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Pebble UI tweaks

Although the major work in Pebble 1.8 is around internationalization, I have found some time to update some elements of the user interface. Most obvious are some tweaks to the look and feel (see below), with others including some usability enhancements around the application.

Default theme
1. Default theme

Common theme
2. Default theme, common pages

In addition to this, I've had some great feedback about project blogs so I've decided to include a "build" theme that can be used as a starting point for using a blog as an extreme feedback device. In case you missed it first time around, assuming that you've got CruiseControl publishing build reports to your blog, it will go green when the build is successful and red when it fails. Kind of like lava lamps, only cheaper and not quite as cool!

Build theme - green
3. Build theme (build successful)

Build theme - red
4. Build theme (build failed)

I'm looking to get the 1.8 release out in the next week or so.

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Posted by Simon Brown on 27 April 2005 16:44:50 BST #


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Re: Pebble UI tweaks

Comment from Lee on 27 April 2005 17:02:19 BST #
Simon, the build theme is a _REALLY_ good idea - I'll implement that on my CI machine. As far the UI tweaks, it looks good. BUT - you're using different coloured images as backgrounds to the DIV correct? why not create a single image (of a varying black transparency - so it will have to be gif or png) and set this as the background image for a div whose background colour is set in CSS? It seems more flexible, and its less maintenance.
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Re: Pebble UI tweaks

Comment from Simon Brown on 27 April 2005 19:57:27 BST #
That's a really cool idea. Web design and Photoshop isn't really my forte, although after several attempts at getting the transparency to work, I've created a transparent graduate. Looks exactly the same as the jpegs I'd created and can be rolled out to all themes. Thanks for the tip!
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Re: Pebble UI tweaks

Comment from Jeff Martin on 28 April 2005 14:58:01 BST #
Probably won't work in IE. You need to start pissing about with Javascript hacks to get IE to actually use transparency. This is the Javascript hack I use
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Re: Pebble UI tweaks

Comment from Simon Brown on 28 April 2005 16:13:01 BST #
Thanks Jeff, I can confirm that it doesn't work in IE! That was a PNG, so I'll try a GIF instead.
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Re: Pebble UI tweaks

Comment from Lee on 28 April 2005 16:17:28 BST #
You may need to try using some interpolation tricks - rather than varying the trasparency, use a transparent pixel next to a non transparent one, then a transparent one etc - varying the density ratio of the transparent/non transparent pixels will achieve the same effect. AFAIK, GIF only supports transparency at the level of 100% transparent or 0% transparent. I'll have a play over the Bank holiday and see if I can create such an image, although I'm not an expert with Photoshop either.
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Re: Pebble UI tweaks

Comment from Lee on 03 May 2005 16:14:09 BST #
I did some research over the weekend. Apparently IE doesn't support alpha channels for PNG. So that only leaves a GIF solution. I tried to create a dithered GIF image earlier but it looked rough - I suspect that this could be a dead end, although it would have been neat had it worked. I'll continue to try and tidy up my GIF - hopefully I just need to get the transparent pixel density correct.

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