This morning we installed a major new release of Xenforo (XF 2.3.2). It has a gazillion improvement features of which three will be immediately visible.
1. There is a new widget (box) called "Featured Content" on top of the right sidebar of your computer screen or underneath the forums on a phone. This widget will contain threads that I think deserve to be featured. For example, this thread will be featured for a while and the next fundraiser thread will be featured. Featured Content also appears in the link by that name under "What's New" on the top menu bar. I plan to use this feature only occasionally.
2. There is a new widget called "Trending Content" underneath the Latest Posts widget on the right sidebar of your computer screen or underneath the Latest Posts on a phone. This widget is supposed to display the "hottest" five threads trending on the site. (I can increase or decrease that number.) I have no idea what the hotness algorithm is, but it's supposed to work over a seven day span. Right now it's pulling up some old threads and some new ones that don't appear that hot. Let's give it a couple of weeks to settle in.
3. There is now a selectable "dark mode" color style integrally built into the XF code as a default addition to the light mode style that most of you have always been using. The light mode has been called "default style" and is basically blue fonts on a white background. If you are in the default light mode now, just go down to the bottom left corner of any page. You will see a gear icon (
) to the right of the words "Default style." Tapping that gear lets you choose to stay in light mode default, or switch to dark mode default, or switch to whatever mode (light or dark) your operating system is set to.
The paintbrush icon (
) Style Chooser is still in that lower left corner also. That still allows you to choose any of the five other color styles instead of one of the three default styles. Dark mode and light mode don't (currently) apply to these five additional color styles. They are all third party add-ons and each has some quirks and bugs, which you may or may not have noticed. The three new default styles, as said, are integrated into the XF code itself and hence should be more stable and bug free.
One of our five third party add-on styles is Shades of Grey, which is now sort of duplicative of XF's default dark mode. The visual difference I see is that default dark mode is more of a rich deep black background rather than a dark grey, the unread threads stand out with orange balloons in front of them, the color contrasts are better, and all the avatars and fonts seem sharper than in Shades of Grey.
Let me know if you have any issues or problems with these new features or anything else in this new code release, or have any other comments.
1. There is a new widget (box) called "Featured Content" on top of the right sidebar of your computer screen or underneath the forums on a phone. This widget will contain threads that I think deserve to be featured. For example, this thread will be featured for a while and the next fundraiser thread will be featured. Featured Content also appears in the link by that name under "What's New" on the top menu bar. I plan to use this feature only occasionally.
2. There is a new widget called "Trending Content" underneath the Latest Posts widget on the right sidebar of your computer screen or underneath the Latest Posts on a phone. This widget is supposed to display the "hottest" five threads trending on the site. (I can increase or decrease that number.) I have no idea what the hotness algorithm is, but it's supposed to work over a seven day span. Right now it's pulling up some old threads and some new ones that don't appear that hot. Let's give it a couple of weeks to settle in.
3. There is now a selectable "dark mode" color style integrally built into the XF code as a default addition to the light mode style that most of you have always been using. The light mode has been called "default style" and is basically blue fonts on a white background. If you are in the default light mode now, just go down to the bottom left corner of any page. You will see a gear icon (
) to the right of the words "Default style." Tapping that gear lets you choose to stay in light mode default, or switch to dark mode default, or switch to whatever mode (light or dark) your operating system is set to.The paintbrush icon (
) Style Chooser is still in that lower left corner also. That still allows you to choose any of the five other color styles instead of one of the three default styles. Dark mode and light mode don't (currently) apply to these five additional color styles. They are all third party add-ons and each has some quirks and bugs, which you may or may not have noticed. The three new default styles, as said, are integrated into the XF code itself and hence should be more stable and bug free.One of our five third party add-on styles is Shades of Grey, which is now sort of duplicative of XF's default dark mode. The visual difference I see is that default dark mode is more of a rich deep black background rather than a dark grey, the unread threads stand out with orange balloons in front of them, the color contrasts are better, and all the avatars and fonts seem sharper than in Shades of Grey.
Let me know if you have any issues or problems with these new features or anything else in this new code release, or have any other comments.
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