Dark CFC Forum Style

[Camikaze]

With the help of ainwood I've created a Dark CFC Forum Style. To select the style, you can go down to the footer on this page and click on the words "Civilization VI" or "Modern CFC" (depending on which style you're currently using), located next to the language option. You will be given a set of options, one of which is "Dark CFC (WIP)". Alternatively, you can change the style in your profile preferences.

The style is currently a work in progress, so feedback on how it could be improved would be appreciated. If there are individual elements that you think are hard to see, or that could be better, then please post here and I'll see what I can do. There are several hundred individual settings that go into a forum style, so there's bound to be some choices that don't quite work, or that conflict. I also never used the old Black vBulletin theme, so I'm not 100% sure what those wishing for a dark theme are after.

I would also be able to work on further forum styles, by popular demand.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The rank under your avatar is very hard to see with the black forum. If you could find a compromise shade of red that is easily visible on all skins, that would work. Keep in mind that colors on this forum are several shades lighter on my current 8.1 laptop. On my XP I would probably not be able to see your rank at all.

Edit 1: The font color in my sig now looks purple. It's really supposed to be royal blue.
Edit 2: My "retired moderator" badge looks washed-out white, when it's supposed to be pale green.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

To avoid more edits: The text in my Alerts drop down is grey-on-grey. Unless the text is bolded/black or white, it's nearly invisible.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

There is no forum collapse. This is really, REALLY annoying!

 

[Kyriakos]

Well... Thanks It is WIP, but at least it is black.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Switched back to Civ VI. The black one has too many problems and would require both aesthetic and practical tweaking. But supposing those problems were worked out, could we expect a few other choices after you know how to solve any potential problems?

 

[W|M]

There's excessive contrasts between light and dark because, while most of what I see is black, the top and sides of the page are light, which gives me the impression that it's a better idea to base the black background on the existing Modern background rather than the Civ VI background.

 

[ainwood]

There is no forum collapse. This is really, REALLY annoying!

added.

 

[Camikaze]

The rank under your avatar is very hard to see with the black forum. If you could find a compromise shade of red that is easily visible on all skins, that would work. Keep in mind that colors on this forum are several shades lighter on my current 8.1 laptop. On my XP I would probably not be able to see your rank at all.

Edit 1: The font color in my sig now looks purple. It's really supposed to be royal blue.
Edit 2: My "retired moderator" badge looks washed-out white, when it's supposed to be pale green.

I suspect these are largely display issues, as to my understanding, and from what it looks like to me, those colours haven't changed, i.e. your signature still looks royal blue to me, and your badge still looks light green.

To avoid more edits: The text in my Alerts drop down is grey-on-grey. Unless the text is bolded/black or white, it's nearly invisible.

I've changed that - is it better now?

Switched back to Civ VI. The black one has too many problems and would require both aesthetic and practical tweaking. But supposing those problems were worked out, could we expect a few other choices after you know how to solve any potential problems?

If you let me know what type of colour scheme you'd like, and if there's sufficient popular demand for it, then I'd be happy to try making some other basic themes too. If there's anything complex required, then that may be above my skill level, but I can put the bare bones together.

There's excessive contrasts between light and dark because, while most of what I see is black, the top and sides of the page are light, which gives me the impression that it's a better idea to base the black background on the existing Modern background rather than the Civ VI background.

The background is a little more complex to change, so there are two practical options:

• Someone with sufficient graphical skills creates a new darker background (@sukritact did an excellent job with the current background);
• I can cover over the brown strip going down the sides of the page, so that the current background is only visible at the top of the page.

I've based the style on Civ VI rather than Modern CFC because there is some custom CSS that should be inherited from the former, but wouldn't be from the latter. Though given the sidebar and collapsible forums didn't carry over, perhaps some of this has been overwritten in the manual changing of settings.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am trying the back out and everything looks just fine so far. I will keep it a few days to see if it sticks with me.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I like this new skin. I have two suggestions, but doing one might well eliminate the need for the other. My preferred change is to have the thread title colors clearly indicate if that thread has been read or has new content. Under other skins bolding conveyed that information. I do not think that bolding works as well with the black background. So how about a new color to indicate one state or the other? Currently all titles are the same pale blue which is a very nice color. How about a light yellow or pale green for one? Pale pink might even work.

Alternatively, the small button to the title's left could be made larger and brighter, but this would not be my first choice.

 

[ori]

I like it - mostly. Its certainly much better than the glaring bright ones
Usernames though are a bit off - in the forum view where it says "latest" for posts in the subforums the usernames are black on dark grey and in thread moderator/admin names are difficult to decipher due to the dark colors used on very dark grey background.

 

[Camikaze]

I like this new skin. I have two suggestions, but doing one might well eliminate the need for the other. My preferred change is to have the thread title colors clearly indicate if that thread has been read or has new content. Under other skins bolding conveyed that information. I do not think that bolding works as well with the black background. So how about a new color to indicate one state or the other? Currently all titles are the same pale blue which is a very nice color. How about a light yellow or pale green for one? Pale pink might even work.

Alternatively, the small button to the title's left could be made larger and brighter, but this would not be my first choice.

I'm not sure if the read thread title and unread thread title are actually defined differently so that it's possible to assign different colours. I'll look into that. If not, then italicising the titles might work too.

I like it - mostly. Its certainly much better than the glaring bright ones
Usernames though are a bit off - in the forum view where it says "latest" for posts in the subforums the usernames are black on dark grey and in thread moderator/admin names are difficult to decipher due to the dark colors used on very dark grey background.

The difficulty with staff usernames is that those colours are defined independently from the forum style, i.e. they're the same across all styles. I believe this was also an issue with the vBulletin black style, but was perhaps mitigated by the fact that usernames were larger back then. I might try increasing username size in the black style and see if that helps. I'll look at the latest post username thing too.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

added.

Thank you. However, the font for the forum headings is now invisible. This should be an easy fix, if you change the font color to the same one used for the statistics sections in the lower right corner (forum, gallery, etc.).

I suspect these are largely display issues, as to my understanding, and from what it looks like to me, those colours haven't changed, i.e. your signature still looks royal blue to me, and your badge still looks light green.

My sig font color looks good now. My badge is still really pale. This is on my 8.1 laptop, and I haven't checked on my XP.

I've changed that - is it better now?

Yes, thanks. I can read my Alerts notifications much better now.

If you let me know what type of colour scheme you'd like, and if there's sufficient popular demand for it, then I'd be happy to try making some other basic themes too. If there's anything complex required, then that may be above my skill level, but I can put the bare bones together.

On the old forum I always used Dark Blue, because it was the one most restful to my eyes. Is there any site that might have some sample XenForo themes to look at? The only other forum I'm familiar with is TrekBBS, and I don't expect CFC to become a carbon copy of that site.


Some other comments about the black theme:

1. It's hard to read the Admins' usernames (dark red on black), but as long as you don't all change your avatars at once, it shouldn't be a problem.

2. Some of the smileys have white pixels around them:


The font color for "Other Smilies" etc. is basically invisible. The "Standard Smilies" shows up with no problem.

 

[Cooleatack]

Hi any mod, will the dark mode still be worked on at some point? I just found this and it still feels too bright. Is it hard to make a new theme? Genuine question

 

[leif erikson]

No one is currently working on it. I am not the tech Admin and have never made a theme, so do not know how difficult it is. Sorry I do not have a better answer.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

No one is currently working on it. I am not the tech Admin and have never made a theme, so do not know how difficult it is. Sorry I do not have a better answer.

If we could have a response from @Camikaze, that would be appreciated. The issues I mentioned that haven't been solved are still issues that need to be solved. I also never received an answer about sample themes.

 

[Cooleatack]

Thank you for the responses. To follow up: I feel that the contrast between the black and white is too high.
Other dark modes use a very dark grey instead of all black and a much softer white. This is much more pleasing for the eyes when the lights are off.

Perhaps even a very dark brown could be used to still kind of incorporate the civ vi theme?

Also, natural incorporation of dark mode of Google Chrome/system settings is very welcome.