Query and test

[SparkOut]

1) Query:

Is it possible to make the breadcrumb trail bigger and bolder, to make it easier to navigate back to the forum index, or the index of the current forum (also could it be repeated at the bottom of the page under all the posts)?

2) Test:

This should be spoilered. So it will be displayed with black background. Only I think the colour of the text is a blue, so you still get a hint of the text that's supposed to be obscured. Can the colour of the text in the spoiler tag be changed to black? Or would it be easier to change the colour of the blackout to blue?

[Scurra]

1. I shall do something about that now.

edit: yes, that little bit larger does look better.

2. Interesting point. It's a matter of getting exactly the right shade of blue...

edit: How's that for the spoiler colour?

[SparkOut]

1) Personally I'd not say no to an even bigger breadcrumb trail, but this is much better.

2) Looks just like color #323D4F to me. Which is the default color for the body tag in the css, so it seems to match just right!

[Bunnylump]

Breadcrumb trails? BodyTags? Do you need the body tag to identify Gretel after the witch has got her??

[SparkOut]

Well, you'd rather have the mortician identify the deceased as Bunnylump than Jane Doe wouldn't you?

[SparkOut]

Slowly the gif artifacts in the offline and online images have been grating on me more and more.
Maybe these will look better. (Just testing, as I haven't tried on a web page with the right background colours yet.)

[SparkOut]

and again on the alternate row background

[Scurra]

They do look better, certainly.
Then again, I confess that's not something I was paying attention to

[SparkOut]

Of course, that's why I thought I'd have a look at doing them up, rather than just complaining.
Grab the images and stick them in the right place and you should be fine.

[giraffe]

Slowly the gif artifacts in the offline and online images have been grating on me more and more.

Are you trying to say they are a bit fuzzy?

[SparkOut]

If you like! (only they should be improved a bit now, as Scurra's already changed the old ones).
"Artifacts" are the little jagged edges that appear on images and text when they get enlarged or changed in resolution, or background colour, as in this case. Computer screens show everything in "pixels" (picture cells) like little tiny mosaic dots. To display the word "Offline" in a picture like we have here, the computer puts a row of coloured dots for the background, and then some red dots for the top edge of the letter, then some more background dots, etc. That means that to get a curved line requires a bit of "optical illusion" to make you think that the curve is smooth. Therefore around the edges, especially where there are changes of direction, there are colours inserted "somewhere in between" the colour of the neighbouring pixels to make the colours seem to blend, as far as our eyes can tell, anyway. This is a technique called "anti-aliasing" (so why not anti-artifacting then? I dunno... ) (There's other factors involved too but I shan't try and get you to wear that anorak.)
In the case of the forum colours here, the images had a much paler anti-aliasing that didn't go with the beige background we have, so the pale dots that were supposed to blend with the background stood out. The new pics should be much smoother.

[Scurra]

There's also the issue that the graphics sometimes get resized automatically (as seems to be partly happening here, although it's very hard to tell.) So all the careful "anti-aliasing" that went into the original image sometimes also gets spoilt by random extra pixels that are inserted to make the image larger...

[SparkOut]

and it's the anorak relay!

[Scurra]

Very close examination reveals that no extra pixels are actually being added here at all; I suspect that the background isn't helping.
I'm more entertained to notice that the maximum message size is 60,000 characters. Which I reckon is enough for a large chunk of a novel. Not that I'm suggesting that people start writing and posting novels on here...

[SparkOut]

Oh I wouldn't do that... I'd script a loop to put 60,000 random characters together and pretend it was a puzzle.