Forum - View topicSome issues with site layout when trying to make a skin
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Mattasaur
Posts: 9 |
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The site layout I have at the moment for my skin consists of a table with 3 columns.
Watch and be amazed by my ascii art~! /---------------------------------------------\ |/--------\|/------------------\|/-----------\| ||········|||······Banner······|||···········|| ||·Logo·&·|||··················|||·Heat·Guy··|| ||·Mascot·|||------------------|||·J·Flash!··|| ||········|||·Page·Title·······|||······WOW··|| ||--------|||------------------|||-----------|| ||·Main···|||··················|||···········|| ||·Menu···|||··Content·········|||·Side·menu·|| ||········|||··················|||···········|| ||········|||··················|||···········|| ||········|||··················|||···········|| ||········|||··················|||···········|| ||········|||··················|||···········|| |\--------/|\------------------/|\-----------/| |··········|····················|·············| |··········|····················|·············| |··········|····················|·············| |---------------------------------------------| |··················Copyright··················| \---------------------------------------------/ (To view the ascii diagram properly, copy and paste it into notepad) The current layout of the skins isn't flexible enough to let me do this though. What it will let me do is this: /---------------------------------------------\ |/--------\|/--------------------------------\| ||········|||······Banner·······|············|| ||·Logo·&·|||···················|··Heat·Guy··|| ||·Mascot·|||-------------------|··J·Flash!··|| ||········|||·Page·Title········|·······WOW··|| ||--------||\--------------------------------/| ||·Main···||/--------------------------------\| ||·Menu···|||··Content··········|··Side·menu·|| ||········|||···················|············|| ||········|||···················|············|| ||········|||···················|············|| ||········|||···················|············|| ||········|||···················|············|| |\--------/|\--------------------------------/| |··········|··································| |··········|··································| |··········|··································| |---------------------------------------------| |··················Copyright··················| \---------------------------------------------/ (Again with the copy/paste into notepad) With the Heat Guy J flash there, it's height is far greater than the banner and page title's height combined thus giving my layout a rather unattractive large space to deal with. Couldn't the skin template have a {SIDE_MENU} tag and in it's place, puts the Forum functions/MyAnime/Encyclopedia/Recent Reviews/etc. there instead of mushing it in with a {CONTENT] tag? Sorry if my explanation seems a bit odd to understand (probably because I didn't explain it very well) but if you want me to show you what I mean, then I'll submit my skin. |
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Mattasaur
Posts: 9 |
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Just re-reading the template thing again. The {SECONDARY_MENU} thing is what I should be using in this case but which tag is the one for the actual page content? If I'm not mistaken, if I have {CONTENT} and {SECONDARY_MENU} in the same template, then the script will flip out and kill people.
Well, I'm going to experiment. I wish there was a more obvious way to test these designs. |
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Mattasaur
Posts: 9 |
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Hmmm...
When I saw the button "Save Skin" I thought that when pressing it, it would then put my skin up for submission. I know what it does now and it works great. There are a few things I want to see changed: - Some way to get rid of the huge space up top where the banner is. - A way to change the Copyright link text - For the button ads to the left, their text be a seperate class to lmenu. - Author email links in reviews to have a class for their link. And anything else I find/think of I'll chuck up here. |
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khy
Posts: 41 Location: Canada |
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i recommend using Paintshop Pro to take screen shots next time
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Mattasaur
Posts: 9 |
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I already have Photoshop 7 but I wanted to show a way in which people didn't have to download images and I didn't have to upload them
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3794 Location: Montreal |
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You mean the orange placeholders? Those are there for a reason, you know. ANN needs the ads to survive, so you need to plan the layout to include them. Since the special ad won't always be there, you can click on the special ad placeholder to hide it, but apart from that the ads have to be displayed.
Why? What would you want to change it to? The reason there's a copyright tag is precisely because we want to make sure that copyright is displayed in every page.
That's not a bad idea.
You mean the one at the bottom of the review? What's wrong with using the regular link color? |
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Mattasaur
Posts: 9 |
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You know, I asked about these things to improve my layout so people can see things easier and/or not have to look at dead space. Your reply sounds rather sharp.
Here's an explanation of what I want to do and what I'm doing: Currently my link text is a dark blue, the same colour as the page background (but not the content background). 1. The copyright text is on a dark background and I want to make the link white so it's visible. 2. The author's link (what's in the {AFTER_HEADLINE} tag) displays the dark link colour when I have it on a black background. 3. I don't want to get rid of the banners. For the normal skinny banner, there is too much space above it and below it in my design in that it looks like a waste of space. I've tried to make my design not have such a huge space at the top before it gets to the content. I'll post some images of what I'm trying to achieve and what I'm struggling to fix: What I Get What I Want Of course, what I want will be slightly different to the finished product because that still needs tweaking and polishing... Anyway, I'm not trying to sound nasty or anything. I just want to be able to tweak my design until it is as good as I originally wanted it. I spent two days drawing the mascot art so I kinda want my hard work with the art and the design to all gel nicely. In regards to the right menu and the page content, what if in the Front Page template, if {MENU2_FP_NEWS} doesn't exist but there's a {CONTENT} and {SECONDARY_MENU} in the global template, it uses the global template for the front page (and any other page), replaces the {SECONDARY_MENU} with what's in the Front Page template (or any other secondary menu - Forum, MyAnime, Encyclopedia, etc.) and puts the news where the {CONTENT} bit is? I want your thoughts... |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3794 Location: Montreal |
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Sorry, I didn't intend for my reply to sound sharp. Now that I'm back from BAAF, let's get to those questions....
I just added CLASS="copyrightlink" for the links in the copyright notice. You can define it in the stylesheet if you want.
The color of the author's link is determined by {COLOR_HEADLINE_TEXT}. You should simply change that value to the color you want. If that changes the color in another part of the layout, stop using {COLOR_HEADLINE_TEXT} for that part.
It seems you solved the problem by yourself. But you might want to think about giving a different width to the various right menus, because they haver different optimal widths. On the front page there's a lot of text so it's best if the menu is wide, but in the other pages don't need as much space to display their elements.
1. {MENU2_FP_NEWS} MUST exist in the Front Page template 2. if there's a {CONTENT} tag in the Global template, it will be replaced by the Front Page template. In that case, the General menu template will be used for {SECONDARY_MENU}. |
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