Legacy Shoutbox Background Issue

[Pandemikk]

Hello,

The shoutbox background currently is based on whatever skin's selected. This can be problematic with sites that use multiple skins, and, in particular, skins that are light-themed and dark-themed. Why? The font colors of the shouters. For example, a black font will look great if the shoutbox background is white, but, if the shoutbox background is dark gray or black, will render the shout unreadable unless highlighted.

My suggestion, an option to globalize the shoutbox background across ALL skins with a specific hex color code. Personally, I would choose a white background across all skins, but that is not possible with the current shoutbox unless I edit the shoutbox CSS style for each skin (not preferable).

 

[Fillip H.]

The problem with that suggestion is that there's no way to select an appropriate colour that works for every skin, as some might like a different colour etc.

This is the first time since we swapped to skin-based BGs we've heard anything, so unless I'm misunderstanding you then I personally believe the number of people affected by this (having to edit multiple skins and minding doing so) is fewer than the people who's benefit from having a preselected colour independent of their skin

 

[Pandemikk]

I don't think you understood my post. I'm suggesting an OPTION for the user to add a universal shoutbox background color. So users can keep it so the ShoutBox chooses the background color automatically or, if a problem like the one I've pointed out occurs, an option for a universal color. For example, it may work fine for most people but for people like me where an issue does arise, I can override the background color that would be provided based on the current skin selected with my own custom color as chosen in the shoutbox's instance.

Best of both worlds, no?

 

[Fillip H.]

Ohh, I see. My bad, sorry

Hmm, unsure how I would create an option to flip between postbit_background and my custom stylevar... Got some ideas though, so Ill flag this as Under Consideration

 

[Pandemikk]

If it helps any I was thinking of having a field or a part of one of your serialized options with this value. And if it's empty, or a pre-defined value like null or 0 then use the pre-defined stylevar background. I'm sure you guys will be able to figure it out though!

 

[Fillip H.]

Yeah but the problem is, we can't inject PHP variables into the CSS - as you'll see if you open, say, vbulletin.css - it's only stylevars and basic functions like math that works in CSS Templates. They are compiled into actual .css files (or stored in the DB as compiled CSS) when you save them or a stylevar, in order to reduce server load.

We would have to have some way of overriding that but only if the option is set.

Which I'm thinking could be done via the style="" attribute, but we shall see

 

[Pandemikk]

Hmm... This would be cake in 3.8.x!

Looking through the .css files I see you can use stylevars... Couldn't you just create a stylevar and use that?

I'm new to 4.x so please forgive me if this seems ridiculous... But couldn't you create a stylevar, populate it whatever the color code is based on the stylevar of whichever background you're currently using by default. Then the user edit would change this default stylevar to the the user's input?

 

[Fillip H.]

It's not possible to prepopulate a stylevar based on other stylevars.

And no, it's equally challenging (if not more so) in vB3.8
vBulletin 3.8 is actually quite arcane in lots of ways, making it more difficult to program for than vB4.