[Rejected] Removal of subsilver2 in 3.1

[Dragosvr92]

subsilver3 seems to be based on the prosilver template, so i do not understand why do you guys bother debating this.
If people need it, all they need to update is the theme and the images in case you will ever add new ones, which i doubt.

Updating the theme files wouldnt be difficult at all. The Changes you have to apply on the original prosilver style should let the subsilver3 users what they should have to change. One single person could take care of this..

[DarkBeing]

The main arguments for keeping subsilver were ease of its modification by some board admins, its lighter weight compared to prosilver (and now with ajax prosilver is even heavier) and possibly the fact that some people simply liked its look/feel better. These reasons apply today as much as they did two years ago.

Personally I like having two completely independent styles. If anything I would like to see a mobile style developed before dropping subsilver. I am unaware of any third-party styles that are not based on either subsilver or prosilver.

I see your point, but again, what will be any different at the time when 3.2 hits? You could copy paste the reasons. What will you tell the users on subsilver2 at that point why you dropped it from official support?

Personally I like your idea of having an official mobile style as a 2nd supported style, because that would make extreme sense nowadays and would go along with user wishes which were posted on phpbb.com.

[canonknipser]

At the time when 3.2 hits, subsilver2 is not part of the default install packages.
During 3.1, subsilver2 will be available in styles-DB on .com, maybe marked as deprecated, together with all other subsilber2-based styles (i don't now, if styles-DB currently has the possibility to mark styles as deprecated). In the release-notes there has to be a comment not to use subsilver2 any more (or use on own risk, because its deprecated ...)
After releasing 3.2, all subsilver2-based style including subsilver2 has to be marked as [ABD]

Hopefully, if Send Statistics RFC will pass, there is a good database for a statistic useful for usage of styles and more.
At this time, nobody knows how many sites use subsilver2-based styles as active styles.

[nickvergessen]

I see your point, but again, what will be any different at the time when 3.2 hits? You could copy paste the reasons. What will you tell the users on subsilver2 at that point why you dropped it from official support?

There will be quite sometime were only boards are installed that didnt include subsilver2, aswell as people get used to ajax and such stuff, which is only part of prosilver. This might push some admins in the decision to change their board style. However then it is their decision and not directly forced by us. That makes a big difference in the way people feel to be threatened by the software and its developers

[KnocksX]

People are threatened more by software that falls a decade behind than by moving to modern interfaces. The look of subsilver2 does not belong in the modern forum landscape. It's embarrassing to look at, let alone include as a sanctioned part of any package in 2012.

[Pony99CA]

KnocksX, to be honest, there's no actual reason why you could call subsilver2 outdated. Technically it is not outdated, it just uses uses tabular markup, which is not outdated (see HTML5 specs).
As for its design, this is up to the users taste, so we can't judge it such peremptorily.
Thus, outdating of subsilver2 is not really the reason to remove it, imho.

I thought Knocks' comment was a bit harsh (as is the one above), but I suspect that "outdated" meant that subSilver 2 uses the "outdated" technique of using tables for formatting instead of CSS. Tables as semantic entities would of course be in HTML 5 and should always be.

As for whether subSilver should be kept in phpBB, I don't much care. However, I do think that if phpBB ships with more than one standard style, any MODs or extensions should be required to support all of the default styles. Allowing phpBB 3.0 MOD authors to only support ProSilver even though subSilver 2 was a standard style seemed like a cop-out to me. It made it seem as if subSilver 2 was the bastard child of phpBB.

People are threatened more by software that falls a decade behind than by moving to modern interfaces. The look of subsilver2 does not belong in the modern forum landscape. It's embarrassing to look at, let alone include as a sanctioned part of any package in 2012.

In your opinion (although I much prefer ProSilver). So how do you explain why other admins want it? Maybe they aren't hung up on whether some people think that it looks "outdated".

My site (the one linked in my signature) looks outdated (from 1998 or so), but I don't care. I always thought that the information provided was why people would visit, not the look. (To be fair, I did have plans to redo it, with a new domain name, but I didn't have time and now Windows Mobile is "outdated" itself. )

Steve

[KnocksX]

Steve, your site doesn't look outdated, it looks like it's trying to preserve the legacy of the World Wide Web.

Yes, my comment is harsh, but sometimes you have to be a little rude to get the point across. Ugly things are ugly. I'm talking strictly about looks, and in web design, "outdated look" is a real concept. To launch a forum for prime time and compete with the big boys, you have to ship a good-looking style and not get distracted by the old, and by today's standards even prosilver barely qualifies. Have you seen this? That's going to be their default style in just a couple of months, so dwelling on the past is just not wise at this point.

As to why some admins still prefer the subsilver2 look, maybe they don't care much for visuals or maybe their forums cater to a tech audience who despise "new" looks (I know plenty of such communities) or maybe it's nostalgia or stubbornness. Those admins are not the audience to cater to.

[Black Antitoon]

I am a forum admin. Not a developer, just a phpBB lover who from time to time has a look at area51 and at the development status.

Subsilver2 is currently the default style in our board. It's a very small board, with 10 to 15 active users, who have been knowing themselves and being together on our forum since years. Most of us like subsilver2, probably because of nostalgia (we have been using it since the release of Olympus RC1). However most of us will not really care if we replace it with subsilver3, many will not even notice the difference.

Despite being in love with subsilver2 for years, as an admin, if subsilver3 gets official support, I will switch to it immediately and drop subsilver2 on my board, because having two different templates is a terrible hassle when you are installing MODs. The only point I see in preferring subsilver2 to a prosilver-based equivalent is that in my experience ss2 is much more lightweight than any prosilver-based style, and I do feel the difference when I am loading the page on a mobile phone. However to me this is not enough for justifying the hassle of managing two templates.

So my vote in this poll (and my two cents) is "Drop subsilver2 , but please, please, PLEASE, provide official support for subsilver3 or an equivalent style".

[rxu]

You guys forgetting just one thing - we do drop subsilver2 from the package starting with 3.1. So there's no point to argue about that.
Subsilver2 will be available as a standalone style, and I think it will be available like that for 3.2+ as well.
Thus, the only point of what you're discussing here is whether it will be updated by development team, or community will do this.
Development team just took a responsibility to serve subsilver2 for 3.1 time as a standalone style to provide graceful migration to prosilver and prosilver-based styles for tons of communities who stucked with subsilver2. Do you realize that?

[Arty]

You guys forgetting just one thing - we do drop subsilver2 from the package starting with 3.1. So there's no point to argue about that.
Subsilver2 will be available as a standalone style, and I think it will be available like that for 3.2+ as well.
Thus, the only point of what you're discussing here is whether it will be updated by development team, or community will do this.

Yes, I think some posters forgot about that.

Suggestions like including subsilver3 in package are not discussed here. I don't think that was ever even considered. Its a third party style, not official phpbb style.

Development team just took a responsibility to serve subsilver2 for 3.1 time as a standalone style to provide graceful migration to prosilver and prosilver-based styles for tons of communities who stucked with subsilver2. Do you realize that?

It affects other teams as well. If subsilver2 is available, styles team must support it. It also makes it impossible to remove large chunks of useless code from core phpbb.