SMF smileys

[Deprecated]

Does anybody else agree with me that ALL the smileys that come with SMF are really sucky? Some are even offensive!

I finally today just deleted ALL the factory standard sets and put in my custom set. I deleted "default" and put in a symlink to my set. (I did it that way because I wasn't sure if I just moved my smileys to the default directory whether it would mess up my existing mapping.)

But the standard SMF smileys are really bad! Their support site uses them and it makes my eyes bleed.

 

[Pete]

I like the default set that 2.0 has, always have.

 

[Deprecated]

LOLOL! Oh Pete... You would!!! LMAO!!!

You and I are the odd couple! Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to.

Felix and Oscar.

 

[Pete]

Eh, only the default set. Not thrilled by the akyhne set, and Aaron’s set was ok. Better than most of the ones produced by the community.

 

[Deprecated]

I've found it more to my liking to just collect them from around the 'Net and pick my favorites. I sometimes make my own from downsizing pictures I've found on the 'Net.

Do you or anybody know about SMF smiley mapping? Can you have your smileys in any of the directories and the software will find them?

Let me phrase that differently. Right now I have a symlink "default" to my directory "custom" just to get rid of the error or status message "not found in default set." Can I just re-make the "default" directory and put all my stuff there or would I have to re-map everything?

I know this sounds screwy but of course I started with the default set, I just added my own custom set. Then as time went on I kept deleting smileys from the default directory until today it was just empty. That's how I ended up with my screwy situation.

You know all we software neatness OCD people always like software stuff straight forward.

I guess I can just move them and see..... (i.e. delete the symlink and rename "custom" to "default.")

It's always better to ask, in case somebody just knows the answer.

 

[Pete]

It's a little more complicated than that.

Users can pick any set out of the available list - and it will try to map to whatever is in the set. So if I pick the alienine set, it will try to find the images in that folder, even if they're not there.

What I'd do is make a new folder, put all the smileys in it, tell SMF it's a new smiley set, make it the default set, then remove everything else so there's only one smiley set.

 

[Deprecated]

Thanks Pete. That's exactly what I did, made a new directory "custom" and that's where my smileys are. I changed "default" to a symlink just to get rid of the "not found in default set" message. Perhaps there is some way I can tell it that "custom" is the default directory. Sometimes SMF settings can be exasperating because of the convoluted thoughts of devs, and because the devs are a hive mind where part of it disagrees with the other. And the hive mind changes over time.

By "users" I presume you mean "forum operators."

Another amusing SMFism is that when you install mods you "download" mods from your local host to get them on the remote host. My thinking is reverse but I know how to do it.... ya think?

 

[Pete]

No, I mean forum users. By default, users can pick any of the available smiley sets to be used in their profile which is why it gets upset when images aren't in all folders.

 

[Deprecated]

OIC. My users don't get that choice, nor can they change the theme. I have strong ideas how the forum should look, and I usually uncheck user permissions to change it.

I understand the "error" messages now. I mean the logic behind them. It's like theme dysphoria or something.

Is there any mod that allows users to pick ONLY the background color for curve? I"m a member of a vB forum that you can choose red, green, or blue.

 

[Pete]

Nope, you’d need to make new themes or implement variants inside Curve to do that.

It’s all images, something you can’t easily just switch out.

 

[Deprecated]

Yes you are right! It took your comment to jiggle my memory. Not just images, SPRITES!

I recall now I modded my last theme and it was the dickens to change the sprites. I did but it was labor intensive.

I sometimes wonder if they could have done that but put the color in the CSS instead of in the images.

We all know that curve is fake CSS, instead of using CSS to make round corners they used round corner images. Curve is just the original scheme faked out to look like CSS. It's all the look of CSS without any of the utility of CSS.

With real CSS you could do what I want easily.

 

[Pete]

Nope because Curve was designed for IE6 where they wanted rounded corners but that didn’t exist in IE then, not rounded edges, not transparent PNGs (at least out of the box, there were solutions but they made the entire page slower)

Also the original reason for smiley sets: so you could have sets that were GIFs with their limited transparency that could blend on both light and dark themes.

 

[Deprecated]

That's right, IE6 was really retarded when curve came out. GIFs seemed a good choice at the time (and now) no matter what, except that they utilize a patented compression technology, thus the rise of PNGs, and I'm sure MSFT didn't want to take any patent risks. Not sure of the exact timing but you recall things going so far that for a time MSFT couldn't sell Windows in EU until they took out IE because EU said IT competed unfairly with other browsers. Or at least that's the way I recall it.

When you get right down to it, smileys sets are and always were just a personal preference. I like the smileys I pick because they are more well refined than default, and seem sharper. Smiley sets like default are to me too similar in appearance to one another and I have to peer more closely at them to distinguish them.

And of course many of us want to augment the available smileys as a part of the fun of being on a forum with a rich smiley selection. That's why smiley devs are always coming out with new smiley sets.

 

[Pete]

Hmm, I wouldn't paint the picture quite the way you do.

Curve was designed in 2007, before Chrome even existed, when the battle was IE 7 vs Firefox 2 and a lot of people stayed on IE 6 because IE 7 broke many things - despite being more standards compliant, IE 6 having been around for 5-6 years or so had entrenched some pretty bad habits.

IE 6 first came out in 2001, before Firefox even existed, and at the time was pretty technically advanced. I can't find any sources to say when it got GIF support but I'd be willing to bet it had GIF support from version 1 - because other products of Microsoft's had GIF support meaning they would already have had to licence it. IE 6 did even have PNG support, it just lacked alpha transparency (which was supportable with a DirectX filter in some clever CSS, and native in IE 7).

Thing is, while Curve could have been designed to use modern features, why do that when a demonstrably high percentage of users couldn't see it properly? It'd just make the whole project look stupid. No-one is going to use a forum where the main visual presentation is broken out of the box for 70% or more of users...

 

[Deprecated]

I am an old man and have obviously been deprecated. I recall I have conquested maybe couple hundred women but I may be off by a decimal or two. Maybe the correct number is two.

I wish curve could have been designed with CSS features that would have made all the sprites etc. unnecessary. It's a shame to see all the graphic design (sprites and all) when the same could be easily done with CSS. It would be so easy today to modify the appearance with trivial text editing.

Pete, thanks for helping me understand it. You were much more attuned to dev thinking at the time, while I was running my forums and never gave any thought to modifying curve until 1-2 years ago. I didn't even know about sprites then, nor the SMF design goals and browser support. By the time I started checking my site rendering with multiple browsers a few years ago, all this SMF history was long gone.

Would you know if 2.1 has upgraded their basic package schemes to utilize modern CSS?

 

[Pete]

when the same could be easily done with CSS

It can *now*. It couldn't *then*. Curve 2, the default theme in SMF 2.1, does use the modern CSS techniques.

You can grab 2.1 at any time off GitHub

 

[radu81]

It's a matter of personal taste, I like the default set of smilies included into smf 2.0

 

[Elf_Ears]

I think they work as a generic set of forum smilies but TBH you should always be adding your own. Preferrably in your own style.

I like how they always included a blank template so you could make more in the same style (Although whoever compiled the new 2.1 fugue set obviously didn't get it and the blank smiley was something else for a while before they finally changed it to a real template.)

 

[Pete]

The Fugue set wasn't even done by them, they're taken from http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/

 

[Elf_Ears]

Yeah, I know. Actually, looking at the originals I guess they had to edit together a proper template cause I can't find one.