Welcome to the 5th anniversary!
RuminDange
First Post
Very nice new default theme...I like it, and don't have a problem with it normally, but the graphics, background really drag down a slow connection that I use when away from home. Both connections are high speed but one is wireless.
Nothing says don't read EN World like watching one little 3 inch band of screen after another refresh just for a 3 line scroll, and that is if it doesn't lock up the browser and cause me to start over. :\
Gave up several times today trying to read threads as it was just much of a pain. Even tried changing themes but with all of them using the same graphical background it made no difference.
Thanks for all the hard work. Waiting patiently for the old school theme to become an option.
RD
Nothing says don't read EN World like watching one little 3 inch band of screen after another refresh just for a 3 line scroll, and that is if it doesn't lock up the browser and cause me to start over. :\
Gave up several times today trying to read threads as it was just much of a pain. Even tried changing themes but with all of them using the same graphical background it made no difference.Thanks for all the hard work. Waiting patiently for the old school theme to become an option.
RD
howandwhy99
Adventurer
I for one appreciate that. The stealth style is very useful. Thanks.Morrus said:
Michael Morris
First Post
Guys, you have to live with the new default for awhile - I have to insure the template changes that are about to be made work in one place before I extrapolate them to other styles.
Why tinker with the code? Ask nemmerle. Last week his Aquerrla site was one of over 23,000 victims to a worm targetted at phpbb2. It wiped pretty much every web related file it found off his server. While we're not vulnerable to that particular worm, we are vulnerable to others like it. Every day we remain at RC4 instead of being on 3.0.3 increases the chance of a similar exploit being used against us.
Since such changes require the large sections of the code to be rebuilt from the ground up, and since the 5th anniversary was coming up I wanted to make a style that was different yet familiar enough to be recognizable as ENWorld - sorta like the 3.5 core books are different from the 3.0 books but still recognizable. The actually changes between the styles are few but it has more textures. I guess I'm just a textures guy - I don't like looking at large panes of even color because such things don't exist in nature. It has a mechanical feel which goes against that of a D&D or medieval site. Another reason for the change is to celebrate five years. Very few sites reach that milestone. Most sites on the internet last around two years at which point the founders burn out and no one is around to pick up the pieces.
I know some of you don't like it - I expected as much. No matter how many hours I spend working on options someone will complain. At least though the comments here have been kept civil and for that I'm thankful. But this isn't easy. Vbulletin has around 16,000 lines of code spread over 230 files and 690 templates PER STYLE. ENWorld's custom code adds around 4000 more lines and counting and around 70 more files - and that's not counting the reviews section. And as much as I've learned and figured out I'm still very much a beginner at PHP. I'm only now starting to really get my head around how PHP and MySQL interact and how vbulletin manipulates and stores the data provided to it.
I'm only one person and there's only so much I can do. I've given up a lot to free up more time. No one noticed, but Dusk is gone - taken down because I don't have the time for it. I haven't played D&D in almost a year - even at Gencon I was so tied up with ENnies business I couldn't find time to play. Better to be part of a living site than the sole maintainer of a campaign setting no one but myself gives a damn about. It was a painful choice, but one I've made and would make again.
Despite that though, I do enjoy what I'm doing immensely. I've given up my job and went back to school to learn how to do this sort of thing well enough so that I can support myself doing it professionally. The next year is going to be very rough, but I know it will be done.
As you might be able to infer, I'm sitting on the edge of ranting here. I've spent almost a full day away from the keyboard because after 3 months of careful work I really thought this new theme would go over better than it has. And yet almost all the first messages were "let us change it back." I'm not angry - but I am dissapointed.
Why tinker with the code? Ask nemmerle. Last week his Aquerrla site was one of over 23,000 victims to a worm targetted at phpbb2. It wiped pretty much every web related file it found off his server. While we're not vulnerable to that particular worm, we are vulnerable to others like it. Every day we remain at RC4 instead of being on 3.0.3 increases the chance of a similar exploit being used against us.
Since such changes require the large sections of the code to be rebuilt from the ground up, and since the 5th anniversary was coming up I wanted to make a style that was different yet familiar enough to be recognizable as ENWorld - sorta like the 3.5 core books are different from the 3.0 books but still recognizable. The actually changes between the styles are few but it has more textures. I guess I'm just a textures guy - I don't like looking at large panes of even color because such things don't exist in nature. It has a mechanical feel which goes against that of a D&D or medieval site. Another reason for the change is to celebrate five years. Very few sites reach that milestone. Most sites on the internet last around two years at which point the founders burn out and no one is around to pick up the pieces.
I know some of you don't like it - I expected as much. No matter how many hours I spend working on options someone will complain. At least though the comments here have been kept civil and for that I'm thankful. But this isn't easy. Vbulletin has around 16,000 lines of code spread over 230 files and 690 templates PER STYLE. ENWorld's custom code adds around 4000 more lines and counting and around 70 more files - and that's not counting the reviews section. And as much as I've learned and figured out I'm still very much a beginner at PHP. I'm only now starting to really get my head around how PHP and MySQL interact and how vbulletin manipulates and stores the data provided to it.
I'm only one person and there's only so much I can do. I've given up a lot to free up more time. No one noticed, but Dusk is gone - taken down because I don't have the time for it. I haven't played D&D in almost a year - even at Gencon I was so tied up with ENnies business I couldn't find time to play. Better to be part of a living site than the sole maintainer of a campaign setting no one but myself gives a damn about. It was a painful choice, but one I've made and would make again.
Despite that though, I do enjoy what I'm doing immensely. I've given up my job and went back to school to learn how to do this sort of thing well enough so that I can support myself doing it professionally. The next year is going to be very rough, but I know it will be done.
As you might be able to infer, I'm sitting on the edge of ranting here. I've spent almost a full day away from the keyboard because after 3 months of careful work I really thought this new theme would go over better than it has. And yet almost all the first messages were "let us change it back." I'm not angry - but I am dissapointed.
Allanon
Explorer
If your goal is to become a professional programmer than I'm sorry but you'll have to learn to live with it. I've been involved in a two year project in which a very old program coded in cobol (which was horrific as it ran in a dosprompt with green text )was replaced by a new, shiny, user-friendly program coded in pascal/delphi which could do so much more, so much faster. We released it 5 weeks ago and since than it's been nothing but complaints, request, bugs, etc. It's a flaw of human nature to resist change. Humans are creatures of habit and anything than threatens or alters those habits will recieve flak because of it. If it helps I like the new style (although I hate missing stealth to use at work )
)was replaced by a new, shiny, user-friendly program coded in pascal/delphi which could do so much more, so much faster. We released it 5 weeks ago and since than it's been nothing but complaints, request, bugs, etc. It's a flaw of human nature to resist change. Humans are creatures of habit and anything than threatens or alters those habits will recieve flak because of it. If it helps I like the new style (although I hate missing stealth to use at work )
Michael Morris
First Post
Allanon said:If your goal is to become a professional programmer than I'm sorry but you'll have to learn to live with it. I've been involved in a two year project in which a very old program coded in cobol (which was horrific as it ran in a dosprompt with green text
You're paid. My payment - if there is one - is the happiness of the user base.
haiiro
First Post
Michael Morris said:
I may just be projecting my own opinion here, but I'd say that changing the default style -- without (for the moment) leaving the old one available -- is always going to ruffle some feathers. Sometimes that feels like change for the sake of change, although I don't think that's your intention.
I like that you're always busy trying to keep the site's look and function vital, and working on new changes. I don't always make use of them, or like the changes, but I appreciate the effort. I've made similar, if less direct, comments in the past, too -- so it's not just because of your post above.
That said, I too very much miss the old default -- I find the interaction of unmatched texture edges very distracting and disjointed. The main forums page really highlights this for me -- instead of clear divisions between the different sections, things wash together, and each forum's line jumps jarringly into the next one.
buzz
Adventurer
Like I said, I don't mean to harsh on all the hard work that has been done. We all appreciate all the work that you and the other mods do running ENWorld. This is my home on the Web.Michael Morris said:
Still, I do Web design for a living, and while I'm not an expert graphic designer, I know what works for the human eye, and what looks contemporary. Textures beneath text make for extremely difficult reading for most people; this is why, while not "natural," books tend not to be printed on textured backgrounds (and tend to be dark print on light backgrounds). Textures are also pretty old-school when it comes to the Web.
These are all very basic design principles. Keeping designs simple not only enhances readability (with the right color scheme), they also decrease necessary bandwidth, easing load on the server and saving you money on hosting.
That said, I'm finding that the PHB theme is working for me and keeping things readable.
I'm sorry you feel disappointed, Michael. I hate to be Mr. Crabby. Still, I want to contribute opinions that I hope will make ENWorld better for everyone, and I can't help but comment that the new uber-textured look is just very hard on my eyes, looks dated, and the non-color-coded, textured post icons are proving less helpful to me.
Here are some sites I feel are exemplary of quality deisgn, to give you an idea where I'm coming from. These are mostly professional design firms.
http://www.happycog.com/
http://www.zeldman.com/
http://www.coudal.com/index.php
http://www.alistapart.com/
http://www.malarkey.co.uk/
http://www.brothercake.com/
Or, don't listen to me. I'm just another yahoo.
As long as there are other theme options, I'm fine.
Last edited:
Allanon
Explorer
Michael Morris said:
Ah, but me being paid depends on my projects being accepted by the user base, I can get sacked if the user base grumbles too loud. Also money doesn't make it any more fun to sit through hour long meetings discussing why they liked the old way better
. Plus I commented in part on the fact that your going back to school to learn more about programming and want to persue a job in that line of work (or am I minsinterpreting you?).In the end, my point still stands. Users will never happily accept massive changes in their established working patterns, thus my comment that you'd better get used to it if you're planning more of these kind of changes.
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