Styling vB4 is a lot harder than styling vB3

[djnoz]

I really dislike the default skin for the new vBulletin because it is much harder to customise. There is about 10x more CSS in VB4 versus VB3, and because the developers decided to avoid tables, the CSS is complicated and unintuitive. The total amount of CSS for a typical page in VB4 is around 70 KB whereas VB4 uses only 5 KB of CSS, this means you've got to do around 10x more work.

What would be awesome is for someone to create a skin for VB4, which uses a single and small CSS file, as with vB3. This could be a table based skin. Designers could then use it as a base to build upon.

What are other people's thoughts on this? Have you tried customising vB4's skin and run into the same kind of trouble?

Matt

[Jack12]

Tables are dead and gone and they have been for ages. CSS is more customizable, SEO friendly and the standard for web design. If vbulletin went back to basing the design on tables I'd never buy another license.

I don't have problems customising the look of vbulletin4. Many changes can be made in the stylevar system and others just require the use of the search in templates function and additional.css template in conjunction with something like firebug (google it) to find what you need to edit.

[Valter]

I can only say that vB is now buggy more than ever regarding style, and there are compatibility issues with different browsers from version to version.

Tables + CSS may be better solution, but we are not who decide about this anyway.

[djnoz]

Originally Posted by Jack12

Tables are dead and gone and they have been for ages. CSS is more customizable, SEO friendly and the standard for web design. If vbulletin went back to basing the design on tables I'd never buy another license.

I don't have problems customising the look of vbulletin4. Many changes can be made in the stylevar system and others just require the use of the search in templates function and additional.css template in conjunction with something like firebug (google it) to find what you need to edit.

I agree that CSS and divs, etc. are the new way of doing things but tables have worked well for forums for a very long time. Even though you say you've had no trouble with it, it is still a lot more work than vB3.

I have firebug too, one of the biggest problems I found was the way the CSS gets munged into a single file (style.php) or a small number of files (x-rollup.css) by the new vBulletin. Once you've identified lines of CSS code you want to change in Firebug, it's hard to identify the template that needs changing, it would be really nice if there was a special mode which includes each CSS template as a seperate file, for development purposes, but of course they haven't thought about that.

And seriously, additional.css is the messiest thing ever. We are told to override existing CSS, i.e. hack innefficiently. We should be changing the CSS at the source, and there should be an easy way to do it.

[Jack12]

Originally Posted by djnoz

I agree that CSS and divs, etc. are the new way of doing things but tables have worked well for forums for a very long time. Even though you say you've had no trouble with it, it is still a lot more work than vB3.

I have firebug too, one of the biggest problems I found was the way the CSS gets munged into a single file (style.php) or a small number of files (x-rollup.css) by the new vBulletin. Once you've identified lines of CSS code you want to change in Firebug, it's hard to identify the template that needs changing, it would be really nice if there was a special mode which includes each CSS template as a seperate file, for development purposes, but of course they haven't thought about that.

And seriously, additional.css is the messiest thing ever. We are told to override existing CSS, i.e. hack innefficiently. We should be changing the CSS at the source, and there should be an easy way to do it.

You could just go in and change up all the code but I prefer additional.css so I can track all the coding changes I have made.

I never said it was easier than vb3, but you (or atleast I) can still achieve desirable results with a bit of work. It takes me a day or 2 to pop out a nice looking theme.

The best way to use firebug and find the code is to copy the class or id name you want to make changes to, go to the vbulletin templates menu and select search in templates.

It will bring you up a list of templates which include the class name, you look in the CSS section of templates and from there you should be able to fairly easily find the template you need to edit.

[Brandon Sheley]

I think styling on the new 4.x is a LOT easier then before
you know have a style generator, you can literally make 1 dozen new and unique stiles in 30 mins.

[djnoz]

Originally Posted by Loco.M

I think styling on the new 4.x is a LOT easier then before
you know have a style generator, you can literally make 1 dozen new and unique stiles in 30 mins.

If you're not fussed about the details then sure, you can.

[Jack12]

Originally Posted by djnoz

If you're not fussed about the details then sure, you can.

Use the generator and then just work on all those details, surely it would still save time.

Seems to me (and I mean this in the nicest way possible) that you're just frustrated with learning a new styling system and immediately put the blame on vbulletin.

I've worked with a few forum systems and nothing is as simple as a few colour palletes and mouse clicks if you're after perfect results.

Many of us are able to easily use the style system and with a little learning/adjusting you'll find the same.

Have you managed to complete a theme yet?

[Brandon Sheley]

Originally Posted by djnoz

If you're not fussed about the details then sure, you can.

that was just an example
it's easy to customize vb4.0 even after using the style generator

[Mr. P]

Originally Posted by Loco.M

I think styling on the new 4.x is a LOT easier then before
you know have a style generator, you can literally make 1 dozen new and unique stiles in 30 mins.

I would argue that point. I wouldn't say new styles. Sure you can make 100 new color schemes in a hour, but I wouldn't really call it restyling the page.

Yeah I have my complaints about vB4 styling vs vB3. For the most part vB3 was so simple to customize a caveman could do it. That?s my main gripe about vB4. However, vB4?s way of doing things allow for SOOO much more power over little individual items. What has me most miffed are what I perceive as being bugs with certain stylevars depending on the browser you use. One I am struggling with at the moment is I believe the threadbit_background stylevar. If I set the background image properly in the image line then everything displays fine in FireFox for example. In forums there are backgrounds behind the individual thread entries as they should be. I go check it in IE and they are there. I found a fix for this. Put the url(/images/whateverimage.png) line in the color bar and vwallah now the backgrounds show properly in IE. But wait!!! Now they are broke in FireFox and Chrome ? /facepalm. I haven?t figured out how to fix this one yet.

Another thing I am having issues with, and this I think is more browser related, is that the shadow variables don?t do anything for IE. They work properly in FF and Chr but not IE.