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  • General discussion about the RAILROAD.NET site, forums, or content ONLY. Please do not post your general railroading questions, please choose an appropriate forum. For help using the site, please post in the Help Using RAILROAD.NET Forum.
General discussion about the RAILROAD.NET site, forums, or content ONLY. Please do not post your general railroading questions, please choose an appropriate forum. For help using the site, please post in the Help Using RAILROAD.NET Forum.

Moderator: Jeff Smith

 #542862  by scotty269
 
I know there is a subsilver skin available for phpBB3. Could we please have an alternate style?
 #542864  by MBTA3247
 
I second this request. The prosilver skin IMO looks awful.
 #542880  by RearOfSignal
 
A choice of forum skins would be great. The current one makes it hard to tell where one post ends and another starts. It's not terrible but I too would be interested to see what else is available.
 #542931  by pgengler
 
Agreed. I especially don't like the new icons. The ones for "nothing new" aren't different enough from "something new", and it's not easy to tell at a glance which forums/threads have new posts.
 #542972  by alewifebp
 
I also agree. The look is very clean now, but it is almost too clean for my eyes. And I personally like the user info to the left instead of to the right.

Overall some positive changes, and the new board features are great!
 #543204  by Ricky Smith
 
Defiantly not feeling this design layout, I've actually stopped viewing as much. I like to just pop in see if there's any new topics, post a bit maybe all in a matter of a few minutes. But now when I click on over to check out what's new I find it annoying and don't bother.
 #543220  by Dump The Air
 
This web 2.0 BS look made the forum look like one of the old google groups with a polishing job or something, everything looks so annoyingly shiny and disjointed.
 #543291  by Lirr168
 
I think I will get used to the changes eventually, but I find the usernames being on the right to be extremely disorienting. Is there any way to change this as a personal option or would it have to have to be a whole forum change?
 #543443  by Plate F
 
Hmmm, quite a few negative comments. I, however, see it as a needed change. It is no longer SUPER slow. Thank you!!

As for the skin, I am already used to it, as two other of my regularly visited forums have used it for the past few months.

-Adriel
 #543916  by MBTA3247
 
Adriel wrote:Hmmm, quite a few negative comments. I, however, see it as a needed change. It is no longer SUPER slow. Thank you!!

As for the skin, I am already used to it, as two other of my regularly visited forums have used it for the past few months.

-Adriel
Good for you, but there are many of us who would like the option of choosing a more familiar skin (which has nothing to do with the speed of the board).
 #543937  by Ricky Smith
 
It'd be nice for an admin or mod or someone to chime in so we don't feel neglected :-D
 #543975  by CS
 
I actually find it reallly cool. Going to take a while getting use to, but theres nothing wrong with change...
 #543982  by pgengler
 
After having a couple of days to browse around, here are the things that I don't particularly like about the new skin and I wish would change:
  • The "new"/"no new" icons aren't visually distinctive enough to tell at a quick glance which is which. The old icons at least had the big area in the middle that was empty (white) when there was nothing new and yellow when new; the new ones differ only in color, and with the dark gray/black and dark red, especially on an LCD when you're not looking exactly head-on, they're very similar.
  • The "Mark forums read" link at the top of the index page. On the old version, this was at the bottom, and it was great, because the way I look at the forum is like this: open the page, scroll down, opening the forums I'm interested in in new tabs, then click "Mark forums read" once I got to the bottom so that I didn't see the same threads as new. Since I'd already opened the forums before clicking the link, the various threads in the forums still had the appropriate new/no new icons. Now, if I do the same thing, I have to get back to the top of the page before I can click the link. (I know that it's only one keystroke, Home, but when I'm browsing the forums my hand is on the mouse, not the keyboard, and scrolling all the way back to the top isn't the speediest thing.)
  • The page links for threads when viewing a forum on the far right of the table column. This separates them from the thread, especially when you're scanning down the list. It's very easy to click the thread title and end up on the first page of a thread instead of the last (which is usually where the new posts are, when you check in frequently enough).
  • No "quick reply" box at the bottom of a thread. I'm not 100% sure if this was there on the old skin, but I have it on other forums and it's nice to have, saving a click and a page load to post a reply.
  • I'm not really a big fan of moving the "user info" for a post to the right side from the left (since it's a pretty useless change for no reason and differs from nearly every other forum out there) but that's something I can learn to live with, I suppose.
 #544004  by Gerry6309
 
There are two sides to this issue. One is the forum "skin" itself, which is the color scheme which the data is presented in. I have seen phpBB3 forums which are much more readable than this one. Contrast is very poor. There are multiple "skins" available which can be user selected if the option is made available.

As for page layout, my beef is that the number of new posts isn't indicated until you reach the bottom of the page, so you don't know how many posts there are to wade through.

One big plus is that oversized pictures or avatars are shrunk to fit so pages don't go off the screen. Again, a better 'skin' might make for a clearer seperation between the post and the writer's information.

Another problem which I have run into is a tendency for my browser to lose track of where it is on a page. It is minor near the top of a page, but gets worse the further down you go.

The performance issue is a big plus, though, and the webmaster deserves kudos for that!
 #544064  by MEC407
 
I heartily agree with everyone who has expressed concern about the username, userinfo, avatar, etc., being displayed on the right side of the page rather than the left side. It would be really, really great if this could be switched back to the left side.

I don't really have any problem with the new skin, at least as far as the color scheme is concerned, but I am having a hard time getting accustomed to the new icons. As others have said, they just aren't as visually distinct as the old ones.

I'm not a huge fan of the new font, either. The old font -- Verdana -- was very, very easy to read, even at small text sizes. The new font -- Trebuchet -- is relatively easy to read, but it is more narrow than Verdana, and just doesn't have the excellent readability at all sizes that Verdana has. Trebuchet is a prettier font but Verdana wins when it comes to readability.

Overall, I am getting used to the new software and the new features, and I'm sure that most of it will become comfortable and familiar very soon. The increase in speed and reliability (which is thanks to new hardware, I assume?) is very nice indeed!