How customizable are the themes?

[Trekkan]

Right now, things look good here, but ultimately it's not how I want my site to look. =) So my question is, how much effort has been put into the customizing of the software? I would assume at the minimum it's fairly decent, but as with other products there always seems to be some reliance between themes, smileys, phrases, etc.

So I guess my question is, how much independence is there between themes? Personally, I'd like to see them fully independent, but... that might just be a dream.

 

[Ryan]

To be honest, I don't see the need for that anymore. Almost all the (almost 600) smilies on my biggest forum render fine in both dark and light themes.

One of the biggest advantages to theme-based smilies is not the same smiley rendering differently on a light vs. dark background, but instead, a completely different themed smiley for the same emotion...That probably doesn't make any sense, so here's an example (an extreme one at that). Say you run gaming forums, and you have 2 skins that you let your users choose from - a Call of Duty skin and a Mario skin. You don't want to use plain old yellow smilies...instead, you've got Call of Duty and Mario smilies. The CoD smilies are army men and the Mario smilies are...Mario! That's where the sets per theme comes into play. Your users can post a smileyface smiley and what actually displays on the reader's screen (whether an army man smiling or mario smiling) depends on which skin they have selected.

If it's not found, don't render it as a smiley image, but whatever "text" would normally be used in it's place. No broken image, etc. Again, it's not that big of a deal to me, so I'm not trying to make it one. =) I just think it's doable and would be nice if it was done.

^ Agreed

 

[Been Told]

One of the biggest advantages to theme-based smilies is not the same smiley rendering differently on a light vs. dark background, but instead, a completely different themed smiley for the same emotion...That probably doesn't make any sense, so here's an example (an extreme one at that). Say you run gaming forums, and you have 2 skins that you let your users choose from - a Call of Duty skin and a Mario skin. You don't want to use plain old yellow smilies...instead, you've got Call of Duty and Mario smilies. The CoD smilies are army men and the Mario smilies are...Mario! That's where the sets per theme comes into play. Your users can post a smileyface smiley and what actually displays on the reader's screen (whether an army man smiling or mario smiling) depends on which skin they have selected.

Ah ok, I see what you mean. Good point. But I would assume that that is something very specialist - i.e. most people won't need or use that feature. It could be a mod though...
Back when I was using IP.Board (Back then they called in InvisionPower Board ) we had that feature and we gave it a try. But members complained that the smilies didn't bring across the exact same meaning and so we dropped it.

 

[Ryan]

I'm with you - not sure how much of a demand there is for this

I personally wouldn't use it but can see cases where people would

Not my call, and it's not going to bother me either way it goes

 

[Floris]

Basically like a StyleVar. And you know how I hate to use that term here.
It would be a broken image.

Not perfect, but some people might like this.

Not perfect is not good enough. This isn't IB