I just come to announce that I will be absent from this Sunday August 15th, for one week.

My mom will be on vacation next week, and since my godmother's sister doesn't use her camping trailer for the whole month and is ready to lend it to someone, my mother wants to take the opportunity to spend her vacation time on camping.  From this, I won't have any internet access during this period.  So I won't take any new request before I come back from vacation.  And regarding the two requests I already accepted, the people are already informed about my vacation and don't see any inconvenient in waiting a little bit.  For now, I concentrate my work on doing what's the most urgent to do.

A backup of my four websites' databases (this one, the portfolio, the bar and the blog) will be done the day before I leave for vacation, in order to minimize data loss in the event of badluck during my absence.

After phpBB3 and ForuMotion styles, I just finished updating my own phpBB2 templates which are as follows :

• [*]aquablue
  
• [*]id_xmas
  
• [*]stylize_darkblue
  
• [*]stylize_darkgrey
  
• [*]stylize_darkred
  
• [*]valentina

Regarding Solitude's templates, it isn't done yet, it will come a little later.

Last night, I kicked my butt in order to finish updating the ForuMotion styles' archives that are distributed here.

Corrections

The main correction consists in image optimization, in order to prevent any color display issues for some Firefox 3.6 users.

Some other corrections, that are much more minor,   I fixed a broken link in one of the files that list all pics with their correspondances in the admin panel.  I also noticed three buttons for which I forgot to change its background color while adapting the styles to phpbb3 version.  So I remade them, with the right background color, and I optimized them just after.

And Hitskin in all of this ?

For now, I have tasks that are more urgent than mass-uploading pics in my Archive-Host account and *messing around* in my FM testboard in order to prepare the updates that will replace the old ones in which some buttons are missing..  This will be done later, when I'll have time.  As long as the archives are up-to-date, I just wanted to finish them.

ps : about the expression I marked with asterisks, I wasn't sure about any expression that is equivalent to the French expression "faire un remue-ménage".  Just tell me please if you know the right expression !

I come here to announce you that after two months, I could finally finish the phpBB3 styles updates !

This wasn't the work on the styles that was so long to do, but the accumulated tasks I had to do : I was literally overloaded !


Regarding the PNG issue under Firefox 3.6

I didn't have time to tell you about this, but after I posted an article on my French blog, those who commented told me about image optimization and gave me a link to an optimization tool.  By testing this tool, my pics lost weight and at the same time, it definitely solved the color issue since this tool removes all unnecessary color profile information and so, removes the ones that cause issues.

For graphics designers that might be interested, I give you this link to optimize your pics : http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/

Then I learned to use little more GIF format and indexed PNGs for non-transparent pics that have a few colors.

This site, the portfolio and the blog all had this diet.


An insane load of tasks !

In addition to the styles updates, I had other tasks, and the biggest one was to finish the first chapters of my GIMP French lesson in order to send them to validation on Le Site du Zéro, and this took me almost the whole month of June to do this blitz, so those who are waiting for a while can finally read them.  The fact that I would like to upgrade my Ubuntu had something to do with it since there are much changes between 9.04 and 10.04's visuals.

When I could finally send my tutorial to validation, I could finally breathe a bit and feel that I finally managed to get over this load of work !

Regarding the Pro_Ubuntu variants request for Terraburg, it finally unblocked, but I first had to finish correcting the vanilla pro_ubuntu style so I can apply these fixes on the style that's installed on his board.  Now that update is done, I can finally begin to make the variants.

After the phpBB3 styles, I still have other platforms styles to update, and the next ones will be the ForuMotion skins.


Changes in phpBB3 styles

The style changes are important enough to motivate me to increment the second number in each style's version number.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the changes :

• [*] Optimized all pics.  The non-transparent backgrounds have been switched from RVB to indexed color mode, and all pics have been processed with SmushIt in order to remove all unnecessary color profile infos.  The most alert of you might notice that all archives have lost weight.
  
• [*] Fixed a text/background contrast issue on hover links in posts : The text and the background had the same color, so the text was completely hidden.
  
• [*] Fixed wrong extensions of some pics.  For some bugs, it came from the "Online" icon, and for other, it was the report button in imageset.cfg file.
  
• [*] Removed code duplicates that appeared during the update from 3.0.6 to 3.0.7.
  
• [*] In Pro_Ubuntu style, the PNG forum and topic status folders are back.  Since I changed PNG fix script for DD_BelatedPNG that uses VML instead of AlphaImageLoader and that doesn't require any HTML code addition everywhere, no bug has been reported in the other styles that have PNG folders and use this script to fix them.  So the risk to see horrible pizels on icons' edges is over !

All styles are compatible with phpBB 3.0.7-PL1

If you use one of our styles, it is strongly recommended to download the newest version.  If you heavily modified them, comparison tools exist to help you.  Some compare directories recursively, some other don't.

If you use Windows, I recommend you WinMerge, a graphical file comparison tool that can compare two directories recursively.

If you use Linux, I only know the hdiff Perl script that can compare recursively each code of each file in each directory.  As soon as I'll upgrade my blog to Wordpress 3.0, I'll settle an English version of my blog and I'll translate the article I just published on my French blog.

With that, you'll be able to update your styles without losing your modifications.

Hello,

It's been a while I didn't give any news even thought I am regularly connected.

First of all, and this news is directly related to this, I upgraded my Firefox to the version 3.6 on Ubuntu.  But the first days after the upgrade, I began to notice that there was something wrong : My PNGs were darkened or had weird colors !

I test with the Windows XP version of FF 3.6, to figure out that this issue doesn't happen with this version.  I test with different parameters, such as the gamma that is known to cause darkening issues under Internet Explorer, to figure out that if I don't save the gamma (as I always did in order to prevent rendering issues under IE), it doesn't render well  under Firefox 3.6 !

So I go for investigation on Geckozone, Alsacréations and QuébecOS.  I then figured out that it varied from one OS to another, or from one version to another, or even from one Service Pack to another !  Even if I could disable the gfx.color management.mode in Firefox's settings in order to not have the issue on my side, this didn't fully solve the issue since many people have this setting enabled.

Then a few days after, someone from QuébecOS notifies me a reply that has been posted in my topic on Alsacréations and that talks about ICC profiles (for colors management).  So I do some research about this, to finally learn that PNG images that are destined for webdesign must have a sRGB ICC profile to display correctly.  Since the default Gimp installation I have on Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't include any .icc file, I had to download one in order to correct my pics.  I cound fine one at this link and then, I tested on a pic that had rendering issues, to figure out that it really fixed the color issue under Firefox and so, it now renders well in all browsers.  If I have some time, I'll write a small tutorial about thsi in the Gimp tutorials section.

But since I made a lot of styles with a lot of PNGs, this makes me have to update them all in order to correct rendering issues.

So, you'll have to expect a mass update, and this includes an update of my Forumotion skins that are on Hitskin, so this means that I'll have to have them deleted, then send the updated versions (anyway, an update will be welcomed, some buttons are missing since the last Forumotion updates)

For now, I already updated this site's default style and my portfolio's style, and I took the opportunity to convert several pics to GIF format when it's possible (this means if there is no perceptible quality loss), in order to reduce the pics' total weight at the same time

Other news

Besides the PNGs colors issues that I could finally solve, and the massive style updates that are coming, I have other things that keep me busy on the Net.

Given the fact that I have limited resources face to bot attacks and I can't install plugins or edit HTML code, I plan to move my French blog from SOSBlog to a Wordpress blog hosted on Servhome.  It's been already a few days since I started testing Wordpress and the theme is almost finished (still the link colors to darken a bit - recommended by Gimp-Attitude's admin).

I'm also having a request that is going not so well, in order to modify one of my styles for a phpBB3 that uses the phpBB-SEO premod.  By the fact that I have never touched to this premod, I'm messing around just in order to be able to test on my localhost and I currently have an open topic on the support forum.

I also habe a quite big MOD in development for Connectix Board (this site's bulletin board system).  This consists in an advanced stats page, and right now, I am stuck in a detail and so, I sent a copy of the files and modifications to Martin (CB's developer).  It's only once I finished coding it that I will be able to publish a beta of the MOD on the French (and only) support forum.

And by the way...

While I was viewing my site's traffic stats, I learned that some of my Gimp tutorials are now referenced on the French Mandriva Linux Community's Wiki.  A few months before, I saw my tuts being referenced on a French blog where the author gathered a lot of GIMP tutorials websites.
This proves that my tuts are appreciated and that if we adopt an "open source" attitude - this means keeping the tutorials accessible to everyone - we have much more chances to be referenced, particularly in websites that are related to opensource/free softwares, and I mean "free" as in "free speech" and not as in "free beer".  In my book, it's this attitude that we must keep in mind when it comes to promote a free software and teach newbies how to use them, because it's throught sharing that we transmit our knowledge and that we help free software to take a place face to their proprietary equivalents.  How could we adopt a software if there is now available or accessible documentation ?  For me, the choice is already done.

Hum... finally I spread much more butter on my toast than I expected. (this comes from a French expression that means that we wrote a lot)

Stay tuned for future news about the progress of the styles updates !

Ishimaru Chiaki