Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Just a few suggestions... =^-^=

Okay, I have been using this site to keep track of pictures of some chat art and others some reference stuff like clothes and such.

But can we have a 2nd picture tab so its better sorted?


[Now for my other suggestions...]

I know there is a bit of text code you can use to push text to the left, right, or middle but there is no real easy way of doing this button wise unless you use the code. Can you perhaps add a button for that so its simpler to do in the future?

Along with perhaps a easier way of coloring text? Also linked works do not change color of text for like spoilers and such. Can that be changed?

Not all of us are as text code savy as we like to be so buttons might help :o

Not entirely sure what you mean? You mean a second gallery widget?

Certainly something that could be considered!

This has been asked for before, and I have always turned it down because it is SO very easy to abuse. Text's primary function is to be read by other people, and the temptation for many seems to be to over-decorate to the point of making reading very difficult. I've seen this become a major nuisance on so many other sites, and I don't want to have to create rules and force the mods to police yet another thing, so we make it unlikely by making it slightly inconvenient. It makes people think twice before recoloring everything. If they really want to, it's still there.

I'm not sure what you mean. Spoilers are by necessity a special color. Is that not working for you?

Ok I'll just do each part of the post in numbers to avoid the quote mess.


1. Yes, a 2nd gallery thing. It would be nice to have one to help sort out say char art from reference materials

2. Good to hear thanks

3. Well people are already able to recolor using text code its just harder for others that are not fully aware on how to do it. I mean it would be helpful say to have golden text on a dark red background or something black makes it easier to read. Yes some may make the poor choice of choosing a hard to read color but in the end thats their fault isn't it? It would only effect them because many would not want to read about the char in such color of text. But I don't think this should be blocked out just because one person may use colors others dislike reading. I mean this is our choice what color of what works for text. If there was a simple template for some colors and perhaps a way to easily move the mouse to a custom color it would make it easier for users to avoid the hard to read colors for their profile, now its just guess work on what number or code makes the color look right. The "i cant read this text" only seems to be a problem for people who want to rp with the char but then realize they cant read the text due to the person's choice but all that ends up effecting is the owner of the rpr profile and it doesn't harm anyone else.

4. My mistake I actually meant this

Now when I noticed at attempting using color code on text I noticed the color of that text that is "THIS" and "this is a test" wont change color. For some templates have a poor choice of color for its text soo people use color code to change the text color for that good reason yet collapse things like this dont change color which can be annoying and hard to read sometimes due to the template they have and the default text color that comes with it.

About point 3, nobody is being blocked from changing the text color. Epic members can even 100% customize their profile and every color on it. Our FAQ also explains how to use the color code to change that. Yes, it's totally up to people what color they want to pick, even if it blinds us and makes it impossible to read without getting a bad headache -- that's their choice, always.

But does that really mean we should not encourage the use of proper colors? It's available to everyone and anyone who takes five minutes to read through the FAQ, but by not making it as easy as a click of a button we encourage people to make a conscious decision to alter the text color, rather than change it on a whim because it 'looks neat' (but can't be read!). That's a good thing! Taking a few seconds to think about it can really make a difference, and there's nothing wrong with ensuring profiles can be read.

About 4, the link of a collapse tag can only be changed with CSS (which is for epic members only). This is because of the way the collapse tag code works. If you do it in the widget itself, it's like trying to put italics inside a bold tag:

As you can imagine that is not going to work! That's what you'd be trying to do with a collapse tag to change the colors though. Does that make sense to you or am I being silly with my explanation again?

I never said anyone is being blocked, (the user had mentioned rules on such things and I dont think it should be at all though any future rules or whatever they where talking about,) it was just a reply for that. Also its a little hard for us who do not know the color codes its harder. I was simply suggesting an easier way to do it. even with the little link you provided some of us like like simpler things

As for the collapse thing, I didn't mean the text inside it I meant the title of the collapse thing

Now it seems you are confused, I never mentioned bold or sideways text in it. I only mentioned the TITLE of the the collapse thing could not change in color which does make it hard to read on certain templates.

again not sure why you keep bring up this "[b ]Text[ b]" as I was talking about colors and not that. Aka making the title text change color.


edit: btw the FAQ only gives 2 examples on colors not where one could find the codes for the proper colors of what color words work. Its very brief and hard to understand, that might want to be updated for some of us who dont know color codes by heart, or at least link to more examples of what color = which code and a full list of of color words that work

That's a good idea, I'll definitely look into doing that. Which part of it is most confusing or unclear to you so that I can focus there?

About this:

You're right, it only really hurts people on their own profiles, and we'd never have the mods police poor color choices on profiles. My concern is much more for the forums, where the point is community, and being able to easily understand one another is a huge concern for any online group, much moreso than most give it credit for! Because the same WYSIWIG text editor is used throughout the site, things added for the profiles would also make their way into the forum.

As for needing to recolor a template because of "poor color choices" in the original, in my mind the solution to that is to bring it up here, have the community weigh in on whether they find it difficult to read, and if so, I need to fix it for everyone, not have people try to recolor it on an individual basis.

And about the collapse tag:

I think I understand what you're saying there. Sanne is right, given the nature of CSS, there isn't actually a good way to make links recolor through the color tag.

FYI, I've created a button that will help people align their text. It should show up tonight or in the next few days, whenever the next patch is ready to ship. I've also added a link to the standard color names in the BBCode tutorial (there's 160+, so it made more sense to link elsewhere than to put a huge list on the page). Hopefully that's a useful start.

you can use every color that has a hex code.

Yes, definitely. I think the question relates to not knowing HEX codes, and trying to make it easier for users who find that complicated.

Well it only gave 2 examples, one of the hex code the other of normal color names yet the full list of color names isnt listed so some colors I attempted didn't work. Also there was no guide for hex code so it was hard to find correct shades of colors.

Well some templates just hard dark background dark text and it was hard to read. If there was say some default different colors of text that came with each template. Because some of them come with text color thats just hard to read on the background



Ok but again with some templates making the text on the page darker it blends in too well with the background for some of them making the title harder to see, if each template came with a small chocie of text color it migth be easier



ps: Glad to see something is going be added soon I look forward to it

Hey Ed,

Can you list a few of the templates you're having that trouble with?

Well there are a few darker templates that have dark text, they are just hard to read.

There is a small bunch of them but...for example

Arabesque - the text seems fine but the problem is the collapse text is this dark hard to read mess, making it hard to read any titles with it. The text is just too dark compared to the red background.

There are a few other darker profile templates that just have the text a lighter shade of text compared to the background making it a bit difficult to read as well. I don't have all the names because I try to avoid them for the most part.
But for example perhaps

Dull Stone, and Stone (Shale) are just an example of what I mean with the text being only a bit lighter then the background making it a bit hard to read

Having dark template with dark but slightly lighter text is hard to read, at least for me anyway and perhaps a few others.

I'm sorry! I thought that's what you meant when you said "But I don't think this should be blocked out just because one person may use colors others dislike reading." I misunderstood then.

Did you know that there are 16,777,216 HEX codes available from the default color wheel? It would be a little hard to list them all, but there are many free online tools available to help you pick a HEX code. Colorpicker.com is super handy. I use it when I don't feel like opening Photoshop and waiting for it to load everything just to get one HEX code. I think using one of these works out a little better than compiling a list of more than 16.5 million codes, don't you agree?

I apologize if my comparison was a little funky and confusing. I was trying to explain the idea of coloring a collapse title. What you want would require you to do this:

That will never ever work because doing this is the same idea as putting an italics code inside a bold tag (the example I gave in my first post). Therefore, the only way to change the link color for a collapse title is by editing the CSS directly that colors this.

Does that make more sense? It's not my intention to frustrate you, I was trying to explain why that doesn't work too well. I hope the color picker will be useful to you though!

When I said list the colors, I meant have a link to the full list somewhere online of the hex codes. Also have a list of all the word colors that work. Because gold doesn't even though red does. It's just a bit hard to find the correct words if you don't use Hex code.


Anyway as for coloring the collapse title there is 1 problem....yes I know I cant currently do it but some templates pic out the worse possible color for the title link making the text unreadable as I said in my other post. If nothing else give us a way to fix that.

A list of the words for the colors sounds good to me! Guess what I found with a simple Google search?



I'm not sure why you say 'gold' doesn't work though, because it works for me. I randomly tested a whole bunch of these words and they all check out.

As for linking to a HEX color picker... I'm not certain if this is wise. If RPR officially links to another site, and this site has malicious advertisement or changes their site after we check it out for bad stuff, we're unknowingly sending people into their doom. And while we're not responsible for another site's content, we're still sort of supporting it! It would be awful if that happened.

If you Google "HEX color picker", you get hundreds of thousands of results with all sorts of choices. Wouldn't it be a better idea to mention "If you Google 'HEX color picker', you can find a color picker for HEX codes" instead? Of course that's Kim's decision to make (she might opt to link to a site anyway!), but I personally would rather let people Google it themselves just in case a website decides to go rogue. You can always bookmark your site of choice to make it easier, since there are millions and millions of forums who use the BBC for coloring text, and they may not have a complete list or link to a HEX color picker either.

As for the templates, there IS a way to fix it, but it's restricted to Epic Members and only for people who are somewhat familiar with CSS. Some templates do have really dark link colors, making it hard to read. But there's also the issue that some monitors are brighter or darker, so it can be really tough to find a suitable color for a template. I did check out the Arabesque template, and the links are quite dark.

I also noticed that collapse tag links don't have a hover color. Normal links usually have a lighter or more readable color, so if you hover of them you can still read them. The collapse tags don't. Is there a way to make collapse tags color-hover too?

I actually already added a link to a list of color words to the BBCode FAQ document. The only reason I haven't added a link to a HEX color picker is that there are SO many I was overwhelmed trying to choose one that is simple and obvious to use, and also wasn't plastered in 20,000 ads.

Sort of. It's another one of those very browser dependent things.

Oh shoot, you did! That's sweet. I checked www.colorpicker.com, it has no ads and from what I can tell no malicious stuff going on. It's very simple, to the point but with enough details to make it usable.

Oh geez, you know I looked at that one first and missed that the HEX code was being outputted at the top, it just looked like it was giving out the RGB on the side. Durrrr. Okay, I'll put a link to that in.

The new alignment button seems to be working great!

Good now that you found it please do add that collapse list to the FAQ thing if you haven't already.
1. I dont know why gold didnt work, perhaps that night I tried golden but again I'm not sure as it was awhile ago.

2.Yes one could google it but some of us are unaware if some of the thousands of results are correct or even work on this site -.- Just toss us a bone here in the FAQ if you mange to find a safe list of them.

3. Ok heres an idea again, if there is a way to fix it only for paying members why not give free members a few basic colors just so it can be seen from each template. Something, anything.. at least so its not impossible to read.

4. The hovering mouse thing doesnt always work for some browser versions -.- soo I'm guessing that just some people not all of us



Also if you think people would abuse a color picker thing for text then restrict it just to profile use and not on the forums, that way no one is harmed from someone's choice of colored text and it cant be abused

Updated collapse tag color for the arabesque template to be 50% lighter. Not sure why it was so dark!