h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I use Goo all the time. Continually. Why? Because Alabaster is just horrible. It has some nice features, I especially like the User Space layout with the recent conversations down the side, but the colour scheme and top bar is just horrendous. Therefore I venture forth with some suggestions for a new skin.

1) Put a navigation bar right at the top right of the page, with nice simple plain graphics without the horrible oval bits that Alabaster's have
2) Put the advert underneath this, preferably enclosed in a nice smart border so it doesn't look like it's been just plonked there, with the BBC logo and h2g2 logo in their proper places
3) Then have a divider of some sort running right across the page (a plain black line perhaps) before the background colour changes and the Entry itself begins
4) Use Alabaster's Space layout and side box style
5) Use different-coloured backgrounds for headings, like in Goo
6) Have a set of navigation links at the bottom right above the legal speil, like in Alabaster
7) Make the colour scheme something really nice. Would it be possible to do a creamy-coloured background with some nice accent colour, say crimson or a deep blue? I don't know, but it might be worth a try...

Now that was probably all a load of rubbish so I'll go away now

How about a text only skin? BBC Online already have a text-only parser (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/education/betsie/parser.pl/www.bbc.co.uk/ for example); maybe h2g2 could be configured to support this?
This would be useful for those with slow connections; people with bad or no eyesight (I think the BBC one is optimised for software that reads out a webpage to blind people); and could be used on mobile devices with no extra coding (see seperate thread).

The BBC text parser - Betsie http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/betsie/ - also recognises the BBC Online navigation bar and places it at the bottom of the page instead of the left or top. This would be another useful feature for mobile users.
It also supports most bbc.co.uk sites, so why isn't h2g2 included yet?

MaW - One point - you should *never* put site navigation *above* banner ads. Alongside is OK, but the banner space is invisible to many users, and putting navigation above this is a *very* bad idea in anything you want to be accessible to new users. (For experienced users it's not such a problem).

Trust me - the initial design for Alabaster had the buttons right at the top as you suggest, and we actually found that testers just didn't see the buttons - they've been so used to ignoring the banner ad and anything above it. Once we moved the buttons down, they stopped reporting certain bugs because they had now found the buttons.

There was a simple "no graphics" skin, which was a direct result of making the skins modular. It was available during testing of Ripley1.3, but was shortly disabled in order so that the team could get on with more important things like supplying us with a large truckload of smileys.

What is strange is that it has become available again (in the command line, not from the preferences) now that the BBC have the guide. Whether this is intentional or merely a bug I don't know yet.

I would like to see a Goo-like skin with reversed background/foreground colours because of readibility issues - as Alabaster is IMHO somewhat boring, it is on the other hand much more readable as the light text on dark background in Goo. Despite of this, I'm a convicted Goo user; Alabaster is such a loveless design.

I'd agree that another dark text/light background skin would be great. The white on Alabaster's just too darned white.

I always run apps such as Word with a pale green background (#BFD8BF). Green has been shown to be the easiest, most restful colour on the eye, yet black text remains readable. I commend it to the designers.

Seconds for a text-only skin, lots can be done with background colors and such to make it slightly more interesting and usable, and faster pageloads would be worth the loss of the graphical navigation bars IMO. Not sure about smilies though, whether they should be parsed back into text or not.

That's a good point, Jim. I was just trying to think of what might look nice. So put the navigation _under_ the banner ad.

I have to admit to being a waverer - I LOVE the deep colours, and the look of Goo, but much much prefer the layout of My Space in Alabaster. It's much easier there to find recent activity in conversations, rather than having to scroll all the way down to the bottom where my journal is.

So if you can do a new skin with the deep funkiness of Goo, but the accessible layout of Alabaster... not that we ask much around here, right?

Yes, yes that's it! That's what we need!

I use Alabaster for the ease of it, but would prefer something a bit less demanding on the eyes, cream maybe?

Yep, I'd go along with Inanna's suggestion as well - the 'Third Way' of Skins!

NQAH (There are Mods afoot, therefore I must be a Rocker!)

I have two skin suggestions;

The first, similar to goo (looks wise) but with the functionallity of alabaster, pretty, useable and you could even have an option of a colour scheme, dark on light or light on dark.

The second, a text based skin, no or few graphics cream backround dark blue/red text. For use on black and white browsers such as opera on my Psion5. Links should be distinguishable other than by colour, basically an easy to load easy to navigate easy to view, specifically for the non high power machines

A lot of work I know but it could be worth it

Mel

i use goo primarily, altho i have an alternate id in alabaster that i use occasionally. i love goo because it's so unusual, but i also love green. the green used on alabaster is nice, it's the white and the orange (the orange is hideous) that turn me off. i like the idea of a light green background, perhaps with navy blue accents or text.

i have also seen a lot of goo users comment that their goo is black, not blue. i suspect that part of this may have something to do with their monitor settings, but it really is darker than it used to be. my screen is nearly indistinguishable from black, and my brightness is all the way up.

It's your monitor. Mine used to be near-black with the brightness way up, but with my new monitor it's navy blue even on 0% brightness. Apeture Grill screens are just so bright it's untrue!

This is my current desktop colour scheme: d2fffa 708f70 32ff32 007575 003535 b9c8b9

The green seems easy on the eyes, but it is nice to be able to type dark text on a light background.

I use goo exclusively at h2g2, mainly because the glare of alabaster attracts too many moths!

Tal

I agree with MaW, I'd like a compromise between the 'cool' looks of GOO with the greater usability of Alabaster. A compromise would be good, I definetely like the top taskbar, and the format of the personal space of Alabaster.

NB, if you do make a Hitchhikers skin, please include some reference to those 30 foot high illuminated letters reading (In the local language) "Go stick your head in a Pig."

Thanks, Lyn (aka Hidman_Zero)

I'd love a Hitchhikers skin. It would be nice to have a place with references to the masterwork freely allowed with no fear of offending those who havent bothered to read it. Dont panic buttons and black lights on black backgrounds rule OK!

I wonder how we could do the total perspective vortex???????


I think the text would have to be green as a tribute to Zaphods version of brain surgery........

FABT

I already mentioned this in the 'buttons' post, but it could also be relevant to a new skin.

How about javascript-style collapsing menus that can'stick' to the top of the screen? They take up less screen real-estate, and the drop-down elements/controls can easily be modified.

Tal