A BRAND NEW FISD! Welcome to the new skin!

[ZeroRoom[TK]]

Many of you will already have noticed, but the FISD Forum has a brand new skin for 2012. Those of you who simply use the default skin or log on and off irregularly will notice as soon as you arrive, but for those of you who have chosen a skin from the skin changer menu in the bottom left hand corner of the page you will need to manually select FISD 2012 to see the changes. Anyone as crazy as me who leaves FISD open 24/7 on their desktop may need to refresh or empty your caches to see the changes and get the full new experience - but more on that later.

 

First, as I always do, let me start by saying that the upgrade path is always fraught with surprises and a learning curve, so while we have done our best to stay on top of any glitches or bugs as more and more people start using it who knows what new issues might be discovered buried deep in the bowels of the Death Star, so feel free to post any oddities you may experience here.

 

Secondly - if you are not seeing the new skin after refreshing (nicknamed Steel) you may need to empty your cache. This is easily done. Most browsers have an empty cache function either under program name drop down in the top left (as with Safari) or as part of the "Clear Browser Data" menu (as with Chrome or Firefox).

 

The changes in 2012 are mostly cosmetic and won't require the learning curve of last years update but it is worth mentioning that the Login window now supports autosave - no more time spent retyping your name and password every time you show up! Now you can let your browser autofill for you.

 

We are always endeavouring to make friendlier, better and easier to use and we count on our members feedback to keep improving. If you have any questions or issues with the update be sure to post them here or in the Tech Centre so we can be aware of them and keep FISD the best possible forum experience for all our users.

 

ONE LAST THING:

 

In order to protect ourselves against any potential issues we have left the '2011.2' and the '2011.White' skins as selectable options in the skin changer for the time being. However this is simply to grandfather them out and I suggest you switch to 2012 as soon as possible as in a week or so the 2011 skins will no longer be accessible.

 

Well that's about it from me - enjoy the new FISD and be sure to let us know what you think!

 

With Unquestioned Loyalty

 

ZeroRoom

Webmaster

[bigironvault]

Hi first of all great work. Only one point - I noticed that the threads with multiple pages that have the little page buttons at the bottom are hard to read except for the page that you're on. ie. When you're on page 2, and there are 3 pages in the thread... 1 and 3 are difficult to read and at quick glance don't appear to be there at all and you have to "mouseover" to find the buttons. Just FYI.

 

Suggest instead of grey ... maybe white for the numbers of the pages you are not on, and black for the one that you are?

Edited March 22, 2012 by bigironvault

[ZeroRoom[TK]]

Try refreshing - it should look like this:

 

 

Which browser are you using?

Edited March 18, 2021 by gmrhodes13
photos updated gmrhodes13 2021

[bigironvault]

Heya released my cache, etc. etc. but still not showing up like that. I'm on IE9. Honestly, it's not a big deal to me. Don't worry about lil' old me.

[ZeroRoom[TK]]

It's probably an issue IE9 has with CSS gradients (and those buttons are pure CSS) - I'll make an IE fix for it

[bigironvault]

Thanks! If you want I can send you a screenshot of what it looks like from my end. Just PM me your email. Cheers!

[arbayer2[TK]]

I like the new theme, looks far more Empire-y than I first thought! However, the background can be a little busy and it makes looking at the user listing at the bottom of the page a bit difficult. Also, it may be that I'm just using Windows XP, but even though font smoothing is active under Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance, the fonts seem slightly too sharp. Also it's odd that the first character of the titles of each section of the page (such as "Reply to this topic", "Also tagged with...") seem to be in bold. Was that intentional or is my browser playing tricks on me (FirefoxPortable 11.0)?

Edited March 22, 2012 by arbayer2

[ZeroRoom[TK]]

PS:

I should have mentioned before - we have a new "Also Tagged With" function. This a great addition that helps you find topics of the same vein using the topic tags to group them. If you're looking at a topic on, say "applying helmet decals" below the topic posts you will see a menu with any other posts that reference this subject.

 

It's a great way to get the maximum amount of information on a subject in the minimum amount of time

[ZeroRoom[TK]]

but even though font smoothing is active under Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance, the fonts seem slightly too sharp.

 

That's definitely out of our control I'm afraid! Your computer is loading the fonts from it's own font library. When you say sharp do you mean aliased (jagged like in IE) or sharp as in super smooth (anti-aliased - which font smoothing should do but sort of cheats..)

 

Also it's odd that the first character of the titles of each section of the page (such as "Reply to this topic", "Also tagged with...") seem to be in bold. Was that intentional or is my browser playing tricks on me (FirefoxPortable 11.0)?

 

That probably is a CSS issue on our end but it's not set to do that. I just checked it out in Firefox but it's not happening for me... maybe that's also connected to font smoothing?

[Griffin-X[TK]]

Looking good...!

[Mopar McNeer]

A welcome surprise. :thumbsup:

[arbayer2[TK]]

That's definitely out of our control I'm afraid! Your computer is loading the fonts from it's own font library. When you say sharp do you mean aliased (jagged like in IE) or sharp as in super smooth (anti-aliased - which font smoothing should do but sort of cheats..)

 

 

 

That probably is a CSS issue on our end but it's not set to do that. I just checked it out in Firefox but it's not happening for me... maybe that's also connected to font smoothing?

 

 

 

A. For "Sharp" I actually meant aliased. It could also be that the monitor this computer uses is a 16:9 one set to run in 4:3. It's not my computer so I can't really adjust the monitor's settings to my preference, but it doesn't matter much in the long run.

 

B. Possibly. I'm not exactly running vanilla Firefox as it's both a portable version and it's also set up with NoScript, Flashblock and a custom theme set. But to my knowledge only NoScript could possibly have caused something affecting fonts as it's the only addon I've installed that deals with webpage scripting. I've also allowed all external permissions with the exception of Facebook's integration into this website (Under NoScript's permissions menu both google.com and whitearmor.net are allowed to load scripts, facebook.net isn't allowed.)

 

I'm sure that under normal operation on my desktop computer the issues I've mentioned wouldn't show up at all, but I'm on extended vacation at the moment so I have to use my dad's computer. EIther way, they're just observations and don't make it impossible to enjoy the new site theme, so I won't worry about it very much.

[TK bondservnt[501st]]

I would not erase the 2011 skins until we have a full test of the new ones!

[Turrican]

Looks realy nice and fresh.

Thank's for the lot of work you have done.

[irocink33[TK]]

What a great looking new skin for the forums. Great job guys! Looks fantastic!

[HawkTrooper]

The new skin looks awesome. Great job, guys!