Your Theme Building Wishlist

[Matej]

If you were given the opportunity to change, add or remove any aspect of themes, what would you do? How would you prefer to use a feature? What other tools would help you succeed?

Let us know in the replies about anything you would wish for, no matter how small or large it might be. We welcome all sorts of wishes - even something as small as recoloring a button, or as complex as an entirely new system or feature idea. We can’t fulfill every wish, but we will try to find common ground with solutions and create new features that everyone can benefit from.

Posts not related to the relevant topic will be removed.

[Doc Ock]

I would like to add rollovers to the avatars. It's so hard to find just the codes for such a thing. I love the look of having a profile avatar, a giant rollover avatar for their posts and a small mini profile avatar for members to play with. The codes I find are so complicated to add and never look right and when I do find a theme with a rollover it's not a theme I would like.

Also being able to set their profile avatar to show up on the main page when they make a post would be cool. Sort of like the theme I have now. It's a theme I'm not very fond of but it's all I could find with the features I like.

[Retread]

On the very top of my wishlist:

A Better Color-selection tool (for both Themes and post editor).

Hi Matej ,

aRMY83 and I recently discussed color pickers and this is the gist of our conversation:

Hex vs RGB vs HSL

The three or six digit Hex color definitions are analogous to RGB. Of course the three digit Hex (#RGB) affords only 16 levels for each channel whereas the six digit Hex (#RRGGBB) affords 256 levels, the same as RGB. I much prefer using Hex due to it's brevity.

HSL is much more useful in actually choosing a color. This is particularly true when using a utility such as the one to which you linked where you have sliders AND the opportunity to input values. When that tool also has the Hex value available, you have the best of both worlds!

By holding the Hue constant and varying the Saturation and/or Lightness, you can remain in the same color family. This isn't easily done with Hex or RGB.

Various utility sites

I recently came across this: hslpicker.com and was quite impressed.

This site (mentioned by aRMY83 ): www.hexcolortool.com appears to have the same core but on steroids. The Lighten/Darken and Complimentary features plus the Shades and Tints add a ton of usefulness. From the outside looking in, I would guess Dan might be standing on the shoulders of Brandon Mathis ... which would be totally legit since Mr Mathis gave explicit permission to anyone who wanted to use his coding: github.com/imathis/hsl-picker/

HSL utility vs ProBoards v5 color picker

There are a few similarities but far more important differences.
The ProBoards color picker lacks the ability to directly input HSL values. The Hue slider is similar to the slider on the HSL picker. But moving the little box in the field (right increases Saturation, up increases Lightness) in just ONE axis at a time,  is clumsy at best.

Also, there seems to be intentional non-linearity in both the Saturation and Lightness axes. The same Hex values are used in both images, above. You can clearly see the indicator box is offset toward the top and right. This will give selecting Saturation and Lightness values that are less than 50% a finer adjustment. Those above 50% will be coarser.

I have my fingers crossed that we'll see a HSLA color picker in v6. This would be a game-changer.

Alpha Channel

Currently the RGB and HSL definitions each have a cousin that includes Alpha: RGBA and HSLA the fourth channel is the Alpha which is essentially the Opacity. I suspect the reason they chose to use the term Alpha was to avoid confusion with the (CSS) Opacity which can be applied to an entire element. Alpha can be specified as a number between 0 (fully transparent) and 1 (fully opaque). It can also be specified as a percentage between 0% and 100%.

This makes RGBA and HSLA far more powerful than Hex, although the definitions can look a bit cluttered in your coding.

Four/eight digit Hex

We're starting to see more browsers that are able to accept the #RGBA and #RRGGBBAA color definitions. I reckon it won't be too long before this has universal acceptance across all modern browsers.

---

To further gild the lily, we could have the output to css be select-able as HSLA, RGBA, or #RRGGBBAA. The Alpha channel for any of these formats could be switched off at will. But even without these features, a color picker based on HSLA would be a quantum leap forward.

[Doc Ock]

A built-in affiliates table. Not sure if it's theme or templates though. But a lot of the affiliate tables I've found either malfunction or the buttons are not aligned.

[Nori]

I recently discovered that it's not possible to use fractional units when making themes. '1fr' gets interpreted as '1 fr' which breaks the css. With CSS Grid now nearly 100% supported by modern browsers (goodbye IE) it would be lovely if fr units weren't broken ^^


I can't remember if it was mentioned whether v6 was sticking with adaptive design or moving to responsive, but either way having control over our mobile stylesheet would be greatly appreciated.


It would be neat if we could separate out our style sheets besides being theme specific. Sort of how plugins work now where you can select what themes to apply each to. Then you can have one global sheet with all your base stuff for all themes, and then much more manageable (smaller) sheets per theme. Currently it's a bit tedious to have to copy-paste the same styles between all themes, and remember to make updates similarly.


This one probably isn't 'theme' specific... but having the advanced style tag plugin be a default inclusion would be wonderful. It would be lovely if we could just put class="blah" into our posts and it pick up from the theme instead of needing to pile on excess attr tags into posts.

[Doc Ock]

A place to add images and info for staff as well as sister sites, board information, or other important pieces of information. Sort of like how the tabbed tables or sidebars are used for.

[scrapjag]

Maybe this is here already, and I just haven't found it, yet.

I'd like to build a "template" that is blank of color, text style, etc. Or, maybe all white. Then, whenever I want to make changes, I can do so in that template and upload it.

Right now, even if I use, say, a previous banner as a template for a new theme, it doesn't work as it did previously. I don't understand that! What size SHOULD the banner be? I thought I had asked previously, and used that size, but each time I make a new banner and load it, it's not the size the previous banner was. Same thing with the News bar and the Nav bar. I guess, while the themes basic template is "blank", it still doesn't work for me as a template for making my own/custom theme.

I'm probably not explaining this very well. I'd just like something that is "set in stone" as far as how things are sized, and I can come in and change the colors, backgrounds, banner, etc.