Metanet Forums

Hello, citizens of Metanet Forums. I would like to welcome you to what could be a major turnabout in the current forums.

As you will already know, we currently have three skins for the forums, the default being a grotesque purple with a nice header (Good job Atilla), the second being mundane and boring, but the nicest one here (Hermes) and one that is currently in Beta and a buggy mess.

Chrome as it is currently called, is in dire need of being recoded from scratch. The codebase behind it is complicated and arkward to modify and work with, Pembie did a great job working on the skin and getting it to a usable level but then real life took him away and left us with this.

So, over the past week or so I've taken the current version of Chrome, and started playing with the design, also changing the colour scheme at the same time as you saw earlier. Now what I need is your help. What I need you to do is suggest features and ideas that can be implemented into the new forum skin to make it far superior to the one we have now, to a level that makes it worthwhile setting it as default (Note: Retronet will never be default because of the theming, and it wasn't planned to be the default). Upon a vote by none other than yourselves you chose Green to be the dominant colour for the design, so this is exactly what it is going to be. Very eco friendly I suppose!

I have a minor list of tasks for you as a whole to work on, yet I can make this larger on a whim, so keep checking back for updates! I will also add the current version of the PNG image to the bottom of the page, as well as sending out the PSD to those who want it, if you do, send me a PM or by following me on Twitter.

Task List

• Suggest a new name
• Mess around with the PNG to create ideas, or use the PSD when I send it to you

Current version

I would like to suggest the names 'Great Leap Forward', 'El Tor', or 'The Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters'.

Well, I suggest the new name something to do with trees? Like Oak or Pine (lousy names, I'm just giving an idea of what it should sound like).

EDIT: Or call it Jell-O. Just saying.

I like it. The category headers are a bit bland, though. Maybe making it a darker shade of green to a lighter shade of green? And I like the brown text as well, if you made the forum names and such a dark, subtle shade o brown it'd bring it out more.

Might wrote:I like it. The category headers are a bit bland, though. Maybe making it a darker shade of green to a lighter shade of green? And I like the brown text as well, if you made the forum names and such a dark, subtle shade o brown it'd bring it out more.

The reason behind the lighter green is so that it fits with the icons we have available. I can try and hunt down another icon set but that may take some time.

I like it too. The only thing that comes to my mind (as the negative side) is the font/colour combination of the METANET FORUMS title, when I see the page, at the top of it. I suggest you to change the title colour (METANET) or the font of it (METANET),or change the font of the FORUMS, it seems like it has been stretched upwards, hmm. All these are optional, my thoughts, though feel free to change it if you see it as an error. ;)

Name suggestion: Terreplein.

UPDATE: I currently have no formatting on the METANET part of the header, that will come later.

Nice update.

Also, Search box looks way too big. I know you know that that should be changed.

Pah, bah. Tunco, the search box looks fine. I would like to see it a smidgen higher, if possible. Just for symmetry's sake.

If you're going to have a front-page login setup, it needs to be above the board index. Add Username and Password into the appropriate boxes, in italics.

Chase, this is a green, rounded Retronet. All your designs look the same.

Wight wrote:Chase, this is a green, rounded Retronet. All your designs look the same.

/
Well what the hell else can you do with a forum eh? Really? That's like saying the default skin of phpBB is a 'whatever colour', slightly different IPB default. They all look the same.

I'd really like to see this red.
Name suggestion: "Chase's".

Yeah this would look pretty cool red.
I'm also a little unsure of 'The official forum board for Metanet Software'. It doesn't sound right. Maybe drop 'board' and just go with 'forum'?

It's generic, but slick.

Sorry, but the grotesque purple default still kicks the hell out of anything you guys have offered!

Here's a HUESAT'd one.

EDIT: You're not having Red, it's a pain in the arse to work with, see wedgie's comment, it's hard to get red to work without making it either pink or magentaish.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ck.

what#s wrong with the current chrome? I like it, and use it.

Green>red.

I'm not dissing the new one -it's good, I like it- but the current blue one is fine for me.

Um... yeah. red=bad and fugly.

That's not red. That's not even magenta, its pink.

Ok, back to green, and see what you think of this now I've done some tweaking. I personally think this is a huge improvement over the previous versions.

UPDATED!

Oh my... Goodness, that text is horrendous. I prefer the white text to the gray, actually.

I like the rest, though.

I don't like the corners.

One last color tip: let's see what happens when you put that in grayscale, I'm sure that would be easy to make. Not that I have anything against green, though, it's lovely.

It looks very friendly.

ortsz wrote:I don't like the corners.

Nah, I think round corners are alright. What's witht he icons? I can't figure out what they mean.

Tunco123 wrote:It looks very friendly.
Nah, I think round corners are alright. What's witht he icons? I can't figure out what they mean.

Read the forum sections.

ortsz wrote:I don't like the corners.

Rounded corners were to try to get away from the 'Grid' layout a bit like LV said...

Edol wrote:One last color tip: let's see what happens when you put that in grayscale, I'm sure that would be easy to make. Not that I have anything against green, though, it's lovely.

The whole reasoning for the change of colour was to keep away from the web usual of greys and blues combined, I wanted it mainly a colour used a lot less throughout the web. Green isn't as easy to work with as blue (Hence why it's so popular) but it can still be easy, unlike red, which can fall into the realms of pink and magenta quite easily.

Also, edited to reduce drop shadow on the header text.