StyleVars - Quick Reply - Would be grateful for your help!

[adambloch]

Hi All,

I've just upgraded to vB4 and I'm making some minor tweaks to look and feel...

I'm wanting to change the background (of the largest area) of the Quick Reply box.

I had a peep in the StyleVars, and found that changes in the forms section made alterations close to where I needed, but not exactly.

I doodled to show my working so far (using guesswork and FireBug combo):



...As you can see, I noticed that there's a gradient defined for the area I'm interested in, and sniffing about with FireBug kind of gives me the impression that the StyleVar formrow_background is the one I'm interested in, but it appears there's something which makes the first child of that element ignore that setting, and use the gradient...

Is there a simple way to stop this variation for the first child, so a 'one size fits all' rgb value could be used, or would it be a whole lot less complicated to just edit the PNG so it colour-matches the value I put in formrow_background?

Thanks for any help you can offer, and best regards,

A

[The Vegan Forum]

Bump.

[ltwonet]

Try "WYSIWYG Block Background Image"

It seems to be only an image so you may have to edit the image.

Or "Blockrow Background"

[downloadsuk]

Check out the vbulletin CMS site. You can downloads a PDF file there that gives you a "stylevar dictionary. Pretty sure that you can find the answer in there.

Link here

Hope that helps.

[The Vegan Forum]

Thanks, downloadsuk. Unfortunately, that document contains errors, hasn't been updated since last year, is very incomplete and most of all: Neither this document, the manual or any other source provided by IB contains a system that links up the stylevar names with names of obvious text strings used in the elements we are working on.

Even with a stylevar system which is as incomplete as the current system is, a proper, searchable document would help a lot.

It should have been this simple: If I want to change the font, background or hover-values for the area which says "Post New Thread", "Who's online", "Quick Reply" or "Permission Groups", I should be able to type in that text somewhere, eg. in a pdf file, and find a page which explains all stylevar names and parameters related to eg. "Who's online" or "Permission Groups".

I'm pretty sure the lack of such a simple document, which could be created in a few days, costs IB a lot of money, because now many confused users send in support tickets instead, which leads to a situation where each of these questions has to be responded to manually, by a paid employee. It's a lose/lose situation for everybody.

[calorie]

In the vbulletin.css template find this and replace transparent with whatever #rrggbb color you want:

.wysiwyg_block .blockrow:first-child {
	background: transparent url({vb:stylevar imgdir_gradients}/gradient-greytowhite.png) repeat-x top left;
}

Try using this as a design tool. It might help you locate things in combination with guesswork and Firebug.

[downloadsuk]

Originally Posted by The Vegan Forum

Thanks, downloadsuk. Unfortunately, that document contains errors, hasn't been updated since last year, is very incomplete and most of all: Neither this document, the manual or any other source provided by IB contains a system that links up the stylevar names with names of obvious text strings used in the elements we are working on.

Even with a stylevar system which is as incomplete as the current system is, a proper, searchable document would help a lot.

It should have been this simple: If I want to change the font, background or hover-values for the area which says "Post New Thread", "Who's online", "Quick Reply" or "Permission Groups", I should be able to type in that text somewhere, eg. in a pdf file, and find a page which explains all stylevar names and parameters related to eg. "Who's online" or "Permission Groups".


I'm pretty sure the lack of such a simple document, which could be created in a few days, costs IB a lot of money, because now many confused users send in support tickets instead, which leads to a situation where each of these questions has to be responded to manually, by a paid employee. It's a lose/lose situation for everybody.

I agree. Fully.

I was aware it hadn't been updated, but at least I thought it was correct what they had there. Jesus, I understand trying to help nublets use the program, but don't they realise its actually technical folk who end up modifying their code, so they shouldn't try and dumb it down and in the long run make it more complicated....

Man, a glossary of all terms, including hook locations, hook execution order, style var dictionary, that is searchable, variable dictionary and scope listing would come in ridiculously handy for us developers, but to be honest, I really don't think that they're listening....

--------------- Added [DATE]1281179357[/DATE] at [TIME]1281179357[/TIME] ---------------

Firebug for firefox is definitely the way to go to.

You can see which CSS file and selector added the property you are looking for and it will give you a computer style. you can also edit the CSS on the fly in browser. At least this way you can narrow it down to which selector it is and then possible find the style var in the template that way. Good luck!

[ltwonet]

Yeah I find myself editing the code in the CSS file 9/10 times and just trial and error some of the CSS they use for some things also doesn't make sense, even area should have had it's own selector instead of reusing some of the stuff that's there it makes it hard to color match sometimes.

[sneezyyzeens]

Originally Posted by The Vegan Forum

Thanks, downloadsuk. Unfortunately, that document contains errors, hasn't been updated since last year, is very incomplete and most of all: Neither this document, the manual or any other source provided by IB contains a system that links up the stylevar names with names of obvious text strings used in the elements we are working on.

Even with a stylevar system which is as incomplete as the current system is, a proper, searchable document would help a lot.

It should have been this simple: If I want to change the font, background or hover-values for the area which says "Post New Thread", "Who's online", "Quick Reply" or "Permission Groups", I should be able to type in that text somewhere, eg. in a pdf file, and find a page which explains all stylevar names and parameters related to eg. "Who's online" or "Permission Groups".


I'm pretty sure the lack of such a simple document, which could be created in a few days, costs IB a lot of money, because now many confused users send in support tickets instead, which leads to a situation where each of these questions has to be responded to manually, by a paid employee. It's a lose/lose situation for everybody.

This, a thousand times this.

vb4 has so much potential, but I'm now a good 6 months after upgrade purchase and I still don't have my test site looking decent enough to upgrade my real site. I've been patient because I keep thinking that with so many unhappy customers that they fix these problems, or at least put out some updated documentation. I understand that new software is going to have bugs, but this is rediculous. And yes, I'm cranky after spending about 3 hours chasing one single stylevar value that if I could edit a css file manually it wouldn't have taken 1/2 an hour.

I have the question up on the .com site, but does anyone know how to change the hover background color for the navbar (ie, Quick Links). Wow, I never realized that vb.org hasn't upgraded to vb4 either. Things that make you go hmmm.

[calorie]

Originally Posted by sneezyyzeens

... I have the question up on the .com site, but does anyone know how to change the hover background color for the navbar (ie, Quick Links). ...

In the vbulletin-chrome.css template...

.navtabs li.selected li:hover a.popupctrl {
	border-color:{vb:stylevar navbar_background.backgroundColor};
	background-color:{vb:stylevar navbar_tab_background.backgroundColor};
	text-decoration:none;
}

The stylevars would be...

navbar_background for border color
navbar_tab_background for background color