Been a while since I posted anything in here, so thought I might pop in and say hi. :)
I see theres been development towards responsive TP and even TP for SMF 2.1? How is the status of that now, is it more or less complete..or in beta?
For myself, its been a little..off, in the coding department. I did work last year on a theme project(more like default theme replacement)for Elkarte, but in the end I realized it wasn't what I wanted to do. The Elk is great, but it has gone its own way from SMF and I was having some RL issues as well so one thing led to another and work stopped on it. Last Christmas I picked up real-life oil painting again(stopped some 20 years ago) so that is my main focus nowadays..but when the paint dries I spend available time on coding :)
Currently working on a SMF 2.1 theme, but not over-reaching as I did with Elkarte. Too many ideas => to long on getting anyting *done*. Of course I have TP in mind for this, and thats why I am wondering about the state of its 2.1 status.
So, what have everyone been up to lately?
Hey bloc, good to hear from you again.
We seem to be doing ok, another release of TP was out a few days ago, although I did cock it up a bit, :-[ hopefully that's resolved now.
I think to be honest TP 1.3 and the responsive version TP 1.3R are just about even in terms of stability. So it's a question of which one to release next. Need more testers and feedback on TP 1.3R to be honest, that's something we need to work on.
TP2 is working on SMF 2.1 beta 3 atm, as can be seen here, http://cctestsite.info/testsite3/ Still needs the fixes added for php 7 I believe. I will also add that TP2 hasn't had the responsive makeover either, I was hoping allvip would work his magic on this one, he said he would. But he also has some RL stuff to deal with atm.
A better example here, on one of @rjen's test sites, https://test2.fjr-club.nl/
Great to see you're doing something you love, I quite like art myself, although I'm probably just about good enough with a paint brush to do the decorating. :P I do love photography. but don't seem to get much time for it nowadays.
Hello Bloc,
indeed, I have a TP test running on 2.1 beta 3. I manually made the PHP7 changes and that site is working fine with TP in SMF 2.1. I would love to have the Responsive version for 2.1 as well (TP 1.3R is working fine on my productive forum) but that won't be needed before 2.1 reached RC stage I assume.
I have checked the 2.1 readiness of the MODS I have, and still some of the must-haves are not updated yet. Once all that is ready I will move my forum to 2.1, including TP .
By that time I would also be interested in a theme for 2.1. Would be great to have one. Ik like your previous work.
Hey Bloc :) Good to hear you're doing OK :)
I tried to get on the 2.1 bandwagon in the last year or two for a site I want to run, even to the point of building big mods on it for what I want to run...
But 2.0.14 kind of soured me on SMF of late, to the point of forking SMF for the things I want to do, and have a few people on it that never touched SMF before so not dragged into all the drama etc.
Figured I could help out TP on the PHP 7 issues and that seems to have worked out OK :)
Quote from: Arantor on July 02, 2017, 05:12:33 PM
Hey Bloc :) Good to hear you're doing OK :)
I tried to get on the 2.1 bandwagon in the last year or two for a site I want to run, even to the point of building big mods on it for what I want to run...
But 2.0.14 kind of soured me on SMF of late, to the point of forking SMF for the things I want to do, and have a few people on it that never touched SMF before so not dragged into all the drama etc.
Figured I could help out TP on the PHP 7 issues and that seems to have worked out OK :)
Pete, the help on the php 7 have indeed worked well, thanks so much for helping us with this. O0 I see you're making some progress on your project, been getting the notifications. 8)
For bloc, those php 7 fixes, to save you searching, http://www.tinyportal.net/index.php?topic=35895.0
Thanks, Mick, great reading there.
I have a few ideas of how to show the blocks in SMF2.1..it may mean to rewrite some TP templates for the custom theme, mobile view does require some extra thinking on how to show things.
For example..panels or at least blocks may have to be shown one at a time - with a "header" panel to switch between them. Otherwise you will be forever swiping down/up to read. That goes for some of the forum parts too of course, especially the many menus.
Hi bloc, good to hear from you. Didn't know you love real-life oil painting. Love to see some of your works.
Quote from: william777 on July 03, 2017, 10:13:21 PM
Hi bloc, good to hear from you. Didn't know you love real-life oil painting. Love to see some of your works.
https://www.bjornhkristiansen.com/olje/
Quote from: bloc on July 03, 2017, 11:07:23 PM
https://www.bjornhkristiansen.com/olje/
WOW! They are indeed beautiful and realistic.
Quote from: bloc on July 03, 2017, 11:07:23 PM
Quote from: william777 on July 03, 2017, 10:13:21 PM
Hi bloc, good to hear from you. Didn't know you love real-life oil painting. Love to see some of your works.
https://www.bjornhkristiansen.com/olje/
Stunning work there bloc. 8)
Thank you :) Certainly a very rewarding hobby - and might be more too with time.
Not sure if you noticed, but the blog script used there is inspired by SMF, written from scratch. So combined interests on there I guess.
I know that feeling, ahaha.
Really like your paintings, too. :)
Sorry to resurrect this, but it looks like I'm 5 months late to this reunion. :) And the paintings are gone now. :(
Oh well, good to see familiar names on here Bloc, Arantor, and even William. lol And the usual TP peeps!
Things are going well here. Still working the same job and loving it. My free time is taken up now by working in the house and building in the basement rooms and things.
Great to hear from you, Brad :)
Well, the paintings are gone from my site because I am changing the site hehe(as usual).But they also exist on Facebook if you are interested: https://www.facebook.com/bjoernhkristiansen/media_set?set=a.1184874874975664.1073741841.100003594877811&type=3
Bloc those are amazing paintings!!
Sent a friend request on FB. Thanks for the link Bloc!
Its been a while :) but hello again.
Its strange how both this site and SMF site have remained unchanged , kind of like the houses are still there, when you visit years after. SMF is still at..SMF 2.0 it seems and TP seems to be going forward in small steps.
For me the interest in themes and coding have taken a back-seat to painting last year, but realising I still love both, I do follow recent trends in both coding and design. One exciting thing - which you may not have seen - is the support of CSS grid have now gotten to all major browsers. yay! well, except one..as always.
Anyway, you know the css and block design code put into TP? Well, now its *really* possible to chuck it all out in favor for pure CSS based grid code. Not just CSS/tables which I think you already converted to responsive CSS but also the HTML code. I just started to learn the new keywords and code and its quite interesting.
Quote from: bloc on June 16, 2018, 09:15:20 AM
Its been a while :) but hello again.
Hey! Nice to see you around again.
Quote from: bloc on June 16, 2018, 09:15:20 AM
Anyway, you know the css and block design code put into TP? Well, now its *really* possible to chuck it all out in favor for pure CSS based grid code. Not just CSS/tables which I think you already converted to responsive CSS but also the HTML code. I just started to learn the new keywords and code and its quite interesting.
I actually posted something using this recently here; https://www.tinyportal.net/index.php?topic=36052.0
Well I wanted to work out what was the minimum version that TinyPortal should support as, as you said IE doesn't support it very well. My mock up was about 2mins with simple grids and flex, the reordering function when you go responsive is really useful.
Interesting. I only glanced at it for now, but the argument seems to be going in favor of modern browsers using CSS grid and older browers either 1) using a well-supported flexbox model or 2) not using anything, but will simply get a mobile-like appearance.
It seems to be that you simply design some containers, then put all the elements in it,for example regular divs - and then you style theses divs into columns and rows. So IE for example, would only see a straight-up design and thus be encouraged to try other browsers..but they would still actually see the content. I like this thought better, because adding a flexbox alternative/fallback means more to maintain overall.
Quote from: bloc on June 16, 2018, 11:38:12 AM
It seems to be that you simply design some containers, then put all the elements in it,for example regular divs - and then you style theses divs into columns and rows.
That's pretty much it.
I'm all in favour of dropping support for IE, but then I've never used it and have never liked it. Edge supports it though, so hopefully in the near future that will be solved. IE 11 actually does support it with some custom commands although it isn't the current working spec so you don't get things like repeat etc.
Either way it's definitely the future.
Indeed.
Tino, are you also "tinoest" on SMF site? I have not been paying close attention to this site or SMF for that matter..but it seems SMF 2.1 is still the version in development?
Anyway, its great to see SMF team members working on TP :) I believe also Illori is currently a team member there.
Quote from: bloc on June 16, 2018, 01:13:42 PM
Tino, are you also "tinoest" on SMF site?
I am indeed tinoest, although I don't do much on SMF anymore as I got disillusioned with the SMF team and their ineptitude. I think I'm still a developer contributer and I occasionaly give my opinion but don't really contribute code anymore.
Quote from: bloc on June 16, 2018, 01:13:42 PM
I have not been paying close attention to this site or SMF for that matter..but it seems SMF 2.1 is still the version in development?
It is, although there is only a few developers working on it. Most have left to do their own thing, Arantor, emanuele, spuds, norv, nao, etc
I contribute more towards Elkarte now as I think that's what SMF 2.1 should of been if it wasn't for the fighting and 'feature freeze' to get an RC out ( which was mentioned about 2-3 years ago... )
I've changed a bit with here, got the responsive version out and fixed some bugs, also added a few features like the new wysiwyg, started on a big change then decided my time was better spent doing a portal like mod for Elkarte.
I see. This portal mod for Elkarte, is it official yet or just at the developing stage?
About SMF team, sad to hear its not gotten anywhere. Elkarte is something I looked at earlier, themes for it anyway, but my opinion then became that its template system was still rooted too much into a set look for it. It was not loosely coupled enought with the backend IMHO, so when I wanted to do something new I ended up rewriting the whole theme - again, as for SMF. That took away the motivation after a while I guess.
But thats not saying Elkarte isn't great otherwise. :)
Quote from: bloc on June 16, 2018, 08:41:59 PM
I see. This portal mod for Elkarte, is it official yet or just at the developing stage?
Just development, it's got the features I want in it. i.e. I can write articles/pages and display them on the front page. I've recently started to add the side bars after I discovered the css grid and flex attributes a few months ago. So I'll be adding blocks as they are called here at some point.
Quote from: bloc on June 16, 2018, 08:41:59 PM
Elkarte is something I looked at earlier, themes for it anyway, but my opinion then became that its template system was still rooted too much into a set look for it. It was not loosely coupled enought with the backend IMHO, so when I wanted to do something new I ended up rewriting the whole theme - again, as for SMF. That took away the motivation after a while I guess.
But thats not saying Elkarte isn't great otherwise. :)
I think that's due to their not really being a front end dev on the project, so it incorperates a back end kind of approach to front end work. Same as all the css I do does aswell tbf. I started to make a simple template system in TinyPortal then stopped. That was in this commit; https://github.com/tinoest/TinyPortal/commit/c1fc66ce642c6861417d87300680bdb502f3c41e
It's nothing like twig, Mustache, smarty or Blade mind. But did start to decouple the front end from the back end to a certain degree, although everyone has different idea's on what that actually means. Can you give me a example of what you mean?
Sure. The idea I had and still have, is that the templates 1) are more uniform, that is, re-use index pages more instead of having one per every major part of the forum for example. You end up having to rewrite for all of them, instead of a smaller(sized) ones that call smaller subtemplates fraom a general template.(Nao was on the right track there incidentally) But mostly 2) that the theme(default theme of course) isn't so rigidly tied in with the core output. For example, don't load javascript for displaying items in a click-based menu for the mini-profile on top of the page..and dynamically fetch some alerts there too. It means that if a designer do not want to use it, its loaded anyway in the javascript. Instead, perhaps build libraries that separate the code that MUST be in the code from whats usable by themes, give it a choice and don't force-load it in. (because "we can't possibly trust designers to handle it" :/ )
Other things like "cooking" together information into a compact variable to be displayed in a single point in the template..SMF have so far tried mostly to also supply all the ingredients of that variable - so at least the theme maker can extract that and use that(I know I have).
I guess the whole idea behind default theme is to make a impressive bullet-proof theme, and then just CSS-colorize that in other themes. But whats the point with a rather versatile theme/template system when you can't do anything with it anyway?
If I wanted to re-shape SMF - or Elkarte for that matter - it is to do exactly this, break up templates into re-usable subtemplates, provide switches that provide more or less information fetched(especially good if you want to make a lean mobile-first theme) and in essence let the theme decide how it will look. Be bold! :)
I know, it seems like devs have to release their full control, well, thats how every dev I've encountered reacted when I proposed this. But look at the projects now..how are they going to accumulate back the users that have vanished? Certainly not by just keep adding features. Today its about presentation, presentation, presentation. People know things can be powerful, they are used to complex systems with lots of features. Whats more important is HOW you present it, a bad experience in software can uproar and sink it(unless you are Google, Facebook or Apple, then you do anything :P) . I think SMF will continue to lose users as long as they still cling to one theme, one way of doing things.
[rant over]
Sorry, you asked. :)
Looking at your commit for TP, it looks good, breaking up things into smaller tpl files. You could also just let them be PHP template files..but I guess its easier to differentiate with the tpl extension.
The code for articles layout use more or less the same idea, having keywords for bulks of code. If it hasn't been changed since I worked on it. :D
Quote from: bloc on June 17, 2018, 11:27:57 AM
Sorry, you asked. :)
Not really, you've described in some parts what I started to do with that template I linked to. I had a header template and a footer template which I just included in the page I was actually displaying. It meant that I had to only define it once and could change it easily. Most of the other logic was smaller subtemplates if I needed them, I just included them.
Unfortunately unless you start to make the change in the templates on either Elkarte or SMF ( I think Elkarte are more likely to accept the change mind for Elkarte 2.0 ) I can't see it happening. It does make life alot easier for the designer, especially when there are a fair few whom don't even know php now. Arantor touched upon this on SMF I think in this thread; https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=556516.0
Just read that topic..nothing has changed since I was a bit more active on there, about 3-4 years ago. Actually, just reading it brought back memories and emotions that directly made me so furious the last time, that I have no desire to be in *that* state again. It kills every positive and motivating factor of doing anything for SMF ever again.
I can see your enthusiasm for moving TP forward though, and it reminds me why I did work on TP all those years ago :) Maybe I'll do some themeing with these new CSS stuff ..but it will certainly not be to those people's benefit - holding SMF stagnated for 10+ years really says it all... and to be frank, I don't think my themes are really so good that users will simply use them now anyway. Tried about a year ago last time, and there were no interest to speak of. (Always grateful for those that do enjoy the themes of course O0 )
Quote from: bloc on June 17, 2018, 06:44:53 PM
I can see your enthusiasm for moving TP forward though, and it reminds me why I did work on TP all those years ago :)
Unfortunately that enthusiasm is waning when I don't see a future for SMF, well at least not a good one. MyBB and PHPBB are moving forward a fair bit with modern design, SMF is just stuck without a decent project leader.
Nice to see you around though, if you want to rewrite the front end of TinyPortal, or work on a completely new varient I'm happy to work with you to get that done, doing it on your own can be a bit daunting and I really struggle with the current db structure of TinyPortal as it doesn't have IMO sensible naming conventions for the column names.
Quote from: tino on June 18, 2018, 06:38:09 PM
SMF is just stuck without a decent project leader.
you do know who i am right? your post is really insulting. it is not just the project managers job to keep SMF moving forward.
Quote from: illori on June 19, 2018, 10:25:21 AM
Quote from: tino on June 18, 2018, 06:38:09 PM
SMF is just stuck without a decent project leader.
you do know who i am right? your post is really insulting. it is not just the project managers job to keep SMF moving forward.
You're the Project Manager.... I see no Project Leader on SMF. They can be one and the same but not in all instances.
Either way my view stands there is no Project Lead, no clear direction.
If that insults you then it's no worse than what you've directed at me.