Markup of new Forum System

[BenMillard]

Structured Pages

By applying best practises to the HTML and CSS the forums generate, the processing required to generate each page, the size of templates and the overall size of pages could be radically reduced and interoperability improved.

 

For example, using meaningful elements of HTML, removing all presentational attributes from pages, avoiding any use of layout tables and so on makes markup much smaller and simpler.

 

With meaningful HTML structure, you can avoid a lot of class and id attributes. Instead, CSS context selectors can apply styling to the content according to the element it is contained by, and the ancestors of that parent. You can still have just as much graphicsy container borders and other ostentation, but with much leaner markup it would download to users faster and be easier to manage.

 

Modern Design

Chunky graphical borders in nested grids look a bit old-fashioned compared with the leading Web 2.0 sites and open source giants. I'd suggest the new forums shouldn't try to recreate the existing GTAF skins and should move with the times; using subtle graphics and uncluttered design to make using GTAF a lot more pleasent and up to date.

 

Message Formatting

Since Invision generates bloated and meaningless markup from some BBCodes, I'd suggest we allow people to use markdown syntax. It's already been ported to PHP, if that's what the new system's backend will be using. It's a format which has become quite popular in blog comment systems because users don't need to remember special codes and it generates meaningful markup.

 

Allowing basic HTML elements like <a href="" title="" rel=""> and the other HTML Phrase Elements would allow messages to be more richly structured without using presentational <span>s with lengthy class attributes. Allowing list markup as well would allow complex topics, such as mod organisation and forum rules, to be structured and presented in a more readable way.

 

Alternatively, you could do the opposite: strip post formatting to the bare minimum. No custom colours, no custom fonts, no custom text sizes. You probably only need these:

• [img] for screenshots, mod previews, chick pics, signatures, etc.
• [quote=Author,Date,Time] for reply to other people or quoting from other sources.
• [url] so you can link to (related) websites!
• [code] for modding discussions.
• A minimal set of smilies.

Hardly anyone uses lists, although I find them useful. Tables in messages are mostly they are just used for decoration. It's very rare that you need to post two-dimensional data (even for me!) so they could be removed.

 

Lean, Mean, Forum Machine

As speed is such an issue, stripped down post format options could compliment a removal of other unecessaries. Topic ratings, post icons, insanely detailed member profiles, complicated user access priviledges (like official gangs), forum calendar (when was the last time you used it?), karma (just causes hassle), award badges and so on.

 

I'm optimistic that the staff will come up with something better than we have now and I'm willing to help out with the specialist things like HTML element choice, CSS layout and suchlike.

Edited August 5, 2006 by Cerbera

[anuj]

 

Modern Design

Chunky graphical borders in nested grids look a bit old-fashioned compared with the leading Web 2.0 sites and open source giants. I'd suggest the new forums shouldn't try to recreate the existing GTAF skins and should move with the times; using subtle graphics and uncluttered design to make using GTAF a lot more pleasent and up to date.

 

So instead of being somewhat unique, you want us to be another cookie cutter xhtml+css website? Don't get me wrong, I love the style that places like csszengarden and the like use, but it just seems somewhat cliche at this point. Anyone can pick up and create one of these in about 15 minutes using Photoshop and any text editor. Uncluttered and subtle are other words for bland and boring. Striking a nice mix between graphic layouts and minimalist stuff seems the best way to do things.

 

Personally, I love the completely unnecessary things that make GTAF what it is. The member awards, permission masks, and the like are just plain fun to mess around with.

 

Also: If nobody else on the team replicates the default skin using the new skinning system (highly f*cking unlikely), I'll do it. We've already got 9-12 guys on the GUI team.

[Luke]

With regards to design, I for one f*cking love tank's designs, every single one of them. They're an integral part of GTAForums. As for XHTMLCSSBBQ compliancy, I agree we should be aiming for it - last time I asked around that was the current intention anyway.

 

I'll second anuj's offer to port any of the current skins to a new format.

[jarjar]

I'll second anuj's offer to port any of the current skins to a new format.

I'll third that . The skins used here on GTAForums are unique, and i for one love them all. They all look awesome. Why change? Is it no enough that we even have to change? I'm not worried either why about whether GTAForums is re-created or left the way it is now. As long as it works the same as it already does and is as popular as it already is, i will be satisfied .

[Luke]

I'll third that . The skins used here on GTAForums are unique, and i for one love them all. They all look awesome. Why change? Is it no enough that we even have to change? I'm not worried either why about whether GTAForums is re-created or left the way it is now. As long as it works the same as it already does and is as popular as it already is, i will be satisfied .

By no means did I mean that we shouldn't kick-start the new forum with a new skin that's slightly more modern (but not an exact replica of every other site on the net) - I just think we should aim to give people the choice of sticking with the old (and awesome) skins too.

[Svip]

We all know (and should understand by now) that when we move to a new software (and this case; self created software), it is more than likely that some of the features of the current system will be lost. Could be because it was overlooked during the creation of the new software, or that due to the new structure of the code, it was somehow "impossible" to add, since it would either take up too much code or do too much SQL queries, etc.

 

Whatever it may be, they may be relatively useless, as any software developer should make sure that the features she/he *wants* to add to a system, should also be of concern early on, and thus the code does allow these features. It does rarely happen though, that some features cannot be added for these reasons.

 

However, in light of this, some users/members of this board will complain that GTAF is suddenly lacking an important feature to them.

 

My point is, we will lose features, but we will also gain features - perhaps one as big as stability. OH MA GAWD.

 

Secondly, GTAF is one of the slowest sites I visit on regular basis, and GTAF isn't the largest of these sites. First of all, I assume it must be a server issue, since the funding for GTAF is not as large as compared to these other sites.

 

However, I think the issue may also have another reason. Due to the lack of a <!DOCTYPE>, most browsers (modern browsers at least, such as Firefox, IE and Opera, etc.) will go into "Quirks Mode" in attempt to render the site. Quirks Mode is by far much slower than other modes (which are named for each selection of HTML version in the <!DOCTYPE>) and thus make GTAF not only a slow site on server side, but also on client site.

 

And besides, why the hell is GTAF sending the CSS with it each time? Couldn't it just have that in a file?