Implemented Thumbnails for Styles

[Enigma]

When you open the overlay to change styles, show a thumbnail (maybe 120px x 120px) of each style under the title. The thumbnail could be bundled with styles and/or set by the admin manually. The thumbnail would not necessarily have to be a small screenshot, it could be any image you want to use to represent the style. If you have more than 6 styles, the popup can have a scroll bar.

Anyway, I thought it looked kinda slick...

 

[Paul B]

Perhaps the style designer would provide the thumbnail image.

As I have said before Peggy, I'm talking about forum admin's who create their own styles.

 

[Peggy]

As I have said before Peggy, I'm talking about forum admin's who create their own styles.

My apologies, I didn't read that.

 

[Dean]

Presumably this would be of use to people that have many themes to select from, and people switch styles often.

I am not clear on what % of people do that?

 

[Paul B]

Well as I have also said before, the pages functionality is a perfect candidate for this.
Instead of a small thumbnail in a little popup overlay which won't be able to show the detail very well, you can do detailed descriptions, full screenshots and even videos.

That would be how I would approach this.

 

[Enigma]

Perhaps the style designer would provide the thumbnail image.

If a designer created the style, then yes the idea would be that the thumbnail image would come bundled with the style.

Surely that completely defeats the purpose of the feature?
What use is a default image in demonstrating how a particular style differs from another?

Some sort of default image would only be in place in the event a style didn't have a thumbnail, and the default image might even be able to be created on the fly, pulling basic colors from the style and thereby actually representing the style.* But the idea would be for whoever creates the style to create a thumbnail image as well. I think 95% of admins creating a style would be able to follow instructions to create a simple thumbnail image with software built into their OS of choice, but maybe I'm wrong.

The thumbnail should also be shown prominently in the Admin panel, alongside the style, to encourage admins to add a thumbnail if the style doesn't have one.

* The default thumbnail image could be created automatically or on the fly using 3 of the basic colors from the color palette, something like this:

 

[James]

Enigma, your image gave me an idea of manipulating the style chooser to only use images of the styles rather than text, creating a collage so to speak.

As for the image, all you'd need to do (simply) is create the layout, print screen, take a portion of the layout and upload.

 

[CurveGotti]

I think that this is a great idea and could be very useful on those forums that tend to use many styles. +1

 

[Ryan]

I love the idea. I'm not sure how practical it is, but to those of you wondering where the thumbnail came from...it's worth considering having the XF software generate the thumbnail itself. I know that it's possible (because other websites do precisely the same thing), but I just don't know what is involved in doing it. The ideal solution for XF customers would be for XF to generate the thumbnail automatically with the option of providing your own thumbnail to override the auto-generated one. Might be overly optimistic, I dunno.

If this is implemented, please include a scrollbar if the style list is too large for the popup...Some of us may have too many styles installed to fit in one popup

 

[Grover]

It's implemented! http://xenforo.com/community/threads/suggestion-alternative-style-chooser.3758/page-2#post-145793

 

[Dad.]

Enigma, I kinda like your idea. Few lines of CSS and I could pull that off.