"Web 2.0" and vBulletin skins

[albn]

Right now, the big craze is the "Web 2.0" look with the rounded corners, the fancy effects, pastel colors and other stuff. I have not found any interfaces that deal with this craze per se, and was wondering what would have to be learned to start one.

Thank you for reading.

[sonichero]

Template modification, namely a lot of templates. For example, in your forum home template, right after <-- / main --> and i think there are two <br />'s, you would put
<div class="left">
<div class="center">
<div class="right">
<div class="tcat">

So it would have a curved tcat. Then you have to go searching through all your templates to find all the tcats and put that code in front.

[albn]

Ah thanks for the help in that regard. Further, I am sure on top of the markup changes, is there a lot of CSS changes as well? Where is a good place to start on how to change stuff around to make a skin web 2.0ish?

Edit: I found some resources on Google, and now it is just a matter of sitting down and learning how to do some of those effects. I have no idea how long the interface design craze will last, and am debating if jumping on the bandwagon is just that...

I happen to like the designs, and have some interesting appeal. Bright colors, huge fonts, almost feels like a huggy marshmallow bear. Now the question I had for a while is, what is Web 2.0 anyway? Is it an idea? A buzzword? Marketing device? There does not seem to be a cohesive or definate criteria on what makes a site "web 2.0". Maybe somebody can help define it.

Anyway, I can pretty much guess this thread is going to oblivion, so I will leave the subject alone.

[xcingix]

Right now, the big craze is the "Web 2.0" look with the rounded corners, the fancy effects, pastel colors and other stuff. I have not found any interfaces that deal with this craze per se, and was wondering what would have to be learned to start one.

Thank you for reading.
I'd love to achieve such a look.
Hope someone comes out with a style soon.

[CyberAlien]

Now the question I had for a while is, what is Web 2.0 anyway? Is it an idea? A buzzword? Marketing device? There does not seem to be a cohesive or definate criteria on what makes a site "web 2.0". Maybe somebody can help define it.
Its a very unclear concept, usually it is used only as marketing keyword for something that has absolutely nothing to do with that concept.

Its not a design specification, so when you see it applied to some design it is usually used only for marketing. There isn't a single vBulletin style that is real web 2.0, and there can't be because of vBulletin template system limitations (can't move stuff around because every item is in different template, must use spacer templates or threaded view would be screwed, etc...). For design web 2.0 code wise means semantically correct layout. There isn't a single vBulletin template that is semantically correct.

For lots of fancy words that mean absolutely nothing and "define" web 2.0 "concept" take a look here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

[xcingix]

I'm designing one now, but I'm nowhere near done.
http://www.ny-dev.com/forums/f97/post-webjay-playlists-1347/?styleid=149
Still working out the fact that it doesn't show up well in IE and I have to create buttons and such.

[CyberAlien]

That's not a web 2.0 style. There is no tabular data at all on that page, but it has many levels of nested tables used for everything.

[Princeton]

Web 2.0 Style is a simple, easy-to-use interface .. which promotes usability, extensibility, and participation.

The idea is to create a lightweight user interface - which will load fast. Whether you use tables or not it's up to you (and how it is done).

[CyberAlien]

Web 2.0 Style is a simple, easy-to-use interface .. which promotes usability, extensibility, and participation.
And all that can't be done with vBulletin, as vBulletin has fixed set of features and style only shows what vBulletin tells it to show, just like any other forum system. Designer can move buttons across the page to make navigation easier, but that's all, and it doesn't make forum more useful - it just makes forum slightly more useful, so it doesn't magically turn design to web 2.0. Style designer can't add new features. So in this matter "web 2.0" term can't be applied to vBulletin styles.

The idea is to create a lightweight user interface - which will load fast. Whether you use tables or not it's up to you (and how it is done).
Then all "web 2.0" styles designed for vBulletin are quite opposite to what they claim, as they use lots of gradient images increasing page size compared to default vBulletin style, and styles that do reduce size are different from default style by so little that it doesn't make them 2.0. The only way to make it smaller is to use divs so code would be as tiny as possible, which would require complete rewrite of all templates, which brings me to point about 2.0 styles being semantically correct.

[Princeton]

the only limits vbulletin has are the limits that you place on it ... vbulletin is extensible and completely customizable

if you want to stick with just changing a button here and a button there than I agree - "it just makes forum slightly more useful

Can it be done (more WEB 2.0) ? Yes!
Is it worth it? ... I dare say NO.

Personally, I prefer to just make the current vBulletin style more usable.

Then all "web 2.0" styles designed for vBulletin are quite opposite to what they claim
it's really funny what people claim

[CyberAlien]

Yes, it can be changed, but that would require rewrites of almost all templates, making style incompatible with almost all plugins and making it harder to upgrade. Its fun to do for test, but its a bad idea for release.

vBulletin is not completely customisable. Its quite far from it. Templates are being included in eachother without any connection between them (so there is absolutely no control over loops), so, for example, if you have a forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost template and inside it in $childforumbits, you don't know how many subforums are in it, you don't know if that level1 forum was first, last or somewhere in middle. Templates can't be included by designer. There are spacer_open and spacer_colse templates that are required in many places and impossible to get rid of.

Also for some reason threaded and hybrid views don't work with tableless layout, I have no idea why it happens, but it did happen when I was testing it (all named divs were there and in all parent templates).