Coding Favorite Skin Trends

[Morrigan 1,822]

On the reverse of this topic:

 

 

What are your favorite skin trends? What makes you happy to go to a site every day? What makes you feel good about staring at something?

 

I think I'd have to say... I still love sidebars. aka I can't think of anything.

[Cloud 0]

• Sidebars are fantastic, or anything to keep your forum from looking bland. 
• Banners, nothing huge. But same reason as above. 
• Cbox of some kind. Especially one with a nice sound effect (nothing obnoxious).
• Neat and organized. I shouldn't have to fight through a horrid design to get information. DF does this wonderfully. 
• Black and grey color schemes with Blue, Orange, Red or Purple. More specifically, dark background with light colored text (like DF and many others).
• Organized RP areas. Having a lot of places to rp is great. I've seen forums with LITERALLY 13 different forum categories each with 3-5 forums in said category for you to RP in. It took forever to scroll to the bottom of the site. Sub-Forums to organize redundancy. 

[Huskerdust 625]

I actually love hovers on avatars (one of few places they can be used effectively) and the use of pages instead of forums for info (like rules, setting, etc). Whoo, less clutter! I'm seeing this more often and love it. I also really love symmetrical grid format and avatars on the index.

[Rune 1,099]

Static sidebars are my favorite thing. Especially if it has the Cbox in it. 

 

Having what the site is based on/about somewhere where I can tell what it is at a glance. Click the site, there it is. Bam. I know I'm on an RP based on French Fries or whatever. Even if its just a Name of Site: A Blah Blah RP. I've seen so many sites where they give no indication (even if their info threads) as to what they are even about. Its confusing.

 

I'm also a little in love with the variety of affiliation options I've seen lately. There's a few skins with a large amount of static, some sisters, some getting larger preference, and scrolling. The ones I've seen have been very clean. But I'm also the ad/affiliate person for my board so I'm a bit biased there.

[Honorem 219]

- Minimal flashy graphics and javascript, because the sites often load instantly by comparison.

 

- The dominance of sans-serif, which seems almost universal now. Easier to read, end of story. But don't ask me on allcaps, because that answer might not be quite as friendly, hehe.

 

- And finally, an awareness of resolution. Something that is either dynamic (changes to a percentage of the resolution of whatever device you use) or fixed and no bigger than 1000px. Because it makes browsing on my annoying small phone screen while at work a little less annoying when the page width matches my screen. Again, very widespread nowadays so it's good to see.

[CandleJack 0]

• I am so glad that I'm not the only one who still loves static sidebars.
• I'm still kind of old-school in the way of not liking flashy/flashing graphics or hover-over banners. I want the information easy to find, not hidden. 
• I like some games where they use a BG image for the main part of the layout (as long as it doesn't take 3 years to load). Then the rest of the layout is just simple stylized divs/tables with CSS. It usually loads great, looks great, and is still simple.
• I've seen the beginning of some sites utilizing a different (larger) size of affiliate buttons, particularly for their sister games. I really like it for some reason. Larger 4 sister buttons, then your statics, scrolling, whatever. 

[Lady Isadorabelle 8]

On 1/26/2016 at 5:39 PM, Zozma said:

I actually love hovers on avatars (one of few places they can be used effectively) and the use of pages instead of forums for info (like rules, setting, etc). Whoo, less clutter! I'm seeing this more often and love it. I also really love symmetrical grid format and avatars on the index.

 

I love using pages! It just feels more tidy. There are a lot of features that aren't utilized, so it's nice to see them used. Though, I understand if an admin isn't a coder that it can be a little tricky when you have to make changes.

 

I love darker skins. Lighter ones give me a headache and a game has to be pretty compelling to keep me there if the skin is a light one.

 

While this isn't something I see too often, I like skins that have a separate CSS for mobile. I use my phone and tablet to access sites along with the computer and skins aren't often optimized for mobile, which makes it less attractive and difficult to do much with.

[VirusZero 176]

I like:

- darker themes (especially for mobile since OLED screens, like on many Samsung devices, actually use far less power to display those sites because they aren't lighting up pixels... so dark themes equals power saving).

- decent contrast (if you have a dark grey background, don't use a dark grey font. Instead use one closer to white if you must use grey.)

- relatively few colours per theme (stick to 2 colours and 2 shades of those colours. Please don't have neon pink, orange, forest green and a deep crimson. It clashes horribly.)

- simpler skins that load quicker. (I don't want 500 images to have to download, 200 gifs to play and a bunch of videos to start.)

- the traditional forum layout.

- banners that are less than 250px tall. 

- banners that match the site/setting. (Look, if your site is Harry Potter... please don't have a bunch of models laying on a couch for your banner. It tells us nothing about your site. Even if you really like those models and think they're drop dead gorgeous... just don't. )

 

 

[Honorem 219]

1 hour ago, VirusZero said:

- decent contrast (if you have a dark grey background, don't use a dark grey font. Instead use one closer to white if you must use grey.)

This. Seems low contrast is in vogue, rather not squint at things to read them. xD

[CovertSphinx 710]

Obviously its not really noticeable until after one has joined, but I also really enjoy it when there are multiple skin color-styles to choose from. So if I'm in a Reds sort of mood, a dark mood, maybe a summery mood, I'm not stuck looking at the same color scheme for my entire stay.

[Orchid 12]

Lately the trend has been round things. I love it. For some reason rounded things on forums just are visually appealing, and I can get behind that.

 

 

[Honorem 219]

On 5/16/2016 at 6:01 PM, mellomeme said:

Lately the trend has been round things. I love it. For some reason rounded things on forums just are visually appealing, and I can get behind that.

 

 

Gotta agree, and add cut off corners and all the other cool CSS tricks working their way into layouts are cool too. Rather than just square everything.

[Uaithne 543]

I really enjoy having just one large avatar and no pressure to make a signature.  It's much better than when the avatars were tiny and signatures were pretty much mandatory.  I can get away without much photoshop on an avatar; signatures require more graphical skill.

 

(Not really a skin trend, but along the vein of design.)

[katherineespair 36]

(many of these 'likes' are on my site and i've got this warm fuzzy feeling. hehe.)

 

A trend that I'm a little crazy about, and do not have on my site, is the character picture on the floating bar above the site where the login etc are.  (does that make sense?) It brings me back to .. what was it? Acornrack? Avidgamers? When they would have your avatar picture in the sidebar? Welcome  NAME. 

 

Maybe it's nostalgia. I'm just sort of drooling over it and wishing I could do that. 

 

[Lark 8]

Soft colors that mix well without blending. <3_<3

Static sidebars with c-boxes.

Being able to see my avatar/gif when not in threads. It's always nice.

The Montserrat font being used. Love it~