New Default Skin

[Fiel]

The one that's currently up is temporary. We need a new default skin! So, I thought, why not have a competition about it?

Starting tomorrow there will be a competition for who can create the best board skin! I'll create a new board and people can place their skins in each topic. Use the rating feature to decide which one to choose. This competition will last for 1 week. The winner gets their skin chosen for the default skin!

Requirements:
1. The skin must be a lighter skin to contrast the other darker skins we have.
2. The skin must use CSS - no greasemonkey or third party apps

The skin does not have to be maplestory-related, but bonus props if you can make it related.

So, let's get creating, and good luck on your skins!

~Fiel

[Rob]

YES, finally YES.

I'll try then =).

[Providence]

Can we please ask Loose to make the banner for the new skin?

[Takebacker]

Can we please ask Loose to make the banner for the new skin?

You probably wouldn't have to ask. This thing begs for his artistics.

But yes, i would enjoy having his stuff up here.

[Russt]

CSS?

How much is already there? Like, if my CSS file is empty, what is left of the style/layout? What is there to work with?

[butterfλi]

CSS?

How much is already there? Like, if my CSS file is empty, what is left of the style/layout? What is there to work with?

View page source? :U

Of course that means users can only design what they see (forum index, portal, and threads).

[Conciente]

I hope this doesn't end like the infamous Banner contest months ago.

[Dusk]

CSS?

How much is already there? Like, if my CSS file is empty, what is left of the style/layout? What is there to work with?

This is what the website looks with the image banner + CSS removed:

How is the CSS generated? I don't know PHP but if it's anything like Perl it'd be generated through functions in a CSS pragma rather than hand coded, right? Or is there some sort of editor for it? I have a feeling that it's going to be hard to find someone who understands CSS and is a good designer.

[Russt]

PHP just outputs HTML. CSS is typically a static file on its own. It can be hand-coded, or generated by something like Dreamweaver.

CSS itself isn't so bad.

body
{
	background: #C3D9FF;
	color: #000000;
	font: 10pt verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	margin: 5px 10px 10px 10px;
	padding: 0px;
}

"Get the body element and set its background to the color #C3D9FF; text color to #000000; font size to 10pt; font family (in order of preference) to verdana, geneva, ... etc; top/right/bottom/left margins to 5/10/10/10 pixels respectively; and padding to 0."

If you know what you want to achieve, you could just look through a CSS reference.

[nannerz]

Will those boards where the styles are tested on be representative of the actual content that will be displayed? Because as someone else mentioned...the tags you write will depend on what you can see...

[Dusk]

PHP just outputs HTML. CSS is typically a static file on its own. It can be hand-coded, or generated by something like Dreamweaver.

CSS itself isn't so bad.

body
{
	background: #C3D9FF;
	color: #000000;
	font: 10pt verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	margin: 5px 10px 10px 10px;
	padding: 0px;
}

"Get the body element and set its background to the color #C3D9FF; text color to #000000; font size to 10pt; font family (in order of preference) to verdana, geneva, ... etc; top/right/bottom/left margins to 5/10/10/10 pixels respectively; and padding to 0."

If you know what you want to achieve, you could just look through a CSS reference.

Lol sorry, I know CSS. I was just a bit confused because when I work with CGI there's functions to automatically generate HTML so you don't have to write out all the boilerplate. I was wondering if there was something similar with PHP. I forgot about things like Dreamweaver though.

[Russt]

Oh. I dunno anything about Perl/CGI. It makes CSS for you?

[Roxas]

Okay. I'll give it a try I guess.

[Ryuzaki]

This is just a suggestion, but dark backgrounds and light font is not confortable for eyes.

I'd like to see a greyish one with soft red. :)

[Roxas]

...This is alot more difficult then when you're not an admin and don't have a skin engine to use. >_>

[Mark]

Easier way to design the skin would be to Print screen the main page and bring it into Photoshop then mess around with the colors until it looks nice. Then simply add in some images and done.

[Roxas]

Easier way to design the skin would be to Print screen the main page and bring it into Photoshop then mess around with the colors until it looks nice. Then simply add in some images and done.

If it were that easy I'd be done already. Doing that and then actually bringing it into the code is the hard part. The code is a pineappleing maze and 1 wrong move brings down everything.

[Daakun]

Just a few tips on screwing around with css.

Get GameFOX. Although designed for GameFAQs, its incredibly awesome CSS pane will work for any site.
Just save your css, and hit the "Reload Stylesheets" button!

Get Firebug.
Trust me, it's that awesome.

Also, I'm not too familiar with vBulletin.
Mind posting the link to the default editable css?

I can't tell what all I should look at. xd

[Roxas]

Just a few tips on screwing around with css.

Get GameFOX. Although designed for GameFAQs, its incredibly awesome CSS pane will work for any site.
Just save your css, and hit the "Reload Stylesheets" button!

Get Firebug.
Trust me, it's that awesome.

Also, I'm not too familiar with vBulletin.
Mind posting the link to the default editable css?

I can't tell what all I should look at. xd

File > Save page as...

just save it. and yeah, firebug is awesome.

Spoiler

just giving you guys a heads up. I'm basically making a red re-design of the theme.

[chrome]

Can we please ask Loose to make the banner for the new skin?

Vouch. Also, if this helps any, my former guild's forum was/is hosted on Invision, and this is what it looks like:

Spoiler

The point I'm trying to get across is, please oh please (that is, if you can, I don't mean to be pushy but I know I am) make it distinguishable from the default skin. The default Invision Boards skin looks very different from that, and I don't mean just the color scheme. Just my two cents.