all I can see in the navigation pane are the drop down lists and title bars. The other items, links for example, appear when I scroll over them.

The Jet Engine theme rocks though. Once you have it figured out, I will definitely use it.

Screencap please? Friend said it worked fine in IE6. Who'd figure that IE7 would screw up a a website even more than IE6? Oh wait, it's Micro$ucktastic.