Forum feature requests and Ideas

[virtue]

@virtue That's a lot of work, but not impossible!

I imagine it would require a LOT of retrofitting... I guess ultimately its up to whether you think its worth it! I wish I had knowledge of how the forum system you use worked so I could come up with a practical solution to propose. I hate to just be like "you should do this super difficult thing" and then provide no other relevant information, lol. I'm sure you have an idea in mind though.

[Melooon]

I imagine it would require a LOT of retrofitting

I think a sneeky solution would be to add an extra layer of processing that would capture all the HTML code just before the server sends it to a browser; check for any strings that look like dates/times and replace them with beat time strings of the matching date.

If you feel like learning PHP you could totally make this yourself - just save a few sample webpages; load them into a PHP script and see if you can write a function that replaces all the dates correctly. If someone did that it would take 90% of the work away and make it wayyy more lightly to be added; assuming it didn't introduce too much slowdown to the forum overall.

[virtue]

I think a sneeky solution would be to add an extra layer of processing that would capture all the HTML code just before the server sends it to a browser; check for any strings that look like dates/times and replace them with beat time strings of the matching date.

If you feel like learning PHP you could totally make this yourself - just save a few sample webpages; load them into a PHP script and see if you can write a function that replaces all the dates correctly. If someone did that it would take 90% of the work away and make it wayyy more lightly to be added; assuming it didn't introduce too much slowdown to the forum overall.

Doing it in post has a lot of issues though due to the system not being able to determine the difference between 24hour/12hour time and not being able to determine the relative date and whatnot. Does this forum use unix timestamps? Would there be any way to fetch the unix timestamp for posts and whatnot in order to convert it? You'd probably also need to place limitations so it doesnt convert times stated in chats or post bodies regardless of the difference in relativity. Doing it after all the processing is definitely not ideal, and I can confirm since I already tried and it was a nightmare, lol

[Rowan]

@Okato how does this look ???

                     ____
                ,-¯   v¯＼
             _/＿  (::●::)-`冖-,,
          . '"     ￣￣             `|           ♥
         |                __             |Oo  ♥   ∧ ∧
   oO|              |¯]}  |      ___-'   _o_  ＼('∀`)／
 _o_    |.__O)＿＿| ,{[   |--/O        "       (    )
  "        O   `-,,,___!!,,,,ノ' ,-_O-_.            o  o~
      ,_-O_-,         _o_         `-`
       '-'
              _________∧_________
           ／                     ＼
           |   oggfnfghbb 。。。 |
           ＼_____________________／

@virtue That's a lot of work, but not impossible!

Thats perfect! Though, the line height is a little tall, perhaps it could be set to 1, but other than that, it renders perfectly on all my devices. Thank youuuu!!!!

[Melooon]

@virtue a very rudimentary version of universal swatch/.beat time is now available - you can select it from your time format dropdown on the profile/look layout - please note you MUST set your time offset to 0, and the clock at the top of the forum will display double and the first will be incorrect.

Otherwise, it works ok! I was able to do it by intercepting the date formatting function and adding additional logic! However timestamps on the forum use all sorts of different offsets and sources, so it's really hard to pin down an accurate base time - I will continue to improve it ^^

[Melooon]

@Okato is MS Gothic actualy a standard text art font?? I cant help but notice that ascii art used in it looks totally squished 

          .-'-.
        /`     |__
      /`  _.--`-,-`
      '-|`   a '<-.   []
        \     _\__) \=`
         C_  `    ,_/
           | ;----'
      _.---| |--._
    .'  _./' '\._ '.
   /--'`  `-.-`  `'-\
  |         o        \
  |__ .             / )
 (___)|     o     \/ /
  | | |           |-'\     .--.
 /  |_.-"""-.-'=_ |   '--./ = .`
<   `  =-->    _= /        __/
 '._     _.-"-.= /`"-...-"` 
    `;"""`     __/
      /```````` |
     |     ,     \
     \      \     \
      \      \     \
jgs   |       \     \
     /        |      |
    /         /      |
   /        /`     /`
 .'        |       |
(          /--.___.'
 `--...__.' /    \__
 /     \__ |        `)
|         `)---'----`
'----'----`

[virtue]

@virtue a very rudimentary version of universal swatch/.beat time is now available - you can select it from your time format dropdown on the profile/look layout - please note you MUST set your time offset to 0, and the clock at the top of the forum will display double and the first will be incorrect.

Otherwise, it works ok! I was able to do it by intercepting the date formatting function and adding additional logic! However timestamps on the forum use all sorts of different offsets and sources, so it's really hard to pin down an accurate base time - I will continue to improve it ^^

Oh Wow, Thanks! To be entirely honest, it would probably be more than sufficient to assume that if a timestamp is part of a post title or body, it probably has business being in whatever format it was originally in, so you can likely just globally exclude the elements, lol

[Riqo]

I don't know if you're open to gift suggestions, but maybe a gift for users who've used css or html on their custom profile? Maybe it'd encourage others to tinker around with it so they can get a cool shiny gift!

[Rowan]

@Okato is MS Gothic actualy a standard text art font?? I cant help but notice that ascii art used in it looks totally squished 

          .-'-.
        /`     |__
      /`  _.--`-,-`
      '-|`   a '<-.   []
        \     _\__) \=`
         C_  `    ,_/
           | ;----'
      _.---| |--._
    .'  _./' '\._ '.
   /--'`  `-.-`  `'-\
  |         o        \
  |__ .             / )
 (___)|     o     \/ /
  | | |           |-'\     .--.
 /  |_.-"""-.-'=_ |   '--./ = .`
<   `  =-->    _= /        __/
 '._     _.-"-.= /`"-...-"` 
    `;"""`     __/
      /```````` |
     |     ,     \
     \      \     \
      \      \     \
jgs   |       \     \
     /        |      |
    /         /      |
   /        /`     /`
 .'        |       |
(          /--.___.'
 `--...__.' /    \__
 /     \__ |        `)
|         `)---'----`
'----'----`

Ah! That textart is definitely made to be viewed in a monospace font, and MS PGothic isn't monospaced! (MS Gothic is the monospaced one, make sure not to get them confused!)
Though MS PGothic seems to the most common in Japanese textart (Shift_JIS art is the most specific term for it, I think.) from what I've seen... And I've been using that for my own text art!

I should have explained that first! It's a good font, but for a very specific kind of textart!!

[night-at-the-musian]

I suggest adding some more dyslexia-friendly fonts! We already have Comic Sans, but further fonts include Century Gothic, Helvetica, Tahoma, and OpenDyslexic, the font you're reading now!

[Bede]

My main suggestion is this, if it's possible:

Change the toggle that changes the theme! Right now, it's a little newspaper. It's very cute! But it also doesn't really convey what it does very well. This is especially an issue because that is what toggles readability mode, so a lot of folks may not even know that it's an option! Some folks will likely think that it will take you to recent updates to the forum, or forum news.

Some alternate ideas for the icon:

• An open book! This the most standard reading mode symbol, and, in my opinion, the safest option if you're going for a symbol.
• Text! Similar to how "top" is spelled out, you can spell out, "readable mode" or something similar.

[Melooon]

ext! Similar to how "top" is spelled out, you can spell out, "readable mode" or something similar.

I hope to implement this later in the week ^^

suggest adding some more dyslexia-friendly fonts!

This has been on the cards for a while; I'm still looking for a simple way to do it, but it's good to be reminded!

[emeowly]

a suggestion for the newspaper theme; a recent posts link in the header with the unread topics/new replies to your posts links like the default melon theme has! i like reading through the recent posts section to quickly catch up on new replies across the forum but i cant find a link to it anywhere in the newspaper theme

[Melooon]

suggestion for the newspaper theme; a recent posts link in the header with the unread t

Done, a good suggestion!

[Marcellus]

Hey! I haven't found any suggestion of a forum translation project, but I'd be interested in working on a french translation. I have close to 0 experience in JS though, but I'm close to bilingual (french-english) and I think I could be up for the task.