# More skins?



## gregjazz (Jun 28, 2015)

Would it be possible to offer more skins than just the current "XenBase" and "Core Child" themes on the forum? For example, it'd be great if there was a more minimal, flat theme with less going on colorwise. That way people who prefer a simpler look could always switch to that theme instead of the current one.


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## The Darris (Jun 28, 2015)

+1 to this for sure.


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## jtnyc (Jun 28, 2015)

+1. A simple darkish/soft background for all pages would be most welcome


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## Daniel James (Jun 28, 2015)

I am with you guys. Although might be nice to have the colour of the old forum as the background? it was quite easy on the eyes. Very relaxing for those Jay Asher argument sessions. xD


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## sleepy hollow (Jun 28, 2015)

Daniel James said:


> IAlthough might be nice to have the colour of the old forum as the background?


 I assume everybody was using his/her favorite colour scheme. There were 10 or so one could choose from.
Can't remember the name - that dark grey skin was great. I think it had something with "VI" in the name, but I'm not sure. Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot from the old forum.


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## Daniel James (Jun 29, 2015)

sleepy hollow said:


> I assume everybody was using his/her favorite colour scheme. There were 10 or so one could choose from.
> Can't remember the name - that dark grey skin was great. I think it had something with "VI" in the name, but I'm not sure. Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot from the old forum.



I didn't even know one could change the old forum colour. The default one I believe was the pale blue one (same as the background the the middle section here)


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## sleepy hollow (Jun 29, 2015)

Daniel James said:


> I didn't even know one could change the old forum colour. The default one I believe was the pale blue one (same as the background the the middle section here)


There was that small scrollable menu at the bottom of the forum page, I think. 

Here's a small pic of my favorite colour scheme (very small, it's a thumbnail from my old bookmarked sites):


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## Daniel James (Jun 29, 2015)

sleepy hollow said:


> There was that small scrollable menu at the bottom of the forum page, I think.
> 
> Here's a small pic of my favorite colour scheme (very small, it's a thumbnail from my old bookmarked sites):



Oh god. White text on a dark background burns into my eyes after a while haha.


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## tack (Jun 29, 2015)

sleepy hollow said:


> Unfortunately I don't have a screenshot from the old forum.


For comparison (posterity?), here is a screenshot of the old forum. I happened to have a few tabs still open.


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## Pietro (Jun 29, 2015)

Yes, I'm all for more skins. Some that would be very minimalistic, no background, minimum graphics (like avatar backgrounds), smaller or adjustable font size, and basically focused on the forum content, like the old version of VI-Control.

I liked the old Topic/Forum/Author/Replies/Views/Last Post table, as above. Especially, I'm missing the "Forum" cell, that just by a quick even indirect look, I could tell what subforum the post is from.

- Piotr


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## mducharme (Jun 29, 2015)

Yes, I agree, the background is very distracting - it jumps out too much, the result is that my eyes are diverted to the picture left and right sides of the page instead of the actual forum in the middle. It makes everything on the site exceedingly hard to read because my eyes keep wanting to go to the sides of the page. Perhaps you can make an alternative skin that keeps the background, but makes it much darker? I think it's only jumping out so much because it is so bright in some places and so dark in others. Making it both darker and black and white might even be better.


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## tokatila (Jun 29, 2015)

Yeah. I'm getting a headache from watching the pic. And on 2560x1440 there is an big ugly blue bar under the picture. It would be much better with full blue background.


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## Richard Wilkinson (Jun 29, 2015)

You could keep the design and fonts, but make it a bit more focused by reducing the contrast, although the VI-Control font would make for a more pro-looking design if it was the same font as the other text.




I think removing the dark blue to grey gradient behind the profile pictures would help too - it's another high-contrast distracting feature.


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## Rasmus Hartvig (Jun 29, 2015)

Just for fun, I installed the "Styler" extension for Chrome and played around to see how much could be changed just with a quick bit of CSS. Here's a couple of examples that tweaks or removes some of the noisier interface elements while retaining full functionality.

If anyone wants to try I'll gladly share my chunk of totally untested CSS


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## Daniel James (Jun 29, 2015)

Pages actually started loading faster for me once I adblocked out the company logos at the bottom of the page... Icould also scroll to the bottom to reach the text box!


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## jacobthestupendous (Jul 7, 2015)

If you could go ahead a whip up a skin that looks like an instance of Microsoft Excel, then I could relax a bit trying to look at the forum at work.


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## CDNmusic (Jul 7, 2015)

jacobthestupendous said:


> If you could go ahead a whip up a skin that looks like an instance of Microsoft Excel, then I could relax a bit trying to look at the forum at work.


Hahahahaha excellent idea :D


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## macteacher (Jul 10, 2015)

Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder...

Personally, I've gone from 30-60 minutes a day on this forum to 30 minutes a week.

an elegant simplified version would be much appreciated.


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## creativeforge (Jul 15, 2015)

macteacher said:


> Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder...
> 
> Personally, I've gone from 30-60 minutes a day on this forum to 30 minutes a week. an elegant simplified version would be much appreciated.



Hi, I'm wondering is the changes made over the past few days has brought you closer to your old habits...


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## creativeforge (Jul 15, 2015)

Daniel James said:


> Pages actually started loading faster for me once I adblocked out the company logos at the bottom of the page... Icould also scroll to the bottom to reach the text box!



All the logos have been moved to the portal page where they should have been in the first place. There have been other changes suggested by others, and gradually implemented. Hope it meets some of your taste...


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## Mystic (Jul 16, 2015)

I'd actually like the forum to have a more adjustable width. It wastes so much space and walls of text that could be spread out more are jumbled up because of the limit that is set on the theme.


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## Mystic (Jul 16, 2015)

Example of what I mean.


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## creativeforge (Jul 16, 2015)

And how was it before? You still have to deal with the avatars and content. Some posts don't have this problem because they will the space, while one-liners would create this problem, yes...


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## Przemek K. (Jul 22, 2015)

Definitely more skins for everyone. Personally I'd love a more darker grey background with lighter grey for the fonts.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Jul 22, 2015)

I liked the greyish skin of the old forum, forgot what it was called - the one that looked a little bit like the color scheme of the newer Cubase and Logic versions. Something like that - a little less baby-blue and colorful - would be nice.

But all in all, I think V.I. Control 2.0 is in a much better place now compared to how it was when it first went live. I've gotten used to it and don't have any glaring issues with it at all any more after all the fixes and improvements. Overall, great job on that @André.


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## creativeforge (Jul 22, 2015)




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## creativeforge (Jul 22, 2015)

Jimmy Hellfire said:


> I liked the greyish skin of the old forum, forgot what it was called - the one that looked a little bit like the color scheme of the newer Cubase and Logic versions. Something like that - a little less baby-blue and colorful - would be nice.



Do you have a screenshot of these? BTW, this is the exact bg color from the old forum.



Jimmy Hellfire said:


> But all in all, I think V.I. Control 2.0 is in a much better place now compared to how it was when it first went live. I've gotten used to it and don't have any glaring issues with it at all any more after all the fixes and improvements. Overall, great job on that @André.



Thanks Jimmy! Good to hear, believe me... 

OK guys, can you look at this image here. The colored bubbles are ALL from the old site. Are you saying one of these would be easier on the eyes for you?

The left background image behind the bubbles is the present site, the one on the right is a screenshot someone posted from the old site.


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## CDNmusic (Jul 22, 2015)

Andre, there was a dark grey skin...nice and flat, letters were white, easy on the eyes, at least for me.


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