Forum:Icons and colors

< Index | Site-related discussion

tl;dr

• Threads with new messages since your last visit are highlighted, but only if they are already on your watchlist.
• Colors. Should we change them?
• Icons. Should we add them?

skip this if you don't understand css

I've added the ability to see which threads have had new posts since you last visited them. This relies on the feature already present in MW, so it will only work on threads that you have watchlisted. This isn't necessarily bad, but I could write a script to automatically add any forum thread you visit to your watchlist. The screenshot to the right shows this in action. It adds three css classes to the table row (<tr>) based on this:

• "threadnew" if there are new posts
• "threadold" if the thread is watchlisted but doesn't have new posts
• "threadunwatched" if the thread is not watchlisted

In addition there's a class to differentiate between normal and sticky threads: "normalthread" and "stickythread".

With these you can change the colors to your hearts content in you monobook.css. The current site-wide colors are of course negotiable, I just picked some colors that looked nice to me quickly.

I've also added some phpbb icons to my monobook.css to try it out. If you look closely, it differentiates between unwatched threads (grey outline), watched threads (blue outline) and watched threads with new posts (red outline). Just showing what's possible.

-- Nx / talk 13:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Nx, you're doing brilliant work, but no one understands what you are saying... ħuman 02:38, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I agree. Additionally, I would assume that most people don't even know what that they have a .css page, or know how to edit it. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 03:03, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Having a bit of forum admin experience, I know what you're saying. At the moment, icon s are a little superfluous I think - but if you have ideas, feel free to add some, mini flashing brains for "new posts" might be nice, but we don't want to overload the brand that much! Adding any thread you visit to the watch list I think is a little excessive; I'd certainly leave that to the user to decide - indicating unwatched and watched threads might be nice, though, and if you can add a "watch/unwatch" button on the forum index itself it might prove useful. I think our current problem regarding the "recent changes" summaries is that "threads" can have different sections (which I think is a very good thing as it means we can multitask the same topic) but there's a not a clear way of showing that the section you want to see has been added to - it only puts the last edit in the summary. You still need to check the thread and all the sections in it, but so long as you don't get more than about 5 or 6 sections, it's no hassle. There's probably not a lot that can be done for that, however, and it's no big deal really. ^gnostic 17:08, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

How about bolding the title of watched threads? That would be consistent with the handling of watched pages elsewhere in MW. -- Nx / talk 17:17, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Bolding sounds good, yes. ħuman 21:27, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Done -- Nx / talk 22:09, 24 December 2009 (UTC)