Ishimaru Design

Yet another correction in phpBB2 styles + FM styles are back !

on 12/07/2008 at 12:08 pm

Sorry for the absence of news lately I was really busy with several forum styles to finish, particularly with Forumotion styles. A few external factors also influenced it.

FM styles are back

For those who remember the times when Ishimaru Design was still hosted on Forumotion, the website used to propose Forumotion styles, but the fact is that they really needed updates, I haven't done any re-release when the website moved. During the last 4 weeks, I took time to work on them, so I can update the styles in order to re-release them under zip archive format for those who prefer the manual install, and on Hitskin for those in hurry and also to give more visibility to ID.

Amont styles who were online in the old version, I have re-released only those whose the graphic quality was satisfying : Valentina and the three Stylize. I consider that Kitty Green and QuébecActif (french-only) don't have the graphic quality to be re-releasable, because of the fact that these were my first styles and they were the least successful in terms of graphic quality, because I was still a beginner when I made them.

On the other side, a new FM style has been added : SmileMotion
This new style is the result of recycling, the style was first made on request, but was never used by the one who requested it.
When this kind of issue happens, I prefer to distribute it instead of leaving it take dust on my hard drive.

The five FM styles are available in both languages (French and English), in one archive for each language.

Corrections and new stuff in phpBB2 styles

Even if FM styles are back, phpBB2 also had been updated, with corrections for all the 5 existing styles, and the arrival of a Christmas style.

Why another correction again ? Because the fact that when I read the doc about cloning subSilver (the phpBB2's default style who MUST be the basis for new styles, I noticed that I missed many images URLs changes and they were scattered everywhere in the templates and so, in my styles, there were links who lead to the subSilver style. This issue would have caused problems for those who removed subSilver.
More, I noticed the same issue in my votebars and so, I corrected them.
So, these are bug corrections and I hope they will be the last ones.

Still in phpBB2 styles, those who liked the Christmas design ID had last year will be glad to learn that this style has been adapted for self-service release (anime girl removed from the banner and whosonline pic, and ID acronym removed from Xmas balls). This is the first self-service style who's not an adaptation of a Forumotion style.

The six available phpBB2 style are all bilingual (French and English).

For which will follow

With all the new stuff, the self-service section of the forum will be reorganized in daytime or evening time, in order to sort the forum styles by platform, and then once done, I'll post the dedicated support topics related to each style.

Big update in my phpBB2 styles !

on 11/04/2008 at 5:49 am

As some people might have noticed, my phpBB2 styles required the install of the eXtremeStyle MOD to make the bilingual navbar function. This came from the fact that I didn't find any solution to make it function without this MOD.

Lately, I reported a display problem about my styles on the support-phpBB2.com's style demo forum. I had to expose my unsolved problem and then, with crewstyle's help, I could finally make my navbars function without installing eXtremeStyle !

The five phpBB2 styles available on this website have been updated tonight, and I also took the opportunity to do some minor changes at the same time.

Among other changes, you can notice the faster page loading on the phpBB2 styles page since I finally took the time to resize my screenshots in order to make thumbnails who are 250 pixels wide, so I won't have to use the resize by CSS. I also updated the styles page, to keep the explanations up to date.

By the fact that new styles are accepted on support-phpBB2.com, it is possible that I will make new phpBB2 styles, whatever it's an original creation or an adaptation of a Forumotion phpBB2 skin.

A new module in the side menu ^^

on 10/06/2008 at 7:08 am

While I had nothing to do, I decided to write and test a lil' Top 10 Posters module using the forum's database, so I can contribute to Connectix Boards's documentation about website-forum synchronization.

And finally, as I test it on my localhost and post a screenshot of the result on the French (and only) support forum, why not installing it on the online website as well, so I can show it concretely.

New SVG file in Ressources

on 10/01/2008 at 6:51 am

When we make skins and we want to use open cliparts as much as possible, we sometimes don't find what we want. This is what happened to me recently.

I wanted a pumpkin pic who looks like a "drawing", not a real pumpkin, but I couldn't find anything relevant in the open clipart gallery. So, I decided to draw it myself. With a pen and paper, I sketched it then scanned it so I can draw it under Inkscape. But for the last step, I couldn't do it until tonight.

You can now download the pumpkin SVG clipart in the SVG files section.

New section in Ressources : SVG files

on 06/17/2008 at 8:49 am

Having made many vector graphics for buttons and logos I finally decided to add a new page on the website where you can download the .SVG files so you can use them for your webdesigns and other graphics kits.

[titre2]Some explanations[/titre2]

SVG is an XML-based open format who respects the W3C standards and who's used for vector grapics. Unlike the bitmap drawing who's composed of pixels and loses quality when scaled, the vector drawing doesn't lose any quality, so you can either make cute tiny icon or a huge screen-sized pic from a same vector file. This is very handy when you need a logo in several sizes, for example for corporative/associative logos or simply for a design.

The most known software for vector graphics is Adobe Illustrator, but it is quite expensive.
So, as free and opensource alternative, I suggest you Inkscape who does a nice job and who is an excellent complement to GIMP in graphics design.

When we export a vector file to a bitmap, the format will generally be in PNG 24 bits, in order to keep the transparency and an optimal quality. Moreover, the demos you see in the SVG files page are under this format.

I will add more SVG files as I will make new icons.

The works can now be resumed

on 05/19/2008 at 10:30 am

You surely noticed I was less active lately.

Actually, the reason is that I made the jump into Linux by installing Ubuntu 8.04 on my PC while keeping Windows XP. By the fact that is was the first time that I was doing an install, even more for a dualboot, I needed to print docs in order to have it at hand while partitioning my C disk and installing LInux.

But the install has been done a few days later than expected, because a few errors in Windows made the Windows partition non-resizable, so I coudn't make place for Linux. I finally got sorted out with a scandisk who corrected the errors, and thus, I could finally do the install last Thursday night and everything went fine.

But after, I had to prepare my fresh desktop for graphics design and PHP testing. This wasn't quite long for graphics : a pack of GIMP brushes + fonts + install Inkscape for vector drawing. But for PHP, it took longer to set up, because a LAMP server is more manipulations to set it up than a Wampserver, and I had to seek support on ubuntu-fr.org for a few details I missed (mostly when it's 3:00am XD).
I finally could finish setting up the server this night and it is now ready to receive my PHP pages and to have my SQL backup imported.

But for now, a few Z's won't be bad for me, ain't it ? XD

Correction in font sizes

on 04/21/2008 at 8:14 am

While I was testing font sizes on a forumotion board where I was trying to replace fixed sizes by relative sizes, I noticed that font sizes in pt are actually... fixed sizes, so there was still the text zoom problem under Internet Explorer, so if you tried to enlarge the fonts under IE, you surely had this problem. For this reason, I removed the value in pt I put in the stylesheet. You shouldn't have text zoom functioning problem under IE anymore.

Glassy buttons are back !

on 04/06/2008 at 9:08 am

Those who've known the old Ishimaru Design when it was still hosted on Forumotion have surely known the glassy buttons and navbar pages who were online since the very beginning. The buttons were hosted on external hosts (Photobucket and Archive-Host).

When Ishimaru Design moved, I concentrated my works on the main pages and I told myself that I will add the pages one by one, once the site reopened, but finally, I haven't had time because I was working on my phpBB2 styles and I had two big requests to take in charge. More, the packs needed to be updated because of Forumotion's updates ("Online" button, etc.).

It's only this week that I updated the .zip archives while I was doing a cleanup on my D hard drive, and Itonight, I coded the pages and uploaded them.

You can now download the buttons kits and navbars to use them on your board. But you will have to ask someone else if you need extra buttons, because I had my hard drive replaced last October, and MS Office 2003 (where the font I used came from) has never wanted to reinstall itself because of a problem with the license number (That Micro$oft and its proprietary licenses...-_-). More, I haven't reinstalled PhotoFiltre since I exclusively use GIMP now. For these reasons, the packs are now under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license. This means that you are authorised to redistribute and modify them, but under these following conditions :

• you must attribute the works to the original author (me)
• You must keep the same license or use a similar license
• You cannot do a commercial use of these packs without my permission

More pages will come... when I will have time for this.

New version of ID ! + News cleanup

on 03/28/2008 at 7:59 am

You were waiting for it, didn't you ? The new version of Ishimaru Design has finally arrived ! Many changes have been done for this new version.

First of all, the design has completely changed and has now lightgreen tones, to replace the old yellowish design. For this occasion, I took the opportunity to rewrite the CSS from A to Z, in order to have a cleaner stylesheet. The XHTML code has been reviewed as well, to improve the appearance and to limit useless tags and classes.

Talking about style and appearance, I did a first step to make the website more accessible. For this, the font sizes are now relative, so this will allow IE users to enlarge/shrink them. I also arranged the style so that the font size follows the number of points per inch the visitor uses whichever browser he uses. Other accessibility measures might come later, as I will read documents and test techniques.

Next, another big change : the forum has passed from phpBB2 to Connectix Boards, this change permitted me to use the forum's session on the website (at last !). This also permits to have a better coherency in the HTML coding, by the fact that the new board is coded in XHTML 1.0 Strict, the same Doctype as the site's one, compared to HTML 4.01 transitional with table formatting which is very characteristic to phpBB2 and who gave me headaches.

With the board's match with the website, the accesses to the website's private sections are now managed with the groups. More, on the side menu, you have now a fast log-in form when you are logged out, and a block with a logout link and two links to your profile and your PMs when you are logged in.

And finally, I did a cleanup in the news, to start back from zero. The fact is that I have implemented a BBCode parsing system to replace the usage of HTML. This change makes formatting easier, but has deactivated HTML in old news. So, why not reseting the news ;) I also cleaned up the links in the side menu.

For now, there is no much content, but for some pages, I had to wait until the new version is online, because I have a few ideas for the pages I want to include, in addition to other small improvements I'd like bring.

Enjoy your stay on the website and the forum !

Ishimaru Chiaki