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Preview Shot

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:31 am
by Brad Smith
Here's the much-awaited shot of the day... This is the new look for Smooth Operator 1.0, redone from the ground up:

Image

Beta 1 will be released tonight somewhere. Good luck finding it.

Here's the plan:

Beta 1 (Tonight) - basic implementation of the new look (32x32 icons), lacking the special status message styling (waiting on an application update for that)

Beta 2 (Tomorrow or Saturday) - full implementation of the new look (both 32x32 and 48x48 icons) and status message (sans special away message behavior)

1.0 Final (Sunday) - barring any issues, a tweaked 1.0 release will be out on Sunday.

Over the coming weeks I will add support for 16x16 icons, no icons, a updated classic style (think SO 0.5 with better spacing and definition), and much more. I'm working about an hour a day on this now, so expect to see a lot of gradual enhancements and additions in the next few weeks.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:32 am
by dbomb
Awesome job Brad! looks very nice!

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:01 am
by falconbrad
Just WOW.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:07 am
by kirk
That looks simply beautiful *tear*

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:48 am
by sdh
you have really done a good job, nothing on the xtras page looks this professional.
i like that the bubbles arent as round as in the previous SmoothOp. ( the edge in the left corner. ) that gives it a way better feel.
and it seems to be more space, so compact. ( thats a good thing. )
the header is also very, very beautiful. will we be able to hide it with a click?

but i think the only thing that stands out is the status color bubbles/messages,
theyre quite dark. have you tried them a little lighter? they would maybe "melt in" a bit better then.
i know theyre probably darker so its easier to locate the status messages,
but since the neutral bubbles are all white they are the only colors and color markings,
so even with a lighter color they would be easy to see.

but like i said, i like it very much, this will really one of the best ( if not the best ) messageview style avaliable.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:01 am
by eevyl
wow, amazing.

However a long ago fixed CSS bug has reappeared, this one.

Update: Found the fix, in the main.css file you have to replace the style "margin: 0;" for the body tag with "margin: 0px 0px -19px 0px;". Now I can start enjoying the thing fully ^_^

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:54 am
by eevyl
Note the weird error with the time too ... huh can't figure that one out.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:16 am
by The_Tick
sdh wrote:but i think the only thing that stands out is the status color bubbles/messages,
theyre quite dark. have you tried them a little lighter? they would maybe "melt in" a bit better then.
i know theyre probably darker so its easier to locate the status messages,

That's the point. When Brad and I went over this a bit back, I think we both wanted it to be very easy to locate status changes. Personally I like the dark status changes, it gives a great contrast.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:31 am
by Son of a Preacher Man
I think it matches brilliantly, and the decision to have different coloured messages suits the style well. I'm not sure if it will be my style of choice, but the hard work that's gone/going into it is blatant.

Incidentally, when do we see a screenshot instead of the mockup? :)

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:35 am
by eevyl
Son of a Preacher Man wrote:Incidentally, when do we see a screenshot instead of the mockup? :)
See it in live action in my link above ^_^

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:41 am
by Son of a Preacher Man
Bah. Show me up why don't you :P

Looks good.

[edit] Appears to be a bug, in that the user pictures don't have a rounded corner in that movie - though I'm guessing that's a known issue.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:44 am
by sdh
The_Tick wrote:
sdh wrote:but i think the only thing that stands out is the status color bubbles/messages,
theyre quite dark. have you tried them a little lighter? they would maybe "melt in" a bit better then.
i know theyre probably darker so its easier to locate the status messages,

That's the point. When Brad and I went over this a bit back, I think we both wanted it to be very easy to locate status changes. Personally I like the dark status changes, it gives a great contrast.
but slightly lighter colors would also give good contrast :) since they are the only colors that arent white.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:58 am
by The_Tick
sdh wrote:
The_Tick wrote:
sdh wrote:but i think the only thing that stands out is the status color bubbles/messages,
theyre quite dark. have you tried them a little lighter? they would maybe "melt in" a bit better then.
i know theyre probably darker so its easier to locate the status messages,

That's the point. When Brad and I went over this a bit back, I think we both wanted it to be very easy to locate status changes. Personally I like the dark status changes, it gives a great contrast.
but slightly lighter colors would also give good contrast :) since they are the only colors that arent white.

We tried it.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:05 pm
by sdh
The_Tick wrote:
sdh wrote:
The_Tick wrote:
That's the point. When Brad and I went over this a bit back, I think we both wanted it to be very easy to locate status changes. Personally I like the dark status changes, it gives a great contrast.
but slightly lighter colors would also give good contrast :) since they are the only colors that arent white.

We tried it.
oh, ok.

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 1:36 pm
by DJ_FoX_MaC_ClouD
Beautiful message style !
I've just a question, why doesn't the capital letters work in the message view?

exemple : my screen name is George Abtar
it will be display as george abtar !
Any thoughts?

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 2:04 pm
by elvyse
What are the nummbers in the left column (under the avatar) supposed to mean?

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 2:06 pm
by The_Tick
elvyse wrote:What are the nummbers in the left column (under the avatar) supposed to mean?
Time stamps

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 2:30 pm
by elvyse
The_Tick wrote:Time stamps
Could you be a bit more precise? How to read them? On Brad's picture, when "mandy moore" says "Ahahahah. This is much slimmer than the previous version." does the timestamp "26:31" mean "10:26:31"? And why is there "10:23:01 AM" on each bubble?

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 2:32 pm
by twopeak
you guess completely correct:
at the first message of a series of messages it will give you the hour and minutes and so on
On the next message only the minutes.

I find this very weird, but I can understand some ppl like it...


/me is trying to figure out where and when to start searching for that beta style...

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 3:03 pm
by kirk
eevyl wrote:wow, amazing.

However a long ago fixed CSS bug has reappeared, this one.

Update: Found the fix, in the main.css file you have to replace the style "margin: 0;" for the body tag with "margin: 0px 0px -19px 0px;". Now I can start enjoying the thing fully ^_^

What program did you use to capture the video? I've been looking everywhere for that kind of prog.