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Posted By: artie505 Dark theme posting icons? - 01/02/10 08:08 AM
Has anybody else noticed the off-the-wall posting icons offered in the ubbthreads-dark theme posting form?

How did they work their way into an FTM theme?

(I note, though, that my selected o-t-w icon appears as a ? in a box when I switch from dark theme to FTM theme.)
Posted By: dkmarsh Re: Dark theme posting icons? - 01/02/10 12:38 PM

I believe those are the default icons that ship with UBB.threads 7.x. IIRC, the decision was made, back when MFIF's software was upgraded from v6 to v7, to replace these stock images with the ones we were then using, which were found to be much more legible, due to larger size and simpler detail—and thus more likely to be useful at conveying extraverbal meaning—than the new roster.

Similar reasoning applied to the smilies used within posts, and at the inception of FTM, I think we felt that the familiar post icons and smilies would help contribute to the sense of continuity with MFIF that we were striving for, so the replacement of the newer sets of images with the older sets was one of the many tasks accomplished during the 24 hours preceding FTM's launch.

I note now, though, typing in Dark mode, that no smilies are available to be used within the body of my post; they're all question marks (in Safari, that is). Oddly, the replacement of the default posting icons in the default skin (ubbthreads_finetunedmac)—which translates fine into the "stock" skin (ubbthreads_stock) as well—seems to have had no effect on the icons available in ubbthreads-dark; whereas the replacement of the default smilies (which also translates into the ubbthreads_stock skin) has displaced the default smilies in ubbthreads-dark.

It's as if each skin maintains its own folder of images, and thus each skin is instructed to follow a different path to find a given image, and in fact, research bears this out: in ubbthreads-dark, post icons are kept in /forums/images/icons/default_dark/ and smilies are kept in /forums/images/graemlins/default_dark/.

Why replacing the default post icons had a different effect in ubbthreads-dark than replacing the smilies did isn't immediately clear, but I guess if we're trying to maintain compatibility between skins, we'll need to address the issue at some point.
Posted By: cyn Re: Dark theme posting icons? - 01/02/10 05:46 PM
dk pretty much nailed it. There's a UBBT bug that results in post icon and graemlin/smiley substitutions not carrying through to the ubbthreads-dark stylesheet. Tacit and I have talked about the problem a couple of times, after Doni pointed out that Smileys don't work in Dark theme. Just recently a way for me to safely test what I believe is the fix occurred to me...so now I need to get with tacit to make sure I'm on the right track.
Posted By: tacit Re: Dark theme posting icons? - 01/03/10 10:08 AM
Originally Posted By: dkmarsh

I note now, though, typing in Dark mode, that no smilies are available to be used within the body of my post; they're all question marks (in Safari, that is). Oddly, the replacement of the default posting icons in the default skin (ubbthreads_finetunedmac)—which translates fine into the "stock" skin (ubbthreads_stock) as well—seems to have had no effect on the icons available in ubbthreads-dark; whereas the replacement of the default smilies (which also translates into the ubbthreads_stock skin) has displaced the default smilies in ubbthreads-dark.


Right you are. We're working to fix those problems now.
Posted By: cyn Re: Dark theme posting icons? - 01/03/10 10:32 AM
And I believe we got it sorted.

The smilies and post icons we have in ubbthreads_finetunedmac should now work in the ubbthreads-dark style too, and also be the only ones available there.

If anyone sees anything we missed, let us know.

PS: Expected side effect of the changes we made is any post that had one of the "off-the-wall" icons will now have no icon.
Posted By: artie505 Re: Dark theme posting icons? - 01/03/10 10:39 AM
Looks OK to me, but...

1. I now see an extra theme...ubbthreads-dark_copy.

2. The smilies in the dark theme look kinda scuzzy, which I imagine is beyond your control.
Posted By: cyn Re: Dark theme posting icons? - 01/03/10 11:12 AM
The dark_copy was my testing ground. I've now removed it.

As to smilies looking scuzzy in the dark style, yeah, I think we'll have to live with that.
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