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

My post was naturally assuming that alabaster would be the default skin in question.

Or the badger skin! But otherwise alabaster for sure.

Brunellie is the one for me! can't stand any other

You're all wrong, Goo is the best skin.

Actually, that's kinda true and kinda so totally wrong

Goo actually works best of the skins on mobile devices. There's a little mess up because of the advanced search menu being pushed down with a narrower screen, but other than that the original skin is still holding its own.

As for technical ju-ju to allow users to customise, we've got some ideas that we're thinking about. And this is *thinking* about. Remember that the first and most important thing is to relocate and settle, then we can run However, one of the things that's come up while we were under ndas' etc was the idea of providing a very basic, clean layout similar to Plain, but each block of content would be nicely ID'd up ready for CSS. Users would then be able to create and store their own stylesheets, effectively creating their own skins. This idea then progressed so that the user could submit their skin to a showcase/gallery where others could see them, and choose to use them if they wished. But remember, that's just an idea nothing decided as we didn't need to worry/decide about that.

But i like having skin - its quite cruicial!

its my 3rd most favorit organ

man... this badger skin is gona be out of this world...

"As for technical ju-ju to allow users to customise, we've got some ideas that we're thinking about. And this is *thinking* about." (Pastey)

Or you could just officially support the "unsupported" Plain skin and encourage people to exchange CSS.

If you haven't played with this, give this a try...

Open "Preferences" from a DNA skin, then edit the URL so that the skin name is "plain".

Refresh the page - you'll see there's an extra "Stylesheet" field. Paste in the following address:

http://www.paranormal.org.uk/mustard.css

Click the "White" radio button and "Update details".

That's how I have been viewing the site for the last four or five years. It took an afternoon to do that; more major redesigns might take a week, but once they have been achieved they can easily be shared.

(To get rid of it, just go to "Preferences" and pick any other skin...)

I didn't know you could do that

But yes, that's exactly along the lines we've been thinking. Although with a bit more control by giving the elements unique ids so they can be referenced specifically

The problem is that there are a *lot* of things that can be done with the site, and *are* being done, that the folk hired to do the "upgrades" didn't have the remotest idea about and thus couldn't test for compatibility.

What sort of things are you thinking about?

Yes Peet -

If they were included in the upgrade, that would imply that they're not included in the documentation.

Which means we need someone to make a list.

Are you volunteering?

Evil grins aside, Peet I'd very much appreciate a list of these features. There is so much here that I think you're the only person who knows about

Peet would make a great Guru.

Wouldn't you like to be a Guru, Peet?

Peet would make a great Chief Guru...

Fancy a job Peet? Lots of responsibility, no pay, mucho kudos though.

Yay, Peet!

I'm not sure he's agreed just yet, we might need to set 2legs on him...

I thought we wanted Peet to say yes

All the mufflewhumps you want...

Awwww, thanks.

I really wish you had asked me to make a list five or six years ago. A combination of old age and Statins has played silly buggers with my memory. But I'll post any of the "tricks" they've broken as I remember them.

Some of these are broken in DNA too, since the BBC started "working on it".

One example was the ability we used to have to use the < /. >, < ./ > mechanism to post relatively short links to awkward BBC URLs by using a "../../" structure at the start of the URL to "back up" to the "dna/" in the URL. When the BBC started playing around all those links in existing posts became broken. (It's been so long since I used this mechanism, the "Buffy" boards were still around, so my memory of it is a little hazy... )