What's your favourite forum skin?

Kai Laddiman · Post by **Kai Laddiman** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 3:14 pm

Following the Palindromes debate, here's a poll inspired by the late great Derek Hazell.

smoothBLUE rocks.

Kirk Bevins · Post by **Kirk Bevins** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 4:14 pm

How do I find out what skin I'm using - I don't know its name. I think I'll call it Bob.

Kieran Child · Post by **Kieran Child** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 4:25 pm

You click user control panel and then forum settings, Kirk.
But if you find yourself puking at how ugly it is whenever you log in, then you have AeroGreen.

Charlie Reams · Post by **Charlie Reams** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 4:44 pm

I'm looking forward to the forthcoming "What's your favourite foreskin?" poll.

Kieran Child · Post by **Kieran Child** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 5:11 pm

AeroGreen would be less likely to win that one.

Kirk Bevins · Post by **Kirk Bevins** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 5:45 pm

Kieran Child wrote:You click user control panel and then forum settings, Kirk.
But if you find yourself puking at how ugly it is whenever you log in, then you have AeroGreen.

Thanks Kieran. I couldn't find forum settings but I found it under "board preferences"

Dinos Sfyris · Post by **Dinos Sfyris** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 5:59 pm

Kai Laddiman wrote:smoothBLUE rocks.

Just tried smoothBLUE for the first time. Polls and layout look cooler but text is illegible! Pro Silver is the way to go.

Charlie Reams wrote:I'm looking forward to the forthcoming "What's your favourite foreskin?" poll.

Too cheesy, Reams!

Jimmy Gough · Post by **Jimmy Gough** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 7:15 pm

The one which is always there.

Sue Sanders · Post by **Sue Sanders** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:14 am

Dinos Sfyris wrote:
Kai Laddiman wrote:smoothBLUE rocks.
Just tried smoothBLUE for the first time. Polls and layout look cooler but text is illegible! Pro Silver is the way to go.
Charlie Reams wrote:I'm looking forward to the forthcoming "What's your favourite foreskin?" poll.
Too cheesy, Reams!

Thanks Dinos, for conjuring up the image of Reams' cheesy foreskin...........

Mike Brown · Post by **Mike Brown** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 4:43 pm

Dinos Sfyris wrote:Pro Silver is the way to go.

And there was me thinking I was the only one still using it! I don't feel such a Luddite now!

Derek Hazell · Post by **Derek Hazell** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 12:01 am

Kai Laddiman wrote:Following the Palindromes debate, here's a poll inspired by the late great Derek Hazell.

smoothBLUE rocks.

Well, I haven't really died . . . not that anybody seemed concerned! I'll accept the "great" part though - thanks Kai!

I might even try smoothBLUE just for you now.

Ian Volante · Post by **Ian Volante** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:41 am

Well I tried prosilver for a few days, and apart from the benefit of it dealing with really wide screens well, it annoyed me by not having the "view active topics" option on every screen. And SmoothBlue is unreadable in places, although has its good points too.

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:59 pm

There IS only one skin. It's prosilver.

Peter Mabey · Post by **Peter Mabey** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 4:03 pm

Hadn't tried SMOOTHblue before - looks really cool, but prosilver is more legible - I had been using Aerogreen, but only because it was the default originally provided.

Ben Hunter · Post by **Ben Hunter** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 5:02 pm

I'd use SMOOTHblue but the big SMOOTHblue logo puts me off. Someone should make a cheeky c4c logo to replace it, if that's possible. And someone should be Matt Morrison.

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 5:08 pm

Ben Hunter wrote:I'd use SMOOTHblue but the big SMOOTHblue logo puts me off. Someone should make a cheeky c4c logo to replace it, if that's possible. And someone should be Matt Morrison.

I'll do it later on. Though it's probably not a very clever move as the more attractive I make SMOOTHblue, the less popular The One True Skin prosilver will become. But I'll do it. I'm all for the people.

Sue Sanders · Post by **Sue Sanders** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 7:02 pm

Matt Morrison wrote:
Ben Hunter wrote:I'd use SMOOTHblue but the big SMOOTHblue logo puts me off. Someone should make a cheeky c4c logo to replace it, if that's possible. And someone should be Matt Morrison.
I'll do it later on. Though it's probably not a very clever move as the more attractive I make SMOOTHblue, the less popular The One True Skin prosilver will become. But I'll do it. I'm all for the people.

The 'people' have gone for AeroGreen (which is my preference).

God - can't believe I've joined in with this thread OTHER than making a penile reference. What's happening to me?!!!

JimBentley · Post by **JimBentley** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 7:10 pm

SmoothBLUE is like a nightmare forum, though, with a seriously bizarre choice of colours. And it's all squashed. I don't mind prosilver, but can't get used to having the avatars on the right hand side, it looks unnatural and weird. So it's AeroGreen for me by default, which conveniently is the default option.

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 9:58 pm

JimBentley wrote:SmoothBLUE is like a nightmare forum, though, with a seriously bizarre choice of colours. And it's all squashed. I don't mind prosilver, but can't get used to having the avatars on the right hand side, it looks unnatural and weird. So it's AeroGreen for me by default, which conveniently is the default option.

It's only been the default for, what... I dunno, 4 months? When I signed up (and for ages afterwards) it was all about prosilver, and you've been here much longer than me Jim!
Someone from Microsoft seems to have mindwashed everyone into thinking AeroGreen has always been the default, it's scary.

Phil Reynolds · Post by **Phil Reynolds** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 8:41 am

Matt Morrison wrote:
JimBentley wrote:I don't mind prosilver, but can't get used to having the avatars on the right hand side, it looks unnatural and weird.
It's only been the default for, what... I dunno, 4 months?

Yeah, good point. Jim, how come you never complained that it looked unnatural and weird for all the time prosilver was the default?

Jon Corby · Post by **Jon Corby** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 8:42 am

Yeah Jim, explain yourself you PRICK.

*has to be held back*

Innis Carson · Post by **Innis Carson** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 11:56 am

I'm sure it's been default for way more than 4 months, 9 I would say. Not that that really affects your point.

Anyway I stuck with AeroGreen because I like the colour.

JimBentley · Post by **JimBentley** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:38 pm

Jon Corby wrote:Yeah Jim, explain yourself you PRICK.

*has to be held back*

I seriously can't remember it ever being like that, even though I suppose it must've been for almost a year (AeroGreen became default in what, December 2008?). "I'm going senile" is the best explanation I can offer, I'm afraid.

Peter Mabey · Post by **Peter Mabey** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:33 pm

I tried SMOOTHblue for a while, and was initially impressed by its superficially cool appearance.

However the lack of legibility makes it useless for regular viewing: I could only read the poster of a message by highlighting the name, whilst single word hyperlinks are hard to spot.

So for me, prosilver is the best on offer, and I'm glad this poll drew my attention to the possibility of changing from AeroGreen.

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:13 pm

An additional point - some of you might not realise how widely used this software is for forums of all types around the Internet. prosilver is the default for all boards until they design or install their own choice of skin, which says a lot I think - this (prosilver) is the skin that the software was designed for. Has lead to some odd moments for me trawling the Internet and finding myself on some forum or other that I've mistakenly thought is C4C because of the prosilver skin

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 5:07 pm

Ben Hunter wrote:I'd use SMOOTHblue but the big SMOOTHblue logo puts me off. Someone should make a cheeky c4c logo to replace it, if that's possible. And someone should be Matt Morrison.

I was just about to sit down to do this. But there's no point - there's already the C4C text to the right (I was going to make up some cool tagline like C4Countdown: Obsessive chat about numbers and letters since 2008) and all that needs doing is the stupid SMOOTHblue logo replacing with the standard picture of Jeff and Rachel as per prosilver. So Charlie will have to sort that for you. Overall though it's too chunky, not at all space efficient, and has horrible logos (for thread statuses etc.), so there.

I did talk ages ago about designing a C4C skin from scratch. I'm still not totally against the idea, be nice to hear what everyone wanted. But really, prosilver is just too good to compete with. I've just thought about it for a whole two minutes and I'm not sure there's anything that I'd change to make it better. Apart from not-strictly-skin stuff like the icons used for the different forums on the homepage.

Derek Hazell · Post by **Derek Hazell** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 10:56 am

Is the fault that clicking first unread post doesn't take you to the first unread post if a new page in the topic has just been started but instead to that new page common to all skins or nothing to do with skins at all?

That question needs some punctuation, but not sure how much, so left it out all together.

Matt Morrison · Post by **Matt Morrison** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:34 pm

Derek Hazell wrote:Is the fault that clicking first unread post doesn't take you to the first unread post if a new page in the topic has just been started but instead to that new page common to all skins or nothing to do with skins at all?

Yeah that is a weird one. Can't be arsed to re-check which skin you're using but yes, this definitely happens on prosilver.

In case anyone missed what Derek meant, if a topic has 70 posts, and you've read 50 of them, instead of taking you to post 51 (at the end of page 1) you'll get taken to post 61 (the first on page 2). Most odd.

The other thing that is annoying about these forums are the announcements - for example the numbers attack tournament week 1 thread. If one of these has new posts and is displayed on screen, if you look at another thread first then return to the topic list, you'll often (but not always) find that the announcement is now incorrectly marked as read, so you have to find your first unread post yourself. Announcement threads don't work too well.

Phil Reynolds · Post by **Phil Reynolds** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 12:58 pm

Matt Morrison wrote:In case anyone missed what Derek meant, if a topic has 70 posts, and you've read 50 of them, instead of taking you to post 51 (at the end of page 1) you'll get taken to post 61 (the first on page 2). Most odd.

This doesn't happen to me.

I always go via the 'View active topics' list - don't know if that makes a difference.

c4countdown