DaffyDuck

... or to respond to a message forum post/query. Yeah, in typical "open source" manner, the skin/project has been abandoned and forgotten. Pity. His girlfriend probably got pregnant or he got married, and suddenly he no longer has any time. The fate of most such projects.

Funny, two ducks posting in a row. It’s just unfortunate that Timan just bailed on the site, and apparently never looked back (not even changed or customized the theme) - though grateful that he keeps it going.

I guess these skin projects are all dead? Must be that Timan go a girlfriend, or got married, or something?

Any chance at a beta release of the current IPB3 theme?

Ping?

Any chance at a beta release of the current IPB3 theme?

That's been my impression as well. Glad I'm not alone in that.

How could it be more of a mess that iPB currently is? More reliable for skinning?

So far, I'm comparing this to the new vBulletin 4.0 and the theming seems to be much less of a hassle under vB4 (particularly remaining apparently constant between version udates). From following your status updates on here, it seems IPB make fundamental changes every time they release another update.

Any chance you could release the interim version for IPB that you're working on, so more of us could test it out in combination with the mobile skin?

...and why is that an automatic no? It supports their latest version - nothing unexpected there.

If IPB3 weren't such a mess from the administration and configuration point of view, I would swith to it (ihave licenses for both). While I can understand Timan's point of view regarding the ease of theming, simply running and admining a site, vB has done their homework, with end users in mind, far better than IPB has. On the other hand, IPB just released an iPhone app to connect to IPB sites, which is VERY well done, and they appear to understand that their users and customers come from several platforms - the vB designers and managers have admitted to 'tolerating' Mac users, and most likely will never support Safari with their text editor (while many others do). So, yeah, short of writing your own forum, difficult to decide.

I'm increasing the importance of the CMS, ie the home screen, amending my earlier comment.

both colors and design look actually very nice in your placeholder, looking very funcrional.

There is no need - iPhone supports sending image files either from the photo album, or via the camera, and uploading them.

There is! I use a plugin for exactly that purpose and it does a great job directing to display different skins based on user agent.

Why? Don't bother. What non-webkit browsers (that matter, that is) are there? iPhone, Android and Palm are all webkit -- not really sure what else there is left? Blackberry? I think those need to get something that actually passes for a real browser, first -- and the next generation browser they are talking about will also be webkit based. As far as I was concerned - the present version of the mobile skin was close to as perfect as any mobile skin would get. If that's going to get thrown out the window, then there's no point. I think, IMO, a more pressing matter would be bringing regular desktop browser skin and mobile skin in line to run on the same forum version, so as to make it possible to actually integrate them. As it stands, with the mobile skin being IPB based, and the closes forum skin being vBulletin based, the twain would never meet, making one or the other pointless. Just my $0.02

Seems similar to what was done with IPB3 ;-)

Honestly, I'm with that -- lack of background isn't that big a deal, albeit it makes for an attractive distractive background - albeit at the cost of real-estate. It's a nice feature to have on a main index page, or on a portal style page, but on the actual forum, I prefer the straight edge-to-edge display. What would be ultimate, of course, would be the ability to display portal and index with a backdrop, and then to use a webkit animation to quickly display a 'stretch' animation when linking to the forum section, displaying visually how the screen 'grows' to fill edge-to-edge. Though I also figure that might get old real fast.

I have no problem even paying $20 for an upraded skin. Do not sell yourself short. You do some excellent work, and you should be compensated for it.

Forum is the major importance, blogs maybe, cms - not really. Essentially the way I see it, is to have the same functionalities you havevon Aqua-Soft - with a main welcome screen that can be used to aggregate news, or articles, that are linked to the forum content, in a separate forum section. This would work similarly to the iPhone theme you have for ipb - two tabs, one 'portal', one 'forum'

You may want to also consider these: http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/...s/MetaTags.html <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black"> Bear in mind, there are advantages and disadvantages to making an app into a webapp, versus just allowing it to be bookmarked -- the most notable is that on a webapp, when clicking on an email link, it launches MobileMail -- when it's a regular web page, it pops up the Mail pane (which is more convenient and more direct).

Woohoo!

Why not set up some kind of SPAM filter, or SPAM mod? vBulletin's got an Akismet plugin, and here's a discussion on integrating Akismet into IPB: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/2...t-intergration/ The sad reality is that forum spam is becoming more and more prevalent, and removing it manually is not going to cut it after a certain amount - in fact, regardless how you look at it, it's a bad use of your valuable time. Better to automate it, and using existing best of breed tools.

Is there something, *anything*, us members can do to help you with that (hint: pay for it?)> I've written you several times via private messages to inquire if it were possible to 'hire' you to assist you in speeding along some projects (provided that the final result still remain in your possession, and up to you to provide to your members as you see fit), but never heard back from you -- so I assumed you were either absolutely not interested, or just too busy to care. Can you give us some enlightenment as to what your availability would be?