So, what’s the latest? Any idea on taking BigT’s served up fixes and just installing them? I mean, he did the hard part - IDing the problems and providing the code fixes. All it takes is installing them. I know he didn’t do all the ones below, but he got several.
Briefly, problems with Sultantheme Responsive include:
[noparse]
[/noparse] tags don't work right. Text in the boxes does not space properly. Linespacing doesn't work.
There is a large space between the avatar and the username.
The thread link arrow in quoted posts is not visible on all platforms.
When spoiler tagged items are quoted, they are revealed, not covered.
[Advanced search extends out of the frame and can't be resized to fit the window.](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=873642)
Quotes in quote boxes are always in italics, whatever the original formatting.
There may be others I can't recall.
Sultan theme Was a misguided attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken.
It failed resoundingly, and is largely unused. Especially by experienced SDMB posters. We regularly see newbies posting about these problems; somebody quickly tells them to switch to the other theme and those problems will go away.
So I certainly hope that none of the powers that be is planning to spend any money on ‘fixing’ Sultan theme. There are lots of more important things on the site that could be worked on, if they have money to spare.
Yes, exactly this. Sultantheme was a disaster from the beginning, and the only thing that saved the board was someone’s suggestion that this stupid thing and the original SDMB theme could co-exist at the same time, and users could therefore revert to the old theme, as long as they were logged in. Apparently Sultantheme scores points with Google for “mobile-friendly” which elevates it in the Google rankings, or so I’m told, and I can’t judge on behalf of TPTB how important that is. But it’s a pretty crappy UI that breaks a lot of things.
We know that Google does give points for a site being mobile-friendly. And we know that Sultantheme describes itself as mobile-friendly. But we don’t know whether Google agrees with that self-assessment.
SultanTheme does in fact work better on mobile than the original theme. The original theme displays at full screen size, which makes it really tiny on smaller devices. SultanTheme properly adapts, fitting in a smaller screen size, and removing parts as necessary so the text is legible on even small screens.
That said, it does have cosmetic issues that actually cause problems, like the in ability to use CODE tags or spoilers within quotes. And both are rather easy fixes, with just a few lines of code. And I share your frustration that they don’t want to fix it–especially as the guy who spent time figuring out how to do it.
It makes it seem like they don’t think the board is going to last much longer, so they don’t want to bother. Otherwise why would you want a broken site to be shown by default?
That said, switching back to the other theme by default would be a regression, as, again, it doesn’t play well with mobile. That said, this could be tweaked with a couple lines of code, too–albeit it wouldn’t remove columns like SultanTheme can do. All you have to do is tell the mobile browsers that it’s a mobile friendly site, and the old HTML 4.0 design (with proper resizing) would work decently well.
I’d actually always suggested that change, as it would have had less chance of going wrong, even if it wasn’t ideal.
Apologies if combining two things in my previous post made it unclear. I’m both saying that SultanTheme can be fixed, or that we could just tweak the original theme to be decent on mobile. Either would only take a few lines of code, and both would be better for the site.
Those who say Sultantheme is a failure and isn’t in use apparently don’t visit this site on a mobile device. The original theme is practically unusable on a mobile device. I’m not sure I’d even visit SDMB without it. I’m not installing a separate app just to visit this site and I’m rarely on a personal computer anymore. For all its flaws (and there are a number) it is a resounding success as an attempt to give this site access to mobile users.
Your mileage may vary, but I’ve been visiting this site on a mobile phone for about ten years and have no problems with the original SD theme. On the other hand, I think Sultantheme is a huge clusterfuck and practically useless to me.
Do you have an iPhone? Because I seem to remember this coming up before, and Safari did a better job with the original theme. I also remember that Firefox implemented a feature where it will blow up the text if it’s too small, though I found it only halfway worked on the SDMB.
I use a phone, and I switched back because the bugs were just that horrible. Not being able to see what text I’ve selected when I want to cut or paste was the killer. That being said, I’m very nearsighted, and I have to push my glasses out of the way to read this. My phone is currently 6 inches from my eyes.
Surely there are other themes out there? It would be lovely to have a legible theme that wasn’t broken.
I used to use an iPhone for a few years, then switched to Android. One thing I do when I use a new browser is to go into the settings and adjust the type size so it’s readable. Another thing that helps is that my newer phones have had larger screens. My vision is pretty good anyway, so I don’t usually find myself squinting.
The biggest issue with using the original theme on my phone is the edit window. It extends over the edges of the screen and doesn’t properly scroll sideways. I cannot compose a post on it. Whereas Sultantheme sort of works.
On a screen 2 3/4” wide that second screenshot is unreadable. I have to turn my phone sideways and zoom. It’s awkward and I wouldn’t even come here if that’s what it looked like.
The first screenshot is perfectly readable on my screen. It’s the only reason this board works in Safari.
I prefer Sultantheme on my phone. The highlighting problem went away, and the other bugs don’t bother me much. I won’t use the standard theme or tapatalk.
The selection problem was actually a broken attempt at a fix, and was fixed a while ago. That is actually part of what makes it frustrating. They did do some fixes.
I also note that my addon fixes all of the problems mentioned in the OP, save the quote arrow not appearing. I can’t see anything that would make it not appear, but it is very low contrast, so I have now edited the script to include a higher contrast arrow, based somewhat on the old arrow.
If you don’t like the color, I’m amenable to changing it. I based it on the highlight color and the color in the online/offline indicator. I tried it in monochrome, to match the quote/reply buttons, but it looked weird.
URL remains here. Install TamperMonkey for your web browser to use, then install my script. (GreaseMonkey may also work.)
