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

They can unite all they like, but if I lock them down in Goo...


Don't worry, I'd never deliberately stop someone accessing the skin they like.


Unless it's alabastrike


Just joking

wahahahah! but when I get the keys... and lock you out pastey, everythign will be switched to alabaster! (only kidding... )

Let it be cast in stone, that from this day forth, as to any and all new homes to which h2g2 may inhabit, that it is the right, of each and every researcher, each indepndant and valued member of the h2g2 community, to be able, in perpetuity, weather they be sock puppet, italic or not, to have, the right, forever, wherevere the site may be, to use the skin of their choosing, and let us not, us fellow members of the community, judge harshley that choice of skin to which our neighbour uses, let us not belittle their choice, nor make their choice an item of fun and jolity, let us embrace each of our fellow community emembers, whatever the nature of their skin of choice
*attempts little fanfare thing on a small plastic trumpet*

I want the badger skin!

2legs, step away from the vuvuzela.

Me too! and the nighthoover skin!

Alabaster and Goo and Brunel are tools. You find the one that works best for you, and go on from there. Imagine how complicated life would be if *everything* in your life had to be chosen from scratch every single day.

Imagine waking up on the morning:

Shall I get up, or stay in bed?

If I get up, should I put on clothes, or stay naked.

If I put on clothes, should I eat breakfast or stay hungry?

What should I have for breakfast?

What language shall I speak today? English? French? Latin? Spanish?German?

Should I return to this house, or find another one?

.....

One thing that I do find strange is that some features only appear in certain skins. Seems odd to me.

Yeh... and some of the newer stuff put onto the site, in terms of functionality was never put into the older skins, I think* it was always said that the older skins were no longer really being supported, just left... even though most it would seem tend to use them
How about a user manipulable skin.... (and I've no idea if such a thing technically could work);
. user chooses background colour/picture/wallpaper.
. user picks text size, colour, and font.
. user places the conversation list at the top, at the bottom, in the middle, or... etc., etc.,
. user places their journal at teh bottom/top/wheverever etc., etc., etc.,
and, perhaps also, with this then choosing the way they want conversation threads to be laid out; length, formating etc...
It would of course mean everyone is viewing the site differntly to everyone else, but that is probalby the case for most the web now these days anyhow...

> It would of course mean everyone is viewing the site differntly to everyone else, but that is probalby the case for most the web now these days anyhow...

Strangely enough it's not. There was a big phase of allowing users to completely customise their experience of sites, but it faded out when site owners realised two things. 1) Most people can't design for toffee and 2) it becames *very* difficult to support: "Click on the "Prefences link in the left/top/right/bottom/floating in the middle menu..." not ideal.

>>Most people can't design for toffee
But that does not stop them from trying and then moaning about it.
Tav has done a great job designing a couple of skins and together with some technical ju-ju I think we can offer the Researchers a certain level of customise-ability; think of which buttons to see in the sidebar and such.
We could have the option for designed skins a la Firefox to be designed by (talented) Froods with the know-how and then made available in a repository.

oo that would be mucho cool... (I think I kept out of those discussion as I'm not techy enough and can't do design stuff....)

Reminds me a bit of the North American television standard, NTSC. It's predicated on the idea that the viewer be able to adjust the set for color, contrast, brightness, hue, etc. The result is that the initials NTSC stand for "Never The Same Color".

Unfortunately, we (like any other site) are in competition with every other site on the Internet for users who will come here and click. Our regular users become very attached to the skins they've selected from our menu. Reducing the options would very likely result in our losing some of our users.

Are different skins really all that hard to provide technical support for? Would cutting back on that support be cost-effective if it turned users away? Just wondeirng.

I wonder if some clever coders could create some Greasemonkey scripts to add personal level control without the need for back-end work.

Lets walk first eh guys - later we can run.

Does the skin matter as much as the content really ? No ~ if there's only a single skin on h2g2 then that's what we'll use. Of course we'll moan it isn't as user friendly as goo, or as simple as plain, but eventually we'll all come to defend it from new-comers who want something else.

but we will dream of what was and what we have lost

Fortunately we can now both dream of what we want it to be and not mourn what we are about to lose.

"Does the skin matter as much as the content really ? No ~ if there's only a single skin on h2g2 then that's what we'll use" [McKay The Disorganised]

Most of us will do exactly that, McKay. What I wonder is how many more researchers we might attract with more skins to choose from, and whether this would be cost-effective. Based on what the BBC has done over the last ten years [i.e., gradually adding two or three more skin options], I'm thinking that they wanted to accommodate a wider range of tastes. We might want to do the same, or we might find that the finances won't allow it. That's fine with me either way, but I'm just one person. I can only speak for myself. How far do we want to go to extend a welcome?

skin does matter!

I'm used to alabaster. It would be nice to go to something similar when we change over. I just hope that the system can support it. There's no guarantee that it can. I've grown very fond of the smileys that we have. Are they ours to keep?