Preview Themes When Modifying Profile

[®i©hie]

I'd like to see an option for members to be able to see a live preview of themes from the modify profile page.

[Ryan Roos]

Pick the theme you want to Preview. Click save.

[®i©hie]

Apr 30, 2012 14:33:47 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

Pick the theme you want to Preview. Click save.

i meant like a live preview

[Ryan Roos]

Apr 30, 2012 14:36:12 GMT -8 ®i©hie said:

Apr 30, 2012 14:33:47 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

Pick the theme you want to Preview. Click save.

i meant like a live preview

That would be a live preview. As a user the way to preview a theme is to try it out. There's no way more efficient to show you the theme then to have you actually turn it on and view it. Any sort of preview wouldn't adequately show the theme on the forum. It would either be reduced in scale or detail. Rendering unique codes into a preview would be a whole separate issue. If a user wants to know what a theme looks like then they should try it out. That's the same speed as previewing it.

As an admin you can preview the theme as you build it in the admin area. Rendering the preview pane in the forum itself for all members wouldn't be practical. Load times alone would be huge.

Just out of curiosity what is your idea for the preview method? How would a theme preview work for you? Is that more efficient or accurate than browsing the forum with a new theme equipped?

[®i©hie]

Ok, That answers my question. Thanks

[Stinky666]

How about when you highlight over from the dropdown for themes, it loads an image and displays it like that? Most times you could see a thumbnail preview of about 400px and think "yeah those colours look like I might like them", so then you fully preview it by saving it..

Edit:
To clarify, when i say "highlight" I mean rollover.

[Chris]

Apr 30, 2012 15:02:55 GMT -8 Ryan Roos said:

Apr 30, 2012 14:36:12 GMT -8 ®i©hie said:

i meant like a live preview

That would be a live preview. As a user the way to preview a theme is to try it out. There's no way more efficient to show you the theme then to have you actually turn it on and view it. Any sort of preview wouldn't adequately show the theme on the forum. It would either be reduced in scale or detail. Rendering unique codes into a preview would be a whole separate issue. If a user wants to know what a theme looks like then they should try it out. That's the same speed as previewing it.

As an admin you can preview the theme as you build it in the admin area. Rendering the preview pane in the forum itself for all members wouldn't be practical. Load times alone would be huge.

Just out of curiosity what is your idea for the preview method? How would a theme preview work for you? Is that more efficient or accurate than browsing the forum with a new theme equipped?

Maybe the color bar could be shown?

[Ryan Roos]

Apr 30, 2012 15:45:00 GMT -8 Stinky666 said:

How about when you highlight over from the dropdown for themes, it loads an image and displays it like that? Most times you could see a thumbnail preview of about 400px and think "yeah those colours look like I might like them", so then you fully preview it by saving it..

Edit:
To clarify, when i say "highlight" I mean rollover.

Again there is no real good way to accomplish this. What page do you show? The home page? But now the system would need to take a screenshot of the homepage whenever a theme is saved. This image would need to be reduced in size and stored. This would need to happen for every single theme in existence. That quickly becomes a lot of stored images for every forum on all of ProBoards. The preview isn't really showing you any detail either. I agree it's a preview, but that's not doing much.

Apr 30, 2012 16:37:23 GMT -8 Chris said:

Maybe the color bar could be shown?

This is a good idea and the most realistic to implement for one giant reason. We already built a system which creates and displays a palette for each theme in the admin area. It's possible that we could use that palette which already exists and display them with the name of the theme. Obviously you wont get a detailed preview, but you would know the general colors of the theme. Best part of this is that the creator of the themes have control over the palette so it can be customized greatly.

I will make a note for this to be considered once we get the themes more under control.

[tunescool]

blogger for example, has a button where you can save any changes youve made, then a preview button which opens in a new tab and all changes are viewed in the new tab, fullsize which you can scroll and see your whole site. you could have a preview theme link that opens in a new tab as well and you can see your forum with the new theme but its just an image, nothing is live where links or anything work

[Ryan Roos]

Apr 30, 2012 23:33:36 GMT -8 tunescool said:

blogger for example, has a button where you can save any changes youve made, then a preview button which opens in a new tab and all changes are viewed in the new tab, fullsize which you can scroll and see your whole site. you could have a preview theme link that opens in a new tab as well and you can see your forum with the new theme but its just an image, nothing is live where links or anything work

On Blogger you are making a theme, not picking a theme. Our theme maker in the admin area has a super advanced preview system already. This thread is about the user side picking a theme.

How is picking a theme and clicking preview any different from picking a theme and clicking save?

If you need to browse the whole forum to experience the theme then what is the difference? If you don't like the theme click back to the one you do like.

The point is on the user side the only setting you have for a theme is to turn it on. So why do you need a preview of that. It's like wanting a second light switch installed in your bedroom. That light switch will show you what the room would look like if you turned on the regular light. Why wouldn't you just turn on the light to see what it looks like?

Now to be clear, on the admin side, where you build and create the themes there is a fully interactive preview system. It allows you to navigate while you make changes. This is a big upgrade from v4 where you had to save and then leave the admin area to see your changes. Now you can watch them change live in your own sandbox while you build it. This makes sense since you have literally hundreds of customization options that you would need to see them updating in the preview.

I hope I've made my point user side vs admin side and the lack of/need for a preview in each.

As I mentioned in my last post, we will very likely implement the palettes. That will give members an idea of the colors of the theme before they pick it. If you don't like the color red, odds are you wont pick the red palette. That will save you some time.

[Robyn]

Will there be theme descriptions? Like if you click on the name of the theme (when under your profile settings) a little box could appear with notes from the admin

(so it could say "Clean white theme with fancy menu. Not recommended for slow Internet users." or "a Halloween theme featuring ghosts and pumpkins! Dark with orange and bats as menus" or "Dark theme, with white text and a textured background", etc etc.)

[Martyn Dale]

Just as an additional note which hasn't been explicitly stated so far:

Themes are more than just colors, they can also encompass code or image changes which are specific to only one theme. While a live preview would be more feasible if it was just come css changes, having it where entirely different code sets will be executed isnt something that can reasonably be placed in a preview

[snap2000]

May 2, 2012 15:19:37 GMT -8 Robyn said:

Will there be theme descriptions? Like if you click on the name of the theme (when under your profile settings) a little box could appear with notes from the admin

(so it could say "Clean white theme with fancy menu. Not recommended for slow Internet users." or "a Halloween theme featuring ghosts and pumpkins! Dark with orange and bats as menus" or "Dark theme, with white text and a textured background", etc etc.)

Me gusta.

[Wormopolis]

I have a current code that sorta does this by using thumbnail images that display next to the drop down:

www.wormocodes.com/index.cgi?board=codedb&action=display&thread=983

perhaps that might provide an idea

[Ryan Roos]

May 13, 2012 23:17:18 GMT -8 Wormopolis said:

I have a current code that sorta does this by using thumbnail images that display next to the drop down:

www.wormocodes.com/index.cgi?board=codedb&action=display&thread=983

perhaps that might provide an idea

They can absolutely use a code and custom images if they want to modify it.

But by default we're just going to have the theme palettes displayed next to the name of each theme.