vB4's new style - My revision and opinion
 

After reviewing the blog post highlighting the new upcoming theme of vBulletin 4, I had mixed feelings. From a coder's and designer's standpoint, I feel it is already restrictive in a lack-of-fluid framework type of way. I like the idea of the new homepage, but it seems a bit uneasy and not very structured. Though I see how it works and why it works, when you look at it for a customized standpoint, it seems like people will need to undo the new theme before they can build off of it.

Of course, I don't know how the new template system revision works, but just from a 3rd party perspective in what can be done, I'm worried. CSS iis definitely the right step and tableless CSS (when not needed for tabluar data) is definitely needed. However, from the looks of the new theme and my experience with the new templates added in 3.7 and 3.8... The following concern comes to light:

Using CSS only where is needed to reduce amount to revise...?

That being, do you have a set class that will modify a piece of data, used in more than one spot and in more than one condition? An example is the light grey floating data as seen in the preview for statistical data representation. As it seems, there's more than one way to style this, which has been shown by the placement of of those that actually float and other than do not.

An example of what seemed perfect for a framework point of view is tcat, thead, and alt1/2, where it remained consistant and changes would effect all areas of the forum without a large chance of a killing the custom style being added (or rather, requiring more work than needed to get a work around).

The main concern is if there will be too many classes of CSS that define many elements that could just be defined by one class to retain consistancy throughout the framework; thus not having an opinionated style addition into a given template just to make it 'fit'. I would hope there isn't a huge length of lines in the CSS like within Wordpress that just overly define and add changes that weren't needed for framework.

Yes, I realized I explained the concern three different ways, but that's just for clarity. I've seen the same problem in each preview, where it seemed like it was forcing a given style on you and thus you must adapt or people that want the more traditional feel to customize in, must strip the system and rebuild and even edit templates as needed, for CSS needs (not data structure as it would be preferred as the only need to edit templates).

Attached, I've reworked the graphics and basic structure, though heavily referenced off of Kier's design, to create what I'd see as a more fluid framework to work off of, while still giving style. Namely, the arrangement doesn't require much of a CSS work around and is simple enough to build off of while each element uses the same 'style' and thus no conditional waste-of-a-CSS-class is needed. This would, as well, ensure the CSS is nicely compact and only the diverse elements would need style.

Some may not like it, that's fine, but it's just a "if I was to design vb4 based off of the current concept". I've also uploaded the picture at the location below, due to vBulletin auto-resizing attachments:



Attached Images http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/images/attach/jpg.gif vbulletinv4.jpg‎ (79.1 KB)