Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
colak wrote:
There is one small thing I detected on mobiles and this forum. “Show new posts since last visit” and “Mark all topics as read” are too close together for fat fingers.
That has been resolved in the new designs. Here is a sneak peek of the new designs running on my local box.
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
philwareham wrote:
That has been resolved in the new designs. Here is a sneak peak of the new designs running on my local box.
yummy:)
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
philwareham wrote:
That has been resolved in the new designs. Here is a sneak peek of the new designs running on my local box.
Nice work.
The main navigation and header, that not how TXP.com is going to look like, right? That’s just a quick blueprint?
As topic views go, the reply headers have no value; they are not set by the post author, there is no subject option for replies. FluxBB itself defaults hiding them too. I would make the actual breadcrumb the main heading for the topic and hide the sub headings, concentrating on reducing space around each post.
The tabs make me think of Firefox’s Aurora project. As with it, the corners don’t look that good.
On forum view, each topic takes two lines of space, but the second line has nothing on it other than the posters name. Those could as well be on the same line. Would make the reply and view number look better too.
Last edited by Gocom (2013-11-03 17:37:22)
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
OK, I’ve taken the <br> out before poster names, which keeps them on the same line now if space allows.
Also, tweaked the radii on those tabs.
The whole reply headings thing – I’m not going to subvert the breadcrumbs to achieve this, it’s a ‘feature’ of FluxBB’s markup being at fault (they’ve neglected to provide a main topic heading). I can hide the heading in all but the first post using the following code (but I don’t really want to, as on any page after the first you won’t see a heading)…
.postright {
> h3 {
display: none;
}
.firstpost & > h3 {
display: block;
}
}…personally, I think the topic headings are bearable as they are – if someone comes into a thread halfway down the page they’ll know what the subject is.
Yes, that’s fairly close how the final navigation and header are going to look on Textpattern.com, why? It looks plain, yes, but that’s the point – the interesting flourishes will be in the main body area not the header. The more styled everything becomes the more maintenance is needed and the less I’m interested in being involved with it.
Last edited by philwareham (2013-11-04 08:48:48)
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
philwareham wrote:
Here is a sneak peek of the new designs running on my local box.
That looks really good, Phil. How much do I owe you?
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
philwareham wrote:
That has been resolved in the new designs. Here is a sneak peek of the new designs running on my local box.
Pretty!
Few things I noticed:- Repeating the topic title in each post is a waste of space. The topic title is already visible in the page title and in the breadcrumbs.
- The links at the bottom of each post: There’s a “|” missing between Edit and Quote. Where did the “Move” link go? Is it possible to move these links to the top of the post, where the post number is?
- Is it necessary to show that a user is a member? Non-members cannot post, so al posters are members.
- Is it necessary to show that an IP is logged? Does that deter spammers or trolls?
- User ranking (lambda and such) and number of posts are the same thing. The same thing applies to registration date as well. All three are indications of how trustworthy a user is. No point in showing all three. I’d leave just the ranking as it is in the current forums.
- Can the facebook/G+/twitter links be moved to the right of the breadcrumbs? Saves some vertical space.
- Compared to the old forum, “known languages” is missing. Is that because we assume that all users speak english?
- The “real name” is missing as well, which I don’t mind. Because then I don’t have to choose between the real name and the forum name when replying :)
- And the most important of all… WE NEED MORE YELLOW! ;)
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
@ruud
Jukka and I have done further work on the layout today that has addressed some of your points already.
Also, some of those other features may have been mods (i.e. the known languages one, I guess) – the new forum uses a completely vanilla version of FluxBB with no modification. That also limits where things appear on page since we won’t be hacking the HTML at all. We hide bits with CSS where they are not essential and where they give us the hooks to do so.
There will not be any more yellow. I’ve kept a bit here and there for history but you won’t be seeing a flood of yellow in any of the new designs.
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
retaining textile functionality I hope. I hate BBcode
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
Yep, Jukka has put Textile 3.5 on the new forum, so business will continue as normal.
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
ruud wrote:
Repeating the topic title in each post is a waste of space. The topic title is already visible in the page title and in the breadcrumbs.
We’ve done this.
The links at the bottom of each post: There’s a “|” missing between Edit and Quote.
This has been corrected.
Where did the “Move” link go?
Its a hack. FluxBB doesn’t support individual post moving, and it neither has a plugins system, so. We would have to migrate back to PunBB to get plugins and shit.
Is it possible to move these links to the top of the post, where the post number is?
The links don’t actually take any space. Those and the offline/online status are in an different block under the post. Its not possible to move those since FluxBB doesn’t have theme partials, or views; just template wrappers.
Is it necessary to show that a user is a member? Non-members cannot post, so al posters are members.
We can’t really differentiate between account statuses. Only way to change anything is either CSS or JS.
Is it necessary to show that an IP is logged?
That is only shown to admins. FluxBB 1.2.x shows the IP address, 1.5.x shows IP in a tooltip when hovering over that link.
User ranking (lambda and such) and number of posts are the same thing. The same thing applies to registration date as well. All three are indications of how trustworthy a user is. No point in showing all three. I’d leave just the ranking as it is in the current forums.
There is no way of removing these without parsing the page, let’s say, using JavaScript and checking the text nodes one by one. PunBB would allow modifying this information through vt_row_pre_post_contacts_merge callback event.
Compared to the old forum, “known languages” is missing. Is that because we assume that all users speak english?
FluxBB doesn’t have “known languages”. There is field for it in the profile, but its not shown anywhere.
The “real name” is missing as well, which I don’t mind. Because then I don’t have to choose between the real name and the forum name when replying :)
FluxBB neither shows real name. There is field for it in the profile, but its not shown anywhere.
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
In addition to extensions (that even supports overriding the BBcode parser), PunBB also would offer layout that doesn’t use any tables: we wouldn’t have to hide columns, but can style them any way we want. They also have ID selectors for categories, forums etc. which would make adding icons and such easier.
Last edited by Gocom (2013-11-05 05:55:52)
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
Moving to punBB now would mean starting the theming from scratch again, since they don’t share too much in common any more. Each of the forums has it’s own pros and cons, I don’t think the trouble of moving to punBB is worth it at this point.
Once fluxBB 2 and punBB next are out, we can re-evaluate – I reckon that’ll be around the same time as Textpattern 5 ;)
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
philwareham wrote:
Moving to punBB now would mean starting the theming from scratch again, since they don’t share too much in common any more. Each of the forums has it’s own pros and cons, I don’t think the trouble of moving to punBB is worth it at this point.
What pros exactly does FluxBB have compared to PunBB? XSS vulnerabilities? Passwords that aren’t salted? Passwords that are used as session IDs, encrypted with site wide key? No real CSRF tokens?
- PunBB salts passwords.
- PunBB has had CSRF tokens for ages.
- PunBB has never had those XSS vulnerabilities FluxBB has. E.g. here.
- FluxBB does some fixes after PunBB, e.g. this.
Additionally PunBB offers extensions and better templates; we could actual provide those meta tags and Textile through plugins rather than hacks. Now, both are vulnerable to:
- Replay attacks; session never changes. Both expire on expiration date, but you can’t invalidate the login session itself without changing your password; they both cloud easily fix this by storing the expiration date in the database. Additionally FluxBB doesn’t tie expiration date and password together, so even if you change password, I can use your old session’s expiration timestamp and extend your session to year. PunBB does lock in password and expiration date.
- PunBB too stores password in the session cookie, doesn’t protect the value with key, but uses the salt which is unique to the user rather than to the site.
But, PunBB allows changing all of those with extensions. You can override the login system, hash generation – everything.
Last edited by Gocom (2013-11-05 09:42:16)
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
So what are you saying, you want to now scrap FluxBB and all the hours of work we have put into theming it?
Offline
Re: Eventual forum upgrade plan
Besides, punBB future development is pretty much dead at this point (one developer working on it, occasionally) – nearly 2 years since last release. So don’t expect more of those nice features to appear any time soon.
Offline