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| [Solved]An easier tutorial? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 22 2008, 12:25 PM (524 Views) | |
| theycallmelisa | Mar 22 2008, 12:25 PM Post #1 |
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I know the skinning ZB boards are time consuming and apparently take much longer than IF boards, and so I'd like to start trying to make my own themes. But every time I go to the guides that are on here, I get so over whelmed and confused. Nicola, I'm not saying you're guides aren't helpful, but to a complete novice, who doesn't know a thing about CSS and what to do with what, I'm still confused. I hope no one takes offense to me by saying that.... So anyway, the way I've been trying to learn the CSS is to modify each part, one by one (usually by changing the colour), and see how it effects my board. Because the CSS is so long, and reading it is like trying to read japanese for the first time (to me anyway lol) I didn't get very far before I was thinking "there has to be an easier way". This is how I was doing it:
That way, I knew exactly what would change if I modified that snippet. I don't want to sound so arrogant and request someone to make a guide like this just for me, but I figured it'd be helpful for any newbie wanting to learn how to skin. I know it'd be much easier to know what area I would need to play around with in order to get a desired effect on my board, instead of just guessing, getting frustrated and giving up. I hope I haven't offended anyone that's already made guides. I know the existing tutorials are helpful to some people, but again, being so new to it all, I find it very confusing. Edited by theycallmelisa, Mar 22 2008, 12:26 PM.
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| rockon1824 | Mar 22 2008, 12:32 PM Post #2 |
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The problem with that is some things aren't as easy to explain as "Link color." The current CSS guide is good because it's easier to physically see what something is than to read some text and try and figure out what it is. If you're using Firefox, I'd definitely suggest getting Firebug. It allows you to play around with the CSS while viewing the page, so you can see the changes being made and then add it to the CSS. |
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| theycallmelisa | Mar 22 2008, 12:37 PM Post #3 |
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I realize that, I ran into that problem when I was trying to figure out what did what. Maybe a tutorial showing screenshots, explaining what snippet effects what area? I don't know... I will check out Firebug though, thanks. |
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| sdwe96 | Mar 22 2008, 12:37 PM Post #4 |
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Firebug is very helpful. If only someone could write an interactive program like firebug that could save all changes to a CSS we could all be expert theme makers!
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| Chris | Mar 22 2008, 12:44 PM Post #5 |
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*cough cough cough* http://docs.zetaboards.com/themes/zbcssguide?s=zetaboards css Edited by Chris, Mar 22 2008, 12:54 PM.
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| theycallmelisa | Mar 22 2008, 12:49 PM Post #6 |
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thank you, but i've already looked at that. |
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| Chris | Mar 22 2008, 12:53 PM Post #7 |
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Then what do more do you need? Do you want to know how it works? http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_examples.asp |
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| silvershoes | Mar 24 2008, 12:17 PM Post #8 |
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I think what she's asking for is for the original css to be commented. I can understand where she's coming from, I like to work that way too. In fact, I went through and commented a couple of my skins just to make things easier. The official docs are helpful, but nothing beats a note in front of or after a section of code that says "this changes the color of x, y, and z." One window, one file, and easy to understand, even if you come back to it a year later. The downside of course is that as you make changes to specific elements, you have to remember to change the notes as well or they quickly become worthless. |
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| Nicola | Mar 24 2008, 03:16 PM Post #9 |
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Darth Vader's Sewing Instructor
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Personally I don't believe comments would be that effective. I mean, if you were to make the comments yourself, you'd be able to describe the area in a way that it'd be understandable to you, but for some things in the CSS, we'd have to describe it a fair bit, and that just increases the size of the style sheet even more. I've been told by a lot of people that my guides are fairly easy to understand for beginners, especially the basic CSS index. The visual guides have a few minor errors since HTML was altered since the BETA (when it was created), but generally they're pretty correct. They're there so you can find out which part to edit to get the desired effect, not the other way around. I find the way I've done it to be useful to more people than a commented CSS. I had done a simplified CSS when Zetaboards was first released, but it's best that everyone is using the same style sheet, for support sake. If you ever want to know what a certain thing does, you can always ask me. I helped write the CSS and I created the themes with Seth, so if anyone is going to know, it's me And I am always here to help with theme related queries. I would also think that you're more likely to commit things to memory if you had to force yourself to remember things a little, rather than having the legwork done for you. It's like using one of those vile theme generators people have created. You're not learning anything, and if you decided to edit something after you'd be totally lost. I also don't think there is high enough demand for this for me to spend an amount of time to do this when it'd be quicker for both of us to make a topic or send a support ticket. If it's even a simple "What does this do?" you could probably ask me by PM, I won't mind... for simple questions that is, I don't do general support via PM ![]() If I thought it'd be truly useful for a large amount of people and would benefit them in the long run, I'd have done it a while ago. |
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| silvershoes | Mar 25 2008, 08:54 AM Post #10 |
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Oh, I understand where you're coming from, believe me. I've worked software support myself for over 15 years and coded css from the early days. More than one way to skin a cat, and I'm not saying one way's better than the other. Speaking for myself, though, it's harder to remember to update three documents than one and keep everything in sync as the visual guides illustrate. Things change, and if the documentation's not kept up to date, people are going to waste a lot of time before they get around to asking for help. This is no way a criticism, and like I said, I've commented my own skins and worked through all this. More shop talk than anything, from what I've seen you're doing a fine job. |
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