Back in April 2018, I released my final new theme for the old ZetaBoards forum: ImF Dark Energy. With its extensive imageless effects, it was very well-received, and I consider it to be my finest work on the ZetaBoards platform.
Unfortunately, it didn't last for very long. Less than a month after I released this theme, the fateful announcement came that ZetaBoards was to be, *ahem*, 'upgraded' to Tapatalk. After a bit of shopping around, I opted to move the board over to MyBB - and, since Dark Energy had been so well-received on ZetaBoards, I announced early on that it would be converted to MyBB. In the year or so since then, I've acquainted myself with the responsive theme templates (based on EreeCorp's BootBB theme), and produced a series of new themes based on these (Fire and Charcoal, Purple Origin, Lucky Blue, and Golden Night, to name a few).
The trouble is, with each successive MyBB theme I produced, I began to grow increasingly unhappy with that Dark Energy conversion. It was one of the first MyBB themes I ever created - and, consequently, I don't think it holds up particularly well compared to my subsequent efforts. Furthermore, since it isn't responsive, I simply never use it (I access this place on my phone quite a lot). I thought this was a great shame which didn't do justice to my original ZetaBoards theme, which I had been so proud of - and so, I decided I would like to give Dark Energy another go, with the benefit of the experience I had gained with this platform. Sure, it'd be my third version of Dark Energy in the space of 18 months; however, I decided it would be worth the effort .
It's been a long time coming - but, at last, here is the finished product :
(Click to enlarge)
Of course, there's more to this theme than just the main index page . As part of this project, I searched through the entire set of templates, and fixed a series of bugs and aesthetic nitpicks I've always had with the responsive themes in general. Here are two examples:
(Click to enlarge)
(Click to enlarge)
One annoying issue on all of the responsive themes is with the thread legend at the bottom of the forum. The icons are too far to the left - so, the right-hand icons are right next to the left-hand labels ! Fortunately, I've figured out how to fix this - so, the icons on the responsive version of the theme a more sensible alignment. Furthermore, there have been various places throughout the theme where I've cleaned out messy backgrounds, borders and other clutter. For example, the 'Update Profile' screen has a lot less of these, and looks much tidier than it did on my previous responsive themes (take a look at this screen in the responsive Dark Energy, and then look at it in Golden Night, and you'll immediately see what I mean!)
One area in particular which received a lot of attention was the calendar:
(Click to enlarge)
In the original BootBB, the calendar was a 7-across grid, with each week receiving its own row. This worked fine on a PC; however, it was an unusable mess on mobile devices (on my phone, there would be one row for Monday to Saturday, and then another row just for Sunday !). I decided this wasn't satisfactory, so I completely re-worked the calendar section of this theme. The traditional grid layout remains for PCs - although, as you can see, I've made the current day clearer, and also darkened the days before and after the month to make those easier to see. On mobiles, however, things have changed completely: the days all display in a single column. Unlike the 7-across layout which couldn't fit all seven squares onto one row, this is actually usable !
If you want to switch to this theme, it's available on the theme chooser under the name Dark Energy II (Responsive). The original non-responsive version remains on the theme chooser alongside it: if you want this, then choose Dark Energy Classic .
Enjoy the new theme !
Unfortunately, it didn't last for very long. Less than a month after I released this theme, the fateful announcement came that ZetaBoards was to be, *ahem*, 'upgraded' to Tapatalk. After a bit of shopping around, I opted to move the board over to MyBB - and, since Dark Energy had been so well-received on ZetaBoards, I announced early on that it would be converted to MyBB. In the year or so since then, I've acquainted myself with the responsive theme templates (based on EreeCorp's BootBB theme), and produced a series of new themes based on these (Fire and Charcoal, Purple Origin, Lucky Blue, and Golden Night, to name a few).
The trouble is, with each successive MyBB theme I produced, I began to grow increasingly unhappy with that Dark Energy conversion. It was one of the first MyBB themes I ever created - and, consequently, I don't think it holds up particularly well compared to my subsequent efforts. Furthermore, since it isn't responsive, I simply never use it (I access this place on my phone quite a lot). I thought this was a great shame which didn't do justice to my original ZetaBoards theme, which I had been so proud of - and so, I decided I would like to give Dark Energy another go, with the benefit of the experience I had gained with this platform. Sure, it'd be my third version of Dark Energy in the space of 18 months; however, I decided it would be worth the effort .
It's been a long time coming - but, at last, here is the finished product :
(Click to enlarge)
Of course, there's more to this theme than just the main index page . As part of this project, I searched through the entire set of templates, and fixed a series of bugs and aesthetic nitpicks I've always had with the responsive themes in general. Here are two examples:
(Click to enlarge)
(Click to enlarge)
One annoying issue on all of the responsive themes is with the thread legend at the bottom of the forum. The icons are too far to the left - so, the right-hand icons are right next to the left-hand labels ! Fortunately, I've figured out how to fix this - so, the icons on the responsive version of the theme a more sensible alignment. Furthermore, there have been various places throughout the theme where I've cleaned out messy backgrounds, borders and other clutter. For example, the 'Update Profile' screen has a lot less of these, and looks much tidier than it did on my previous responsive themes (take a look at this screen in the responsive Dark Energy, and then look at it in Golden Night, and you'll immediately see what I mean!)
One area in particular which received a lot of attention was the calendar:
(Click to enlarge)
In the original BootBB, the calendar was a 7-across grid, with each week receiving its own row. This worked fine on a PC; however, it was an unusable mess on mobile devices (on my phone, there would be one row for Monday to Saturday, and then another row just for Sunday !). I decided this wasn't satisfactory, so I completely re-worked the calendar section of this theme. The traditional grid layout remains for PCs - although, as you can see, I've made the current day clearer, and also darkened the days before and after the month to make those easier to see. On mobiles, however, things have changed completely: the days all display in a single column. Unlike the 7-across layout which couldn't fit all seven squares onto one row, this is actually usable !
If you want to switch to this theme, it's available on the theme chooser under the name Dark Energy II (Responsive). The original non-responsive version remains on the theme chooser alongside it: if you want this, then choose Dark Energy Classic .
Enjoy the new theme !
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Moonface (in 'Woman runs 49 red lights in ex's car')' Wrote: If only she had ran another 20 lights.
(Thanks to Nilla for the avatar, and Detective Osprey for the sig!)
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