Experimental Site Style: I Can't Believe It's Not VB

[Ryan Smith]

Hey gang,

With the permission of Ken g6, I have gone ahead and ported his VB Stylish script for the AT Forums to the internal styling system. Ken's theme has been well received, so adding it to the internal system means it can be made available across all browsers without requiring 3rd party plugins.

After testing of the new internal style has shown that it appears to be working correctly, I'm going ahead and enabling the style for everyone on an experimental basis.





For those of you looking for something a bit more like the old forums, please go ahead and give it a shot. You can select your style from the Style Chooser that is at the bottom left-hand side of every page.



The VB style (like VB itself) is really only meant for desktop use cases, so I can't promise that it's going to be very well behaved on phones or other configurations that trigger the responsive display changes. Otherwise, if you encounter any bugs/quirks, please be sure to report them here.

Finally, please note that as this is an experimental style, it may be removed at any time for any reason. Right now this is a weekend test; if it works well and doesn't break the site, then I hope to be able to leave it up permanently.

-Thanks
Ryan Smith

 

[Elixer]

Thanks--even though I was already using it.

 

[Ryan Smith]

Thanks--even though I was already using it.

Yeah, to be clear it's not supposed to behave any differently than the Stylish script. Implementing it just means that it can be used without 3rd party plugins.

 

[Ken g6]

I hadn't seen the style on a phone until now. There are already a few things I want to fix.

But thanks to Ryan Smith for putting this live on the site!

 

[FeuerFrei]

Using the VB-esque theme now because it's not white. Not too enamored with it, but it helps. Thanks. I was itching for a change, but didn't especially want to install Stylish.
What I r e a l l y want is a dark theme.

 

[MongGrel]

Thanks--even though I was already using it.

Have been using it awhile myself now.

Thanks again Ken

 

[shortylickens]

Not bad. Not great either.

Can we have Fusetalk back?

 

[Shawn]

Much better than default, thanks

 

[Ryan Smith]

Not bad. Not great either.

Can we have Fusetalk back?

It has died and gone to a better place. Now if you want to go write your own CSS, then go for it. If it's good enough I might even add it to the style chooser.

 

[IlllI]

Hey gang,

With the permission of Ken g6, I have gone ahead and ported his VB Stylish script for the AT Forums to the internal styling system. Ken's theme has been well received, so adding it to the internal system means it can be made available across all browsers without requiring 3rd party plugins.

Thank you for this. You've made the forum more tolerable.

 

[IlllI]

actually... the 'main' forum page doesn't really look like the rest of the VB theme pages.
What I mean is if you go here https://forums.anandtech.com/
it looks a lot more different compared to all the other sub forums I guess.
Here is a picture of what I mean https://i.imgur.com/oOTF3tD.jpg

Is there any way to get https://forums.anandtech.com/ to look more like the rest of the vb theme?

 

[Ken g6]

Is there any way to get https://forums.anandtech.com/ to look more like the rest of the vb theme?

Probably. I'm not planning on any more changes other than bug fixes at this point.

 

[Ryan Smith]

Probably. I'm not planning on any more changes other than bug fixes at this point.

Nor would we ask it of you. You've already done so much, Ken.

 

[IlllI]

Can someone please update this? The forum looks even worse that the previous move to xenforo, if that can be believed

 

[Ken g6]

Can someone please update this? The forum looks even worse that the previous move to xenforo, if that can be believed

I'm not inclined to work too hard on this yet, because I read this in another thread:

Of note, this is only Phase 0 of the upgrades planned. Phase 1 and Phase 1.5 will contain a more robust reputation system that will doubtless replace that green bar you see now listing Likes breakdowns.

Who knows what else they'll change! But I did do a little work toward this, so maybe I can clean it up and post something that makes threads look better soon.

 

[Ken g6]

I have a partial vBulletin style at the original URL: https://userstyles.org/styles/131291/anandtech-forums-vbulletin-style

It could use a lot more work, but I don't know when the next upgrades are planned.

Edit: P.S. Don't use Stylish - it spies on you. Use the Stylus add-on instead.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Ken, do you take the site's CSS files from one particular theme and modify them, or do you just do a subset of rules that you expect to be loaded after the site's and override them? I'm doing the latter (using Stylus), but with a complex site, it's easy to miss quite a few things. I wouldn't expect mine could really be published as a style that anyone could use, because it would break in so many instances.

 

[Ken g6]

do you just do a subset of rules that you expect to be loaded after the site's and override them? I'm doing the latter (using Stylus)

Me too.

I wouldn't expect mine could really be published as a style that anyone could use, because it would break in so many instances.

Mine's certainly not ready for publishing yet. But I think I should be able to cover enough instances to be useful, at least.

 

[jpishgar]

Phase 0, Phase 1, and Phase 1.5 have been rolled out. I don't expect too much more in the way of gargantuan changes to the theme or feature-set.

Article Management System (part of 1.5) is the one part that is still pending release - but shouldn't be too disruptive on the themes end of things at all.

The reputation system itself shouldn't muck up too much theme-wise either.

 

[Carson Dyle]

No, it doesn't mess much up. It's pretty easy to suppress all of that garbage.

 

[IlllI]

I'm not inclined to work too hard on this yet, because I read this in another thread:

Who knows what else they'll change! But I did do a little work toward this, so maybe I can clean it up and post something that makes threads look better soon.

Thanks for the info and update

 

[DrMrLordX]

I would love to see this return as a style choice on AT.

 

[IlllI]

hopefully this can be updated for 2020

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah, getting tired of dark mode.

 

[Ken g6]

I went ahead and updated the user style with what I've been using lately. Remember, use Stylus to install it, because Stylish spies on you.