New CR Style - Deep Blue

[jimsflies]

Hope you guys like the new style!

You may have noticed over the past few months we have changed the forums around. This was done in an effort to simplify the site. Fewer forums to figure out where to post, less scrolling to get to where you want to be. These changes were done leading up to Deep Blue. With Deep Blue, you can be almost anywhere in two clicks and minimal scrolling.

The goal is to make CR easy for the casual user. Casual Users typically only spend time on a couple of pages...maybe the home page, maybe the forum home page, or possibly the New or Today's Post search. Deep Blue seeks to put as many threads in front of them as possible and still have it manageable.

Deep Blue also makes our members the star of the show! Deep Blue's color scheme and graphic design is intended to showcase your content. CR changes with every new thread and post that is made..even the items members are selling are dynamically placed into the tabs and homepage. The homepage (http://www.captivereefs.com/) slideshow grabs threads with attachments from the Showcase forums and display them with links back to your thread. There is also a new footer area with the Hot Topics (Most Replied...from the past 5 days) and Most Popular (Top Viewed threads from the past 14 days).

CR has been growing thanks to you guys. Deep Blue was designed to really set us apart from other sites and hopefully get us to the next level (or three). :)

[Heidi]

woohoo! Its about time Jimmy! Just kidding, really the site looks wonderful and very unique for a forum. I love it!

Heidi

[Captain]

Groovy

[Sir Patrick]

I am loving it!!!

[Hopkins]

Very nice! Thanks for all your hard work, its definitely worth the effort.

[Skyhigh]

I like it........

[jimsflies]

Thanks guys.

A little guided tour of some of the pages I think are particularly cool and fairly unique to CaptiveReefs:
homepage (http://www.captivereefs.com/)
Main Forum Page (aka Forum Home) (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/forums.html)
Coral Collector (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/coral-collector/) and Fish Finder (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/fish-finder/)
Tank of the Month Forum (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/tank-month/)
Sponsor Forums (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/sponsor-forums/)
Selling Forum (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/livestock-sales-trades/)

[jimsflies]

Here is a screen shot showing the top area above the tabs. This is where all the links are that used to be in the old menu...if this isn't displaying for you, please let me know what browser and version you are using.

http://i1119.photobucket.com/albums/k621/jimsflies/navbar-screenshot-1.jpg

[rosebud161616]

Very cool looking and a lot different than other forums. If I could give a little constructive criticism, I'm not a big fan of the menus at the top. They're not very laptop friendly. It's hard to go from Forums to Top without hitting one of the other menus first. Otherwise, very cool!

[jimsflies]

Good point Erika. I think though if you are navigating the top nav, it isn't as critical if a content tab changes. It was decided to make everything change when your mouse goes over it rather than click. It could be changed it if turns out to be a major problem though.

[MyNemesis]

The top two bars don't appear on my screen. Those would sure make life easier! Got to be some computer setting. Trying to figure things out. Thanks for your help, Jim.

[jimsflies]

If you are on IE6, I know for sure it doesn't work. I'm not as sure about IE7 but it should. I made the decision to stop supporting IE6...it required to much special code and it is losing users very quickly now.

For the best CR viewing, I recommend Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/make/download.html?&brand=CHMB&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bk&utm_medium=ha).

But it should work fine on IE8 and above as well.

[MyNemesis]

Thanks for your help, Jim. I will try to figure this out this evening and try to update my version of IE.

[rosebud161616]

Good point Erika. I think though if you are navigating the top nav, it isn't as critical if a content tab changes. It was decided to make everything change when your mouse goes over it rather than click. It could be changed it if turns out to be a major problem though.

I agree it's not critical, just annoying. It can get very frustrating trying to move the cursor all the way to the end, just have it hit another tab and then you have to start over.

[jimsflies]

For those that prefer to stay with the old, for the time being you can click here and you will be time warped back to yesterday :)

CR Superblue (Old Style) (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/forums.php?styleid=12)

You can use the style chooser (lower left hand corner of each page) to get back to Deep Blue.

[CableGuy]

The only thing I dont like is the "tile view" of the forums... I like the typical list view as that is what I'm used to. Much easier to navigate.

[evilc66]

Looks good, but can we slow down the changes? The number of changes over the last few months were getting annoying.

[jimsflies]

Looks good, but can we slow down the changes? The number of changes over the last few months were getting annoying.

Yup...that's the plan. All of the changes were leading up to this. Unfortunately some of the changes had to bleed over into the old style because they were more than simple template changes.

There are a few remaining items on the bug list for the new style, but as I complete those I doubt most people will notice a difference.

In fact, I am ready to take a break from all this coding stuff. I'm ready to get back to reefing.

[rulost2001]

the site works great even for the less computer literate ....nice job

[jimsflies]

Glad to hear it. I have also started working on tips to get the most out of the new style. Here is a link to see the forum tips (http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/site-issues-feedback/?prefixid=Forum_Tips) (located in the site issues and feedback forum).