Support Challenge Suggestions!

http://sheetz.com/main/food/images/orderpointScreen.jpg PLEASE USE THIS FOR A SKINNING CHALLENGE PLLLLZZZZZ. Ever since I first saw this in sheetz, I've been drooling for a reason to use the colors.

Skin a fantasy theme! Because, uh. I don't do that enough for EF already? No but really, and I think a lot of admins will agree, our own sites demand a certain feel so we can't always do a skin we'd like to because it doesn't fit our own game.

Skin a sci-fi theme! Just because. Planets. Aliens. Guns. KAZOOM!

Fleur-de-lis: Create a skin that turns the so-favoured fleur-de-lis on its head. Only not literally. Or maybe literally, I dunno.

Pretty ribbons theme.

Graphics-less skin.

Subforum theme: Create a skin that customises the way subforums are linked. This might be better as a template or code challenge than a skin thing, though?

Topbar, topbar: Create a skin that uses a topbar instead of a sidebar.

Pop-it, baby: Either create a skin that uses a pop-out cbox/sidebar, or create your own version of a pop-out sidebar/cbox code. I'm leaning toward the latter because it would encourage more people to experiment with CSS and submit more codes, I think.

Browser Wars: Instead of just falling back on the "doesn't work in IE because it sucks" mentality, encourage people to check cross-browser compatibility: Create a skin that works in/on at least one browser/device other than/as well as Firefox.

Accessibility-schmility: Like that sig that's doing the rounds, the web doesn't run out of ink so enlarge your font and all that. Contrast! Colours that don't make colour-blind people totally blind. There are a few useful tools on the web that you could link to as part of the challenge.

Mobile Wars: Make a skin that works on a bunch of different devices. Tricky if you don't have a phone/tablet/netbook to check it on, but I think there's a thing on the web somewhere that lets you check compatibility, or maybe we could proof each others' entries, like a community-skinning challenge combined. Each of us has to provide updated screenies of the other entries on at least two devices (including our regular PCs).

Buddy System: Further to the community-skinning challenge, pair us up to collaborate. Like, maybe if a graphicsy person doesn't know how to code, they could design the skin and do the graphics and then a coder can code it for them. Or real collab where we have to choose a palette together, the software etc, design it together, split the workload between. One does the calendar, one does the search; one does the main index, one does the topic pages, etc.

Portaholic: Take any skin you've already created and port it to another (dissimilar) software platform. Like, you can't just port it from IF to JCINK or vice versa, you have to basically remake it for another software, like ZB to PB or something. Get those skins available for more places.

Fontaholic: Google has all those free websafe (kinda?) fonts now. Create a skin where the fonts can't be the bog-standard arial/verdana/times/monkeyface.

Comic Sans: Make CS look good? (Is this even possible?)

Oh, oh! October's not that far off (ack). Halloween theme?

Christmas in the south: Just because reindeer tracks in the snow can get a bit boring.

Christmas in the north: Because no matter what, as soon as the coke ad comes on (Holidays are coming, holidays are coming!), I immediately start thinking of reindeer in the snow and white blobs wearing scarves.

Orange and purple.

Lime green and purple.

Skin a medieval theme!

Reimagine an old skin: I think this may have been done before, but it could be worth redoing? Remake a skin you made years ago. Or maybe get permission to remake someone else's skin, or make a version of a skin someone else has made (again with permission). Like if you see a skin that really inspires you but you'd do the colours different or choose a different background or platform or something.

Fill a request day: The challenge is literally to fill someone's request.

Graphics galore: Make a skin complete with forum markers, pip icons, group badges, member legend (as in picking the colours, not necessarily installing a legend code), etc etc. Not all skins have these, they just come with the basics, so it might be nice to have to do the full enchilada. (New topic, etc doesn't need to be graphics, they can be styled with css, but the macros would have to be replaced to be considered a full entry in the challenge.)

Man up! Create a totally unfeminine skin. Possibly extend the challenge so it's not all dark and crispy. Light can be manly too?

Seasonal challenges (August, Spring, Summer, Winter) and seasonal challenges that turn preconceptions of the seasons on their heads (like full-bloom flowers in fall). I like how @Saphira's Autumn Effect is mostly green instead of brown.

Ummm. I think that's it for my ideas now.

I'd say have a skin that performs the same way in all modern web browsers (i.e., latest versions at the time of the challenge): Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. This is very easy to check.

There's significantly more to accessibility than that. It's also very hard to determine what's accessible and what isn't. It takes quite a bit of work and there are many criteria that need to be taken into account, some which are thrown out the window from the start, because forums are, in general, not very accessible. So I'm not sure that'd be something easy to do, because it would require a lot of work from the support mods to just be able to say: yep, this is accessible.

I love the idea of mediaeval, fantasy, historical, sci-fi etc. skins. Generally-themed skins in general: great idea!

how about a skinning challenge where the goal is to do a 'colored grayscale'. What I mean is like you pick a color. Say...blue. And all you can use is blue (light to dark, different shades). Like a grayscale palette, but it's not gray. Does that make sense?