Extended Forum Options

[Frostiikin]

Hello there!

Today, i'd like to propose a new feature to add to the forums, Or actually, many various features that I think would enhance the forums in various different ways.

 

Thingy #1: The ability to set a default font/text color

This is something that i've seen as a google chrome plugin for a different forum, which simply sets the user's default text color and font before they type a message. As simple as it sounds, it adds a lot of customizability to the forums, and if used alongside signatures, users could truly stand apart from eachother at just a simple glance.

 

Thingy #2: Custom emoticons

Basically, I want it so that you can set an image URL inside of your settings to be a thing that pops up in the emojiis tab. Once a image is selected, it'll be downscaled to be around the size of your average emote. The custom tab would be at the very top, above the built in emojiis for easier access. The point of this would be so that you don't have to constantly re-upload an image that you would like to use as an "emote". 

 

Thingy #3:

This idea is way less developed, but once I get a better grasp of exactly what it is i'll edit this thread. Basically, I had an idea where you can set it to automatically fade through your favorite dragons right under your profile pic, and they would actually work as the links to the real dragons. I'm not exactly sure how it would work, but it'd be great way for users to show off their prized NDs, holidays, thuweds, ect without taking up a ton of space in their sigs.

 

That's about it for now, I hope that these additions are atleast considered. Bye! -Frostiikin

 

Edited July 11, 2018 by Frostiikin

[realicraft]

I give support
Here's support

[Kaini]

Keep in mind that the forums run on an existing platform, so it's not like TJ has full control over how it works. Not sure how much of this he would actually be able to control.

 

And you have to be careful with the different text colors - they can be really hard on the eyes for some people.

[Confused Cat]

#1

Please no. I wish people would stop using fonts or colors just to make their posts look different. Yes, it makes me recognize them as e.g. "the person who always posts everything in italics", but that is not a positive thing.

(Please don't take this personally, @Frostiikin  I would just really prefer thinking of someone as "that person who once posted that funny picture", "that person who is super smart", "that person who is great at drawing", or even "that person whose political views I don't like", rather than "that person who uses a different font for some reason".) 

Colors and font effects are often used to make important parts of a message (or important posts in a thread) stand out, and in my opinion that is what they should be used for.

 

#2

We can already upload an image to a post and later re-use it with the "Insert other media" -> "Insert existing attachment" feature. That's easy enough to use for us, and no additional work for TJ.

Edited July 11, 2018 by Confused Cat

[DuskOfTheStars]

Please, no. The forum is already hard enough to read. Why make people's posts HARDER to read with less effort?? I find it hard to read posts wholly coloured some colour other thwn black on this background. People with vision loss use the internet too - I'm one of them.

 

ETA: Also very much with Confused Cat here.

Edited July 11, 2018 by DuskOfTheStars

[HeatherMarie]

3 hours ago, Kaini said:

Keep in mind that the forums run on an existing platform, so it's not like TJ has full control over how it works. Not sure how much of this he would actually be able to control.

 

And you have to be careful with the different text colors - they can be really hard on the eyes for some people.

 

Yeah, this is exactly what I was thinking as I read the OP. I really really don't think #3 would even be possible with this specific forum, and I'm not sure #2 would either. This isn't a built-from-scratch forum that can be customized any which way. And YES to being careful about different text colors, and 'please no' to anything that makes different text colors more common. For a LOT of people those colors are very, very hard on the eyes and can cause eye strain or other issues very easily. For me personally the darker colors don't bother me much, but the bright 'neon'-ish colors are really really hard to read and make my eyes feel weird when I actually bother attempting to read them.

[Fuzzbucket]

Invision is totally inflexible, so mercifully  I don't see how this can fly. But if it bothers you THAT much, use an addon like Stylus.Then you can see what you want to see and the rest of us can carry on as we are.

 

And yes to Heather - different colour fonts all over are very hard on the eyes. Your initial post is very unpleasant to look at, Frostiikin, and if it hadn't been the OP, I wouldn't have read it - but one does need to see what is being suggested. I generally skip over luridly coloured posts, as do many others, and in the case of one person a few years ago who did all her posts in bright pink, I actually blocked her posts, and in the end so many people asked her to stop that she suddenly got it, and went back to normal colour 

 

This is a forum where we discuss stuff, not a forum to show off how much fancy stuff we can get into a post. Do you expect the newspapers and books you read to be in shocking pink with emojis on every page ? No - so why in a forum. We stand out from each other by our names and avatars; why on earth would anyone want to be spotted by posting in green glitter letters ? It suggests the poster thinks their post needs EXTRA attention. We are all equal here (except mods, who sometimes need to attract extra attention.)

 

As to the emoticons - just recently a shedload of new ones turned up i the drop-down, and are driving me and many other users to distraction. No more defaults, thanks; we can add our own when we want them. Easy !

 

tl;dr - no support. Dis-support if there is such a thing !

 

[Ruby Eyes]

#1: No support. It actually bothers me very much on other forums where this *is* an option. This also makes it more difficult when adding additional skins which we've begged TJ about for a long time already. Your purple text would be a pain in the sit-upon to read on a dark background.

 

#2: You're saying you still don't find what you need in that plethora of emoticons we have now?!

 

#3: Unlikely. Links to non-growing dragons are allowed on the forums, but not their on-site images. But you could probably find a tool on the internet somewhere so create an animated gif of your favourite dragons and link that to your scroll?

[Jazeki]

I would suggest using an add-on to your browser as others have mentioned or perhaps modify your forum posting style as you get used to life here. I see you're new to the forum and yes, sometimes, it can be exciting to write in a "specific" color or font style, but over time it gets tedious and really does start to cause people to get frustrated because they can't/don't want to read what you wrote. Mods and thread mods use colors to identify important info and I believe rp people use colors specifically in their section too. I think it's best to get comfortable with how the forum works before suggesting changes.

 

Also, emojis aren't a huge deal. This isn't like discord and I'm not sure how willing tj is to fiddle with things so that people can have custom emojis all the time. 

 

Finally, maybe look into an image cycler and double check the artists permission section before you start doing anything that links to specific dragon sprites. Also, remember that we can't link to growing things because that counts as spam.

[DuskOfTheStars]

To expand on rp people using colour, as one of them: we use colours to denote different characters' text, or sometimes on the separation of different characters on one post. As a general rule, we don't colour the whole thing as that's kind of a pain to read. But yeah, I'd save the colour in other sections for mod posts/project thread posts where they're highlighting important info.

 

And this forum is about posting text, not reacts. Real time stuff has more use for reacts than a forum has use for such, where they're only to give tone to a post.

[purplehaze]

I don't like to be discouraging to people with new ideas, but honestly none of these appeal to me or seem like something I would want to see used by others.

 

I agree with others who have already posted about the difficulty in reading colored text. I do use it occasionally, but generally with a specific purpose in mind -- not just to scream "look at me!" I generally find it hard to read and annoying and often skip posts that use colors I find difficult to read.

 

As far as your points 2 and 3, I just don't see any reason for needing those things. The forum can already get pretty cluttered-looking when people use signatures that are oversized. I think more images and custom emojis would just add to the clutter and take away from the purpose of the posts. 

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

I mean, the first suggestion I don't think is even very necessary. There's already an option to change your text colour and it's very easy to use, so I don't think having it be a default setting is really even necessary given that it's so easy