[bytech]

Phew, at last I think everything is in place for the IPB Mocha Skin I mentioned a few days ago. You can download a copy from http://www.bytech.ca/downloads/ . This is my first release, and this baby is free. Please, please, let me know if you bump into any problems with it, or if anything is out of the ordinary (even if you can fix it, I'd like to be able to make the whole thing as easy as possible for those whom may not be able to... so please send me a PM or drop me a note here). Enjoy!

[Debbie]

[Debbie]

Great skin - well done

[bytech]

Thanks Debbie. The encouragement from the community alone was worth it. Proud to be part of the IPB community!

[Debbie]

[Brandon C]

Excellent skin, and nice site download page!

[bytech]

Brandon C, on Feb 7 2006, 08:07 PM, said:

Excellent skin, and nice site download page!

Thanks. I'm a "bit" of a perfectionist when it comes to web design, and it "only" took me about 5 hours to create. Still a few things I need to fix on it, but it passed the "can others see it yet" test.

[Nimdock]

Thank you for the great skin...


I do have a couple of questions. Did you forget to make some of the images or was that intentional?





Also, what's with the V's in the menus...

[bytech]

Not intentional. I think those are the "dotted" folders? Will have a look and release a patch ASAP. Thanks for pointing this one out Nimdock! I think the Vs are missing images. I thought I'd gone through all of that, but I guess working at 02:00 in the morning shows.

[Nimdock]

No problem.

Yep, those are the images with the dots for the topics in which the user has posted.

[bytech]

Got the prob with the Vs solved... now my graphic software is acting up, but I should have the rest of the images fixed in a couple of hours. I also noticed a lack of transparency in the Email icon, so I'll be fixing that too...

[bytech]

Here is the patch: http://www.bytech.ca.../click.php?id=3
Full download with the fixes will be available through the official website in about half an hour. Thanks again Nimdock!

[Nimdock]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

[//Nathan]

I am thinking of recommending this skin to an IPB I know of whose admins don't come here (though I have recommended they do) but they're really new to the scene. I have a couple questions before I recommend it though:

First, will the patched release be out soon? The fewer steps they have to go through, the better.

Second, about credits/removal... If they download it, what credits are there? Is it just a link at the bottom like the one they have now (darkness v2)? Or are there nags/ads placed about? It's just I've never heard of a skin that has optional credit removal. I like the credits where they are as long as they're non intrusive, so the people who made it can get recognition. I would never get IPB Copyright Removal because I want people to know it's an IPB and to have that link. Now, they'd be able to change the board header, right? Or would that be considered credit removal? Because they'll want their own header.

Linking to a couple screenies posted in the other thread:

http://www.polifi.ca/mocha-screen1.png
http://www.polifi.ca/mocha-screen3.png

[bytech]

Hi Nathan,
Thank you for thinking of recommending this skin!
The patch is already out as a stand alone file for those whom already installed the skin, and the fixes are now part of the full download as well.

The credits can now be previewed from our download page (click on the magnifying glass beside the download links). Very unintrusive as you will see. The header is part of the design but not part of the credits. You may change it beyond recognition.

[//Nathan]

Yeah, the board I'm thinking of (darkrealitymb.com) used to be mine, but I'm sort of serving as like a technical advisor, as I have 2.5 years experience running an IPB and they have none. I had four skins, and they removed all but this really dark one (noted above), and the community called out for a lighter skin option. I think they'd like to go their own way rather than putting the skins back that I had, and your skin is very attractive. Odd, when I think of a brown skin, I don't think of coffee, I think of something very foul. Yet when I used Ubuntu, which has a brown GUI, I found it really pleasing... your skin accomplishes the same feel.

Neither of those credits are intrusive at all. Can't say the new admins will go for it, but I'll certainly recommend it. Good job on the skin by the way.

Oh yeah, here's the link where I mentioned it. http://www.darkreali...?showtopic=3828

[bytech]

Ubuntu's brown gives it a very stable feeling. Awsome distro, but at the end of the day I ran back to my KDE (now under PCLinux as that was the only distro that recognised my EIDE controller card).

Thanks for the compliments. As I mentioned before the community has been awsome on this one, and I think I'll make skin releases a regular activity.

[//Nathan]

Well you know there's a KDE Ubuntu, right? I don't know much about Linux, but I heard of something called KDEbuntu that integrates that environment. Myself, not knowing much, I prefer Gnome to KDE, but that's just because the newest ones I used used Gnome exclusively. I don't know much about the difference.

If you make any more skins, I'd love to hear about them. I like green and blue skins, and grey... the three I had that were canned were grey and green versions of the default - the default was tossed as well.

[bytech]

Yeah, there is something called Kubuntu which is KDE based. Right now I am really happy with PCLinux... Seems to be the best distro for "out of the box" usage with good up to date repos.

I'll be sure to keep everyone informed of anything else I release. For now I think I'll sit tight and see what problems come up with Mocha, if any... make sure I don't make the same mistakes twice.

[Nimdock]

Hey bytech, in profile view, the icon for e-mail's and PM's has a blue background.