Site Layout Misadventures

I love how my mind factors in "Bugs" as a character there worthy of a theme perhaps... LOL

Inyouchuu Lover since ~2005~

An entirely viable option really!

I'm looking into the possibility of putting together a new thread reply widget. I can't help but notice that the process of replying to posts can be a bit clunky. Yes, there's a Quick Reply field at the bottom of the thread - what I'm using now, in fact - but it has no support for attachments or formatting (aside from BBCode if you have the syntax memorized or whatever). I could just try to port the entire Full Reply Editor onto the post page itself, but honestly it's a rather clunky design that a lot of people don't particularly like. So I dug around for alternatives that might be easy to implement right into the existing space with no compromises on features or ease of use.

Anyway, this visual editor caught my eye!
https://overtype.dev/#basic-editor

I think you all know I'm a sucker for efficient software, and this is a tiny one that apparently works pretty well. It's based on Markdown, a formatting standard that uses easily-typable symbols that are already commonly accepted for their meanings, such as italic, bold, strikethrough, and

• Lists
• Of
• Items
  among other things.

This would also be an opportunity to revisit the attachment system and hopefully make the NSFW tagging system a bit less janky in the process. Any thoughts on this idea are welcome!

I have nothing to say because unfortunately this just not my area of expertise. You seem like a wizard or something to me just coding us this far. But I definitely try out and test stuff as it develops. I do want to help in anyway I can.

Appreciated very much! I'll share more once I have something in place.

Also had a crazy idea to put together a playable VN on the site with all custom assets, at least as a welcome intro if not something bigger.

Time for the mad ramblings of an inspired developer with no free time to develop!

I've been slowly putting together a custom design for this forum and have some ideas that I think would make the experience arguably better for all. The "blue-dark" theme I've already been playing with is definitely a solid start, but there are a bunch of changes and improvements I'm considering that would make it ours. Bear with me as some of this explanation may be a bit technical.

First thing is using divs instead of tables to display posts. As it is now, messages like this one are formatted as a traditional HTML table, meaning a rigid predetermined rows/columns structure. It works fine on a surface level, but it comes with a few disadvantages. One of those is that it can't adapt to different screen sizes very well. I'm not just referring to desktop vs phone here, though that is one practical drawback. You are given a choice whether you want the user info banner to display on top of posts or on the side, "View in Classic Mode" in your profile options. But you have to go out of your way to make that change, with the technical reason being that the web server has to specifically serve you a version of the page in one configuration or the other when the page is initially loaded.

The modern solution for this is not to use tables, but instead group everything under different CSS styles. CSS can adapt layouts and rules in real time and pretty much work for everyone. The nice thing about a horizontal post layout (user info panel on the left, post message on the right) is that, if your screen is wide enough for it to display well, it saves a bunch of vertical space and shows you more messages at a time, making it more readable as a conversation.

Insert joke about it being too big to fit (on the screen).

I'll post my experiment progress later, but I'm putting together a style that could end up fitting our site really well. The layout responds to different sizes and the controls are unobtrusive (but not ambiguous or hidden away, as is so trendy). The design uses some subtle outlines and shadows to avoid the Flat Modern Corporate Look and preserve the feel of a classic forum.

One thing about my WIP design is that in horizontal mode, all the user info (name, self-assigned title, avatar, and PM/moderation buttons) is able to fit on a little tab sticking out the side, and that gives me a few ideas for how to actually decorate that tab. I could make it look like a paper ofuda, or give it a cloth texture with a little chevron shape on the end like Mikoto's signature hair bow. Another idea is to display a specific character on it, and give users the option of which character to highlight. That could even be linked with a sitewide color theme. So if you pick Mikoto, you get her picture on your info tab for all to see, and your view of the site goes to a red/white/black color theme. Pick Sui and she shows up and the theme turns to brown/blue/yellow perhaps. And I suppose "the demon bugs" would also qualify as a character to select, because why not!

Anyway, it'll probably be a while before I can cram the new style code and features into the site, but I figured I'd share my ideas for thoughts and approval.

Yeah I'll be curious how it looks with the user panel on the side. Definitely love the idea of a few colored themes styled around the characters.

You probably cleaned up blue-dark since I last tried it, it is looking nicer now!

Inyouchuu Lover since ~2005~

Here's a tiny demo of it in action. No active functionality yet (buttons are just text, etc) but it's at least a decent example of how it could be laid out, with a few posts copied from our conversation about the Hayami universe. There are a few features missing, such as a way to get a direct link to the post or select it for moderation, but it features a hover-to-reveal spoiler that might end up being the result of spoiler marking.

Any feedback is welcome. It looks and feels decent to me at face value, but I'm sure there are plenty of potential usability caveats I'm not thinking of.

Yup, I definitely like it!

Inyouchuu Lover since ~2005~

Holy crap... I just had a realization about something I could do to dress up this proposed forum style.

Hear me out...