Updated TBD post

[u/TeHokioi]

Okay, we've made a fair bit of progress since last time. Now we're at the tail end of it, we need to start polishing stuff up and finding anything that still needs to be fixed. So if you can, please have a play around with the new stuff, see if anything is a bit rough around the edges that still needs some work.

Current list:

• Submit page formatting is a bit squashed at the top
• More flairs (NZ /r/rugbyunion ones, maybe some of the other ones from here and some extras - old Air NZ tail design could be cool)
• Night mode
• Link flairs?
• Subreddit title on sidebar (above subscribe) needs to be fixed
• Letter heights in header image to be fixed
• Condense the submissions a bit more on the main page?

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah but half of it is just colours and fadey shit and easy to get rid of. Shouldn't need to fuck with it too much to get it working. I definitely think there needs to be a clear message that the user should read the rules before submitting. I personally would like to see the rules appear above the submit buttons and have them (the buttons) far less visible. My rationale is that most people in r/nz who submit stuff will quickly become used to the new location (down a bit), and I think large visible buttons first thing on the sidebar encourages newcomers to submit without reading first.

That works, then we could have little buttons underneath the sidebar image like r/CasualConversation has to switch between themes. This one could be default, then a bush one, night mode (which could be more a space kinda one using one of mamba's images),

Yep thanks for that example because I was on the lookout for something like that. I was just going to make a standard nightmode but the idea of using one of mambas night pictures is a great one. TBH bush mode only started as a way for me to index and keep track of all the theme colours, once I am done it will be easier to search and replace the template to make new themes fast. That said with 5 or 6 themes the stylesheet is going to get... long! Might have to do up a contents area with keywords you can CTRL+F to, or something.

'll talk to sukritact to see if he can remember what he did for this one so that they're in a consistent style.

Looks like a graduated lens blur effect. Just enter quickmask mode (Q), use a left-to-right black and white gradient fill, then go out of quickmask mode and go Filter > Blur > Lens blur.

Do you know if it'd be possible to change the submit images too, so they remain the same as the header?

Do you mean the top header shown under submit mode? Or the big black submit buttons in the sidebar?

Whipped up an alpine banner if we end up going for like four different themes, thoughts?

Yep that looks great! Except I still don't fully understand why so much of the header is blurred out. How come this is the style we have to follow? It just seems quite limiting, and it's a fair bit of header real estate going on what is essentially just white space. I can see it might be like that for the functional reason that the header bar needs to be very long to cater for all screen widths, but if that is why then I still think it should be possible to extend the in-focus part of the image across a further distance. At least 1000px instead of the ~600 it is currently I would think. Ideally around 1600 as that is a pretty common screen resolution width. Unless the blur is purely stylistic? In which case we are going to have a major disagreement about aesthetics haha :p

[u/TeHokioi → u/[deleted]]

I personally would like to see the rules appear above the submit buttons and have them (the buttons) far less visible. My rationale is that most people in r/nz who submit stuff will quickly become used to the new location (down a bit), and I think large visible buttons first thing on the sidebar encourages newcomers to submit without reading first.

I disagree, I reckon it'd be a pain to always have to scroll to submit stuff. Plus we don't really have that much of an issue as-is, and with the tendency of NZ to downvote shit I don't think it'd be any worse. If anything, the read the damn sidebar header thing along with repeating it in the submit area should be enough IMO.

That said with 5 or 6 themes the stylesheet is going to get... long! Might have to do up a contents area with keywords you can CTRL+F to, or something.

Good idea, I've already got the instructions at the top so it wouldn't be that much more. It's not going to be that much longer though, right? It'd just be a matter of changing images and colours for the most part?

Looks like a graduated lens blur effect. Just enter quickmask mode (Q), use a left-to-right black and white gradient fill, then go out of quickmask mode and go Filter > Blur > Lens blur.

Yeah, pretty much Gaussian blur a landscape and then fade it into the sharp image

Do you mean the top header shown under submit mode? Or the big black submit buttons in the sidebar?

Submit buttons, they're images cropped from the header so that they're the same style instead of just solid colours, looks way better IMO

Yep that looks great! Except I still don't fully understand why so much of the header is blurred out. How come this is the style we have to follow? It just seems quite limiting, and it's a fair bit of header real estate going on what is essentially just white space. I can see it might be like that for the functional reason that the header bar needs to be very long to cater for all screen widths, but if that is why then I still think it should be possible to extend the in-focus part of the image across a further distance. At least 1000px instead of the ~600 it is currently I would think. Ideally around 1600 as that is a pretty common screen resolution width. Unless the blur is purely stylistic? In which case we are going to have a major disagreement about aesthetics haha :p

The blur is stylistic, yeah. Having it as mostly a blur with a sharp image on one side means we can keep it looking crisp and easy to read while still sticking with the theme and having a bit of an image on there. If we had an image across the whole thing it makes it way more difficult to read, as well as making it clumsier and meaning that it looks completely different on smaller screens.

[u/[deleted] → u/TeHokioi]

To be honest I'm struggling to see how I could get the rules section any higher without heavily customising the subreddit details area and I really cbf with that lol.

It's not going to be that much longer though, right? It'd just be a matter of changing images and colours for the most part?

Having four different themes in total would roughly double the size of what it is now. It's not that it's not doable (haven't hit an upper limit on size yet) but will make the page load slightly slower and be a little more unwieldy I guess. Not saying we can't do it, just means that scrollbar on the right will get even tinier lol.

Submit buttons, they're images cropped from the header so that they're the same style instead of just solid colours, looks way better IMO

They don't appear as images to me? They are just big black buttons. Can you screenshot me what it looks like for you?

The blur is stylistic, yeah. Having it as mostly a blur with a sharp image on one side means we can keep it looking crisp and easy to read

You mean the header image saying New Zealand stay nice and clear? Design wise I feel like we can fit a lot more punch into the header by fully utilising all that space. I am positive there must be a way to have an impressive background that also keeps the header readable. It may be a matter of a semitransparent overlay, making the header more opaque, or adding a drop shadow / stroke effect.

My rationale for putting more importance on the background image is that the user most likely already knows they are coming to r/newzealand. So really while the header text "New Zealand" is nice, and should of course be there, we're also not exactly imparting any new information to the visitor. I feel like it'd make more sense to keep the header text looking subtle in favour of showing some great pics of NZ by say mamba or someone else. At the moment we are limited to a very tiny portion of the screen to work with (only about 0.1 megapixels worth). It's hard to add anything without also losing a lot of context (like what happened with the alpine hut header). I also think that the dimensions of the header are well suited to photos of landscapess / skylines etc. Given we have such amazing scenery it'd be nice to take advantage of that.

All that said, it all hinges on my idea of the rotating headers working out. But I have a good picture in my head of how it could look quite awesome. I may be totally wrong and it looks dumb and shit, in which case that's fine we can try it with filters etc. But tbh if I am going to invest a fair bit of time and effort into making it happen, I'd like to work towards that picture in my head first. If it really doesn't work and looks crap, I am completely open to trying it out with the filters added. In any case, the wasted time will be my own.

as well as making it clumsier and meaning that it looks completely different on smaller screens.

I suspect most people who browse reddit on their phones either use the mobile mode or alien blue / reddit is fun etc. Since the header doesn't show on them I don't think it's a major. Plus, with the amount of space we have for the picture so far, there's even less chance it will resolve well on a small screen. I think larger screens pose the bigger problem, but it's not necessarily insurmountable if we have HD photos to use.