Unseen Sakura 2.0.0
A major release and the first since 1.1.0. It also brings everything that was prepared for 1.1.1, which was never released on its own. New: two home layouts, Unseen Cards and Unseen Mix; List, Cards and Masonry views, two columns for the List view and a side panel for the thread lists of forum pages; page transitions; a theme scrollbar; page width and density; motion effects and a cursor glow, with a Reduce motion switch that stops every effect; colour bars and a one-block look for the categories of Next and Classic; seven looks for the left panel's Categories card; social links for twelve networks; four looks for XenForo's cookie notice; a choice of which hero guests and members see, a short video in the hero banner, and a Header widget that can show any widget or an ad; an avatar and smilies beside the quick reply and a writing meter under the reply editors; High legibility; a switch for the thread preview on hover. The thread timeline has a new look with a knob you can drag, the theme page is regrouped and has a new icon and a shortcut in XenForo's staff bar, a Russian translation joins the other eleven, XenForo controls the theme had hidden or made hard to read are back, and the editor on phones is fixed.
Upgrading keeps your look
Upload all the files, then click
Upgrade on the Add-ons screen right away. Until the upgrade has run, the theme's admin pages only show XenForo's message that the area is being upgraded. Coming from 1.0.x? The upgrade applies the 1.1.0 changes too; the 1.1.0 notes describe them.
Apart from the fixes under
Fixed and the points below, your forum looks and works the same afterwards:
- On phones, tablets and other touch screens, and in windows 840 px wide or narrower, the links of the footer's bottom strip get taller lines, so each one is at least 24 × 24 px to tap.
- In the Next layout between 901 and 1,000 px wide (up to 1,029 px with thread thumbnails on, at their default size), each category's cover sits above its topics while the right column is shown.
- A XenForo or add-on widget in the forum home's left panel takes the look of the theme's own cards.
- The category covers of Next and Classic that start below the first screen load as they come near, instead of with the page.
- In the Next layout the whole category cover is one link (see Improved).
- In the Unseen layout each topic row shows its replies above its views, instead of the score and the views (see Improved).
- The controls in the heading of the home feed keep to the right edge, also when they wrap below the title.
- Moderators see a pencil beside the tick of each thread row instead of the word Edit (see Fixed).
- XenForo's buttons that are links take the theme's buttons in both colour schemes: Post thread and Send direct message are no longer gold but the theme's primary button in the palette's ink colour, and buttons such as View more, Add passkey and Register now take the theme's outlined button (see Fixed).
- The thread timeline on thread pages takes its new look (see Improved).
- A writing meter shows under the quick reply, the full reply page and the new thread form (see New); Threads → Editor → Writing meter switches it off.
- Administrators who may manage styles find the shortcut to the theme page (the blossom) in XenForo's staff bar, right of Admin, instead of in the top bar (see Improved).
New looks do not switch themselves on. Your Unseen Sakura styles keep:
- the member greeting お帰りなさい: Hero → Member hero → Member greeting (new installations: Good to see you, translated);
- pages opening without a transition: Feel → Page transition (new installations: Needle drop);
- the browser's own scrollbar: Feel → Scrollbar → Theme scrollbar (new installations: the Hanabira theme scrollbar);
- XenForo's thread rows on forum pages, without the List / Cards / Masonry buttons: Threads → Thread lists → Views (new installations: the buttons, opening in List);
- the replies and views of the List view's rows side by side: Threads → Thread lists → List view → List counters (new installations: Stacked);
- XenForo's own cookie notice: General → Cookie notice (new installations: Tegami);
- the What's new icon hidden, the compact Share this page card and 3 threads in the Trending content card: Modules tab (new installations follow XenForo: the icon shows once the navigation folds into the menu, with the phone top bar spaced so that every icon stays on screen, the Share card shows every share button enabled in XenForo's options, and the Trending card shows as many threads as it is set to);
- the thread preview on hover, on: Threads → Thread lists (new installations: off);
- your X and Facebook links where they were, in the footer's brand column, and hidden where that column is off: General → Social links; the new places in the header and the left panel start off.
Off on every board until you choose them: the Cards and Mix layouts, the thread list side panel, two columns in the List view, the colour bars and the one-block look of Next and Classic, the cover picture behind the Cards, motion effects, the cursor glow, Reduce motion, High legibility, the hero video and the avatar beside the quick reply. Each audience keeps its own hero, the Header widget (formerly the Member card) keeps what it showed, the smilies stay below the editor, the page stays Wide (1,320 px) and Comfortable, and the Categories card keeps the Sakura list look. New installations also fill the forum home's right column with Members online, the Gallery, Trending content, Forum statistics, Latest posts and Share this page; an upgraded board keeps its own sidebar.
Every setting named here is on the theme page
Appearance → Unseen Sakura (change it, then click
Save). Its
Reset button gives all of them the new defaults, but it resets the other theme settings as well.
New
- Unseen Cards: a home layout with every forum as a square card under its category's heading: the forum's picture, its type and name, two lines of description, the latest post, the topic and message counts, the names of its sub-forums and a New tag while it has unread content. Link forums and pages are cards too. Cards per row (2 to 6; fewer on narrower screens), card size, forum pictures (the icon, else the cover cropped square, else the kanji on the forum's colours), the right column, the left panel, the content above the cards and the forum's cover picture as the card background (under a dark veil, with white text; off by default): Layout → Cards. Moderators and administrators get a cog button on each card with XenForo's Edit forum (administrators who may manage nodes), Mark read and Watch.
- Unseen Mix: the Unseen, Next, Classic and Cards layouts as sections of one home page, each at most once, in the order you drag them to, each on or off with its own number (topics for Unseen, categories for Next and Classic, forum cards for Cards). Each section looks as its own layout is set. The list is numbered in page order; each top-level category can be given to the Next, Classic or Cards section (Which layout shows each category; the others fill the remaining sections in node order), and the Unseen section can list the topics of one category or forum only (Topics from). The section list is one setting for the whole board: Layout → Mix.
- Thread list views: forum pages can show their threads as List (XenForo's rows), Cards (square cards, up to three across, two below 1,000 px and one on phones) or Masonry (two columns; a thread with a thumbnail gets a tall card with it on top, sticky threads run across the whole width). Choose the view each forum page opens in, and whether visitors get the List / Cards / Masonry buttons (their choice is kept in a cookie); the buttons sit at the end of the bar, XenForo's Filters menu at its start. Every view keeps XenForo's own rows, so inline moderation, filters and pagination work as before. Discussion, question and suggestion forums; article forums keep XenForo's layouts. Threads → Thread lists → Views. In the List view, each row's replies and views can be stacked (replies above views, the default) or side by side, and the list can be split into two columns where the page is wide enough (phones and narrow pages keep one column): Threads → Thread lists → List view.
- Thread list side panel: a widget panel beside the thread list of forum pages, and of category pages where XenForo creates them: Right (in XenForo's own forum sidebar, after its widgets) or Left (a column like the forum home's left panel; on narrower screens it opens from XenForo's navigation button). Off by default: Threads → Thread lists → Side panel. Its cards are listed on the Widgets tab (Thread list panel), which marks a card that XenForo's own sidebar already shows. The theme's Categories and Season cards are already placed in it.
- Page transitions: None, Needle drop, Pixel iris, Corner stitch or Bubble burst, played when a visitor follows a link to another page of the forum. Browsers without page transitions, Firefox today, open the next page at once; Bubble burst plays there too. Feel → Page transition.
- Category blocks for Next and Classic: two switches per layout. Colour bars puts a thick bar in each category's colour across the full width of its block's top (a category without a colour takes Sakura, Matcha, Ume and Kin in turn); One continuous block joins the categories into one block instead of a card each. The category colours can be set right there too. Both off by default: Layout → Next / Classic → Category blocks.
- Reply editor: the member's avatar beside the quick reply, as XenForo shows it (off by default; not on narrow screens); the quick reply's smilies below the editor or in two columns beside it (below again on narrow screens); and a writing meter under the quick reply, the full reply page and the new thread form: five cells in the palette that fill as the message gets longer, its level (Draft, Note, Reply, Write-up, Full guide!) and the character count (on by default; still while Reduce motion is on or for visitors whose device asks for less motion). Threads → Editor.
- Theme scrollbar: Hanabira (a petal pill in the palette accent), Sumi (a slim ink stroke), Kintsugi (a gold seam) or Take (bamboo), for visitors with a mouse or trackpad; phones, most tablets and high-contrast mode keep their own scrollbar, and Firefox shows the design as two flat colours. Feel → Scrollbar.
- Page width and density: Narrow (1,200 px), Wide (1,320 px, as before) or Fluid (the whole window; post text keeps a readable line length), with the header, footer and staff bar following; windows up to 1,200 px wide look the same in all three. Compact tightens the lists the theme draws and the posts slightly; the banner keeps its size. Feel → Page.
- Motion effects and cursor glow: cards tilt and buttons follow the pointer, and a soft glow follows the pointer inside posts, topic cards, forum rows and sidebar widgets, in White, the palette's accent or Gold. Only with a mouse, never on touch screens. Both off by default: Feel → Effects.
- Reduce motion: one switch stops every animation of the theme for all visitors: the hover lifts, the hero petals, the banner depth and the banner video, the post entrance, the postbit hover, the avatar ring, page transitions, motion effects and the cursor glow. Visitors whose device asks for reduced motion always get this. Off by default: Feel → Reduce motion; the effects you already had (post entrance, postbit hover, avatar ring, hero petals) now sit beside it.
- Left panel per view: the Unseen layout's left panel can be switched off in its List, Grid or Shorts view on its own (Layout → Unseen → Show it in these views); the Cards and Mix layouts have their own left panel switch.
- Looks for the Categories card: Sakura list (the theme's own), Neon list, Poster grid, Editorial list, Tag cloud, Accordion groups or Ticket cards, one per style, for the Categories card in a left column (Widgets tab, Left panel). A Categories card can also keep a look of its own, chosen in XenForo's widget editor.
- Social links: X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Discord, TikTok, Telegram, Reddit, GitHub, Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn, each with its icon, in the header (in the menu on narrow screens), in the footer (in the brand column, or in a row of their own while that column is off) and as a card at the end of the left panel. Only networks with an address show. General → Social links.
- Cookie notice looks: four designs for XenForo's own cookie consent notice: Tegami (a corner card, right or left), Obi (a bottom band), Shoji (a centred card; in Advanced mode a dialog over the page) and Tsubomi (a pill). Each follows the style's palette, fonts and corners, light and dark mode and High legibility, and keeps Reject exactly as large as Accept; optional cookie groups are never ticked in advance, and Accept and Reject are XenForo's own, recorded as before. The texts can be changed for each language of the board, and the language packs never overwrite them. A look shows only while XenForo's cookie consent is Simple or Advanced. General → Cookie notice.
- Who sees which hero: choose the hero guests see and the hero members see (Hero → Who sees which hero). A member hero shown to guests never shows personal details.
- Hero video: a short video can play in either hero's banner (MP4 with H.264, optional WebM; 1 to 15 seconds; landscape, up to 1,920 × 1,080 and 30 frames per second; up to 3 MB by default, adjustable from 1 to 6 MB under General → Upload limits). It is always muted, starts after the page has loaded, plays only while the banner is on screen and has a pause button. By default phones and small tablets, and always visitors who ask for less motion or save data, see the banner image. The admin page checks the file before it is saved and says what to change. Hero → Guest hero / Member hero → Banner.
- Header widget: the card on the right of the member banner, called Member card before, can now also show one of the board's widgets, with its own options and display conditions, or an ad from the new ad position Header widget, besides the account card, images, a video or your HTML. While the widget or the ad has nothing to show, the account card shows (the Community card for guests); a widget deleted later counts as nothing to show, and the theme page marks it Missing until you choose another. Hero → Member hero → Header widget.
- High legibility: a stronger tone for the small grey texts: labels such as Latest activity, dates, reply and view counts, the All → links in card headers, the section labels of the Who read this thread card and the footer's small print, and in this version also the selected navigation tab, the View all links of Next and Classic, the coloured reply count of the Next layout's topics, the kanji and reply counts of the Unseen layout's rows, the small texts of the Cards layout, the selected List / Cards / Masonry button, the member count of the forum statistics, XenForo's log-in link button beside a list, the footer's breadcrumb links and selected language, and the footer's keyboard focus ring and link hover. Off by default: General → Look → High legibility.
- Thread preview on hover: turns XenForo's preview of a thread's first post, shown when the pointer rests on a thread title, on or off in your Unseen Sakura styles: in the home feed and in XenForo's thread lists, such as forum pages, What's new and watched threads. XenForo's Enable discussion preview option and the viewing permissions still apply. Threads → Thread lists.
- Cloudflare guide: the download includes README-CLOUDFLARE.txt beside the upload folder: the browser cache and Cloudflare settings of our demo board. You do not need it to install the theme, and it does not promise a higher PageSpeed score.
Improved
- Theme page: new tabs: General, Layout, Hero, Threads (Thread lists, Thread page, Editor), Feel, Backgrounds, Modules and Categories, with Widgets, Ads, Languages and Licence in a row of their own; the page opens on Layout. Links and bookmarks to the former Appearance sub-tabs open the matching tab. On the Categories tab each category and forum is a fold, closed until you open it; a link to one forum opens its fold.
- New icon: the add-on list shows the Unseen Sakura blossom, and the shortcut to the theme page (administrators who may manage styles only) draws a blossom instead of a cog and sits in XenForo's staff bar, right of Admin, instead of in the top bar.
- Next categories: the whole category cover is one link: to the category's page, or to its topics when it has no page of its own; the category name and View all go to the same place, and each View all names its category for screen readers. That topic view shows only the chosen category's block, under the category chips, and asks search engines not to index it.
- Page speed, banner first: on the forum home, the hint that fetches the hero banner photo now sits in the page head, ahead of the fonts and every stylesheet, instead of in the page body.
- Page speed, category covers: the cover photos of Next and Classic that start below the first screen are no longer downloaded with the page. Until the visitor scrolls, only covers on the screen load; from the first scroll on, covers up to one screen ahead load. Without JavaScript every cover shows at once.
- Page speed, fonts: with the self-hosted fonts (the default), the font rules come as one of the theme's own stylesheets instead of a separate fonts.css file, one stylesheet request fewer where XenForo combines stylesheets.
- Page speed, message background: on thread pages of a style whose message background is one of the four bundled images (Backgrounds → Message background → Bundled image, not the library image), the page head asks for that image at once instead of leaving the browser to find it in the stylesheet, so the first screen shows sooner on phones.
- Touch targets and screen readers: the footer's bottom strip links are at least 24 × 24 px on touch screens and narrow windows; the page content column is marked as the main area (role="main"); the All → links of the Members online, Staff online, Latest posts and Gallery cards carry the card's name for screen readers.
- Member hero card: a save reads the parts of the card it does not change from the database at that moment, not from the settings loaded with the page.
- Reset now also covers the new settings: the Feel tab, the thread lists and the editor, the category blocks of Next and Classic, the Cards background picture, the member greeting, who sees which hero, the social link switches, the cookie notice's look and corner, and the Trending card's count. Texts, images, videos, the Header widget's content, the Mix sections, the cookie notice texts and the social link addresses stay.
- Unseen layout rows: each topic row shows its replies (in the accent colour) above its views on the right, instead of the score and the views, and the meta line no longer repeats the reply count; in the Shorts view the numbers come with a reply icon and a view icon.
- Home feed heading: the moderation button, the view buttons and New topic keep to the right edge, also when they wrap below the title.
- Thread timeline: a new look: Original post at the top and Now at the bottom, each with its date, a rail that fills in the palette's colours up to the post you are reading, and a knob beside it with Post 12 of 45 and that post's time. Drag the knob or press on the rail to go through the thread, and let go on the post you want; with the keyboard, the arrow keys move post by post, Page Up and Page Down a tenth of the thread, Home and End to the first and last post. Members also see their unread count. The knob glides only while motion is allowed: not with Reduce motion on, nor for visitors whose device asks for less motion.
Fixed
- Editor on phones: on screens up to 840 px wide (the tablet break point) and on touch screens, the toolbar fits one row (the other buttons behind its More buttons) with larger 36 px buttons; a row that still wraps starts from the left; the reply box keeps one height (170 px at most) instead of growing while you type; the text is 16 px on screens narrower than 568 px; the keyboard shortcut hint is hidden on touch screens. Desktop is unchanged.
- Inline moderation: the moderation bar's close button and Go are visible in the light scheme; the moderation toggle is a framed button like Mark read and Watch, also on a member profile's Profile posts tab; the row tick is easier to see and the Edit link of each thread row is a pencil button beside it in the row's corner (24 px on XenForo's rows, 28 px on the theme's rows and the thread cards), shown at every screen width, while XenForo hides its Edit link on narrow screens; neither slides away under the pointer any more; a selected row keeps a bar and a ring, so it stands out from a hovered one; the Filters menu is easier to read.
- Moderation on the forum home: moderators get XenForo's inline moderation in the home feed (the toggle, a tick and the Edit pencil in each row's corner, the selected highlight and the bar). Guests and members see no change.
- Navigation: on desktop, the selected tab shows XenForo's dropdown arrow, so its links (for example Mark forums read and Watched threads) can be reached; pages outside every tab (account, direct messages, search, help) show XenForo's row of section links. Both while the theme's secondary navigation row is off, the default.
- Phone top bar: with XenForo's What's new icon shown (Modules tab, as on new installations), a member's icons could run past the right edge of phone screens up to about 400 px wide, so the page scrolled sideways. The bar's spacing on phones is now tighter and every icon stays on screen; no icon is hidden or made smaller. With the icon hidden, as upgraded boards keep it, the bar is unchanged.
- Thread page: the quick reply's Save draft button saves the draft; the toolbar's draft menu is no longer cut off; the thread tools menu fits on the screen; the header shows the full forum path and the thread starter; the header Share shares the thread, not its first post; staff members' user titles show again; the back arrow points the right way in right-to-left languages.
- See-through notices: XenForo's notices at the bottom of the screen or floating over the page (the cookie notice, the push notification offer, admin notices with these display styles) were see-through, so the page showed through their text. They now have a solid background under the theme's tint, and their link button reads in the text colour. In dark mode their other buttons, such as Accept and Learn more on XenForo's Simple cookie notice, were hard to read (pale pink text on a light button); they now have dark text on the palette's button colour.
- Social icons: the X and Facebook icons of the footer showed as empty boxes; they now show the networks' marks.
- Visitors who ask for reduced motion: links to a place on the same page no longer scroll smoothly, the theme's hover lifts no longer jump, and XenForo's own fades and slides (a notice closing, the footer cookie panel) finish at once.
- View counts: the home feed, the Trending content card and the thread header printed the raw view counter (0 on a thread whose views had not been counted yet); they now print XenForo's number, at least the number of posts.
- Thread rows: the last poster's avatar in the corner of XenForo's thread rows covered the middle of the starter's avatar; it now has XenForo's small size.
- Alert and direct message counters in the top bar are pink with dark text, easier to read in both colour schemes.
- Link buttons: XenForo's buttons that are links kept XenForo's colours instead of the theme's. View more (What's new), Add passkey (account security) and Register now (log-in page and log-in overlay, in the dark scheme) had text in nearly the colour of the button, and Post thread and Send direct message had white text on gold in both colour schemes. They now take the theme's outlined button, and Post thread and Send direct message the theme's primary button in ink instead of XenForo's gold, readable in both schemes.
- Button text: the text of a hovered or focused button, and of XenForo's link buttons such as You must log in or register to post here. and Change, could be hard to read in some palettes, such as deep pink on the pale pink hover of the Sakura palette. It now takes a tone of the accent closer to the text colour, readable in every palette and colour scheme, also with High legibility off. Primary buttons keep their text colour, the buttons of XenForo's notices keep XenForo's button text on hover, and the social log-in buttons keep their own colours.
- Editor buttons: the editor toolbar's hovered and active buttons, the quick reply's Write and Preview tabs, the full editor's active Preview tab and the More buttons are easier to read in every palette, also with High legibility off. The quick reply's Post reply button has a deeper gradient, so its white text is easier to read in every palette, in light and dark mode.
- Thread list labels: the Replies / Views labels of the forum thread list are easier to read in every palette, in light and dark mode.
- Printing: a printed page leaves out the theme's footer, which printed as blank white blocks, the reading bar and the page's decorative layer, and XenForo's footer text prints in black.
- XenForo's cookie page (help/cookies, in every style) showed raw phrase keys for the theme's two cookies; it now describes them and the new thread list view cookie.
- Thread header: "1 view" and "1 reply" instead of "1 views" and "1 replies".
- Next layout around 1,000 px: between 901 and 1,000 px wide, beside the right column, each Next category kept its cover beside its topics and squeezed the topic titles into a narrow strip; the cover now sits above the topics there.
- Category chips after a resize: the Unseen layout's chip row now centres the chosen chip again after the window is made wider or narrower.
- Other widgets in the left panel: a XenForo or add-on widget in the left panel kept the boxed look of the right column, and the latest member tile of XenForo's forum statistics was cut off; such widgets now look like the theme's own cards, and the latest member gets a whole row.
- Theme page on phones: the Dutch feed view cards made the page wider than the screen, and long card names on the Widgets page and the page title in some languages were cut off; they now wrap.
- Widgets page: choosing another style with the style chooser while you edit one of several Gallery cards now stays on that card.
- Reinstalling: installing the theme again after an uninstall created a second "Unseen Sakura" style next to the one the uninstall left behind; the theme now takes that style back, as long as it still has that name, and keeps your own values in it.
- Uninstalling: the last step stopped with an error when the theme's Similar threads cache folder did not exist or could not be removed; uninstalling now finishes, and a folder it cannot remove is left in place and noted in XenForo's error log. Uninstalling a board that imported many of the theme's translations also took a long time, because XenForo removes phrases one at a time in every language; the theme now removes its translated phrases in one step first (with all 12 translations imported: about 5 minutes on our test board).
- Setting texts: the theme page says "at 1,140 px and below" where the left panel hides and the category chips show; the Who read this thread texts name XenForo's View member lists permission; the background upload limit gives the real sizes and says that images are stored as JPEG where the server cannot write WebP.
Translations
Twelve translations: the eleven updated, and Russian, new. If you use one, import it again from the
Languages tab of the theme page; this replaces the theme's phrases in that language, including any you edited. The cookie notice texts you write on the theme page are not touched.
Requirements: unchanged, XenForo 2.3 and PHP 8.1 or newer.
Live demo ·
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