Phantasy Star Cave Message Board

Some of you may have already noticed it, but there's a PS Cave Classic board style. I've been fiddling with it from time to time, though most of the work was done months ago.

It's supposed to look mostly like the message board we had years ago that ran on CuteCast. It's pretty functional already. I always use it.

The main page, forum view and thread view were done long ago, and I just finished the "Post a reply" page, so I'm announcing it now, even though a lot of the lesser-used parts aren't done yet (though they work fine and don't look horrible).

You can switch the board style in your profile. Tell me what you think.

I like. It´s much less painful to read black text on a light background than white text on black.

The colors are much lighter than what I could remember of that old board layout.

DEJA VU!
Lotsa good memories!

Looks bit dull, but I'm keeping it because it has no images. Faster to load. ;)

It sure is neat that you have been working on bringing back that classic skin. However, I'll wait until you smooth it out a bit.

I noticed it awhile ago, but it does not seem 100% classic yet.

Mono wrote:The colors are much lighter than what I could remember of that old board layout.

I assure you, the colours are exactly the same.

Zucca wrote:Looks bit dull, but I'm keeping it because it has no images.

Dull? How so?

I guess you mean it has less images instead of none. The HTML is cleaner, which also contributes to faster loading.

thriwren, could you elaborate on it not being 100% classic?

Any suggestions are welcome. I have a hard time deciding where everything should go, as there is a lot of information and many links displayed at a time. For example, I can't quite decide where to put the jumpbox now that I cleaned it up, so it sits at the bottom.

I really like the new board style. It's far easier to red, it loads faster, and generally, after being on website with a board similar to it, I feel more at home on it.

BenoitRen wrote:Dull? How so?

Dunno... Maybe Brown text would fit better instead of black text. And the white background should be close to yellow. Imo...

How do you edit these themes? With CSS?

First I edit the template (.tpl) files that contain the HTML to remove all the style information and mold it into something that resembles standards compliant HTML. Then I edit the sole CSS style sheet.

BenoitRen wrote:
thriwren, could you elaborate on it not being 100% classic?

The colors and layout is 100% but it seems that its a bit bigger than the classic. The "who online" and the top control panel dont seem to be on what I can recall from back then. But it has been years since I have last seen the classic board.

Oh, right. That's more the functionality than the style of the old board, though.

I slept a bunch since those days, and stuff gets blurred together. Thought is was more than that.

It probably feels different because it lacks the PSCave title and left side website navigation links of the homepage.

So far, I like the PSCave skin the most (the dark one with the stars). Although, the PSCaveclassic skin is better than the Subsilver one in my opinon as that one is a little stale for my taste and is used as the default skin in a lot of message boards. It's good to see the old/classic PS skin again which takes me back to my lurking days. I also like the fact that it has faster loading time due to lower amounts of icons. But overall, the PSCave skin looks a lot nicer (in my opinion yet again), as it's not as bright as the other two and has very beautifully designed images. The icons and links are also placed nicely beside each other at the top where they are easy to find. The PSCave skin makes me feel like I'm drifting through space. It's a lot like my screen saver, I really like it!