Terra Incognita Template version: 1.0.2 for SMF 1.1

This template is provided free of charge for both personal and commercial use. However it is not under an open source licence. There are restrictions to it's usage.

These restrictions are few and are as follows.

• All style and graphics are copyright www.jasidog.com and must not be reused in other works without permissions.

• Neither the code or files from this downloaded template package, nor derivatives of, can be redistributed without permissions.

• The information, copyright and any links in the template footer must not be removed or edited without permission. This includes any code (X/HTML).
  
  Hue and colour and image changes to tie in with any of your own modifications to the template are permissible. Provided they don't obscure the visibility of the copyright information.

• This template/skin is provided "as is". Use of this template or it's constituent parts is entirely at your own risk. The template has been tested for deficiencies but responsibility will not be accepted for any problems resulting from the use of this skin.

Bearing in mind the above. You can edit and change this template in any way you please. Should you wish clarification on these matters or to be given permission to distribute to others a derivative template, remove copyright info, etc. Then please get in touch.

Version 1.0 [9th of Febuary 2006]

First public release, for SMF 1.1 RC2.

Version 1.0.1 [25th of August 2006]

• Updated for compatibility with SMF 1.1 RC3.

• Numerous bug fixes. Sorry for lack of detail. list lost.

• Various CSS changes for IE7 compatability.

• Finnish language files added as I had already made graphics for this on request.

  However it is not quite complete. I need a translation or alternative wording for the term "Info Panel".

  Any help would be apreciated. In the mean time if you go to -

  smf/Themes/terra-incognita/languages/index.finnish.php

  You can edit the last entry to reflect the correct term.

Version 1.0.2 [4th December 2006]

Third public release. For SMF 1.1

• Updated for full functionality with SMF 1.1 final.

• Fixed various small HTML errors.

• Fix for failed avatar uploads regression in last version.

• CSS changes for IE7 rendering

• German language graphics now included even though the main board tabbed menu is not perfect in Firefox when using this.

  Many thanks to Torsten of www.b-b-forum.de for creating the translated graphics.

  I will likely fix this problem at a later date by moving or removing some of those links.

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Installation Instructions

Installing this skin is, or should be, easy.

1. Go to your SMF admin panel >> "Configuration" >> "Themes and Layout"

2. Scroll down the page a until you see the section "Install a New Theme".

3. Now where it says: "From a file:". click the browse button.

4. Browse and find the Terra-Incognita.zip file you downloaded and select it. Then hit the install button.

Congratulations, the skin has been installed and is ready for your members to use.

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A little blurb

Terra Incognita is largely based of the work done for the Endar template. So you may find plenty of similarities

Terra Incognita is constructed without the use of tables except for a few specific areas.

• The calendar, whilst the rest of the board had at least a plausibly sematic table free rendition. I couldn't think of another way to do the Calendar.

• The "SMF Bulletin Board Code" Table in the "Posting" help section. For similar reasons to the calendar.

• The whole admin panel which other than CSS styling has not been altered whatsoever, this seemed prudent.

• The last content block (Forum History.) in the board stats page. This due to my own lack of javascripting knowledge. It did work as a detailed list but only with javascript turned off. Where a page reload allowed the display to update correctly. A little more effort or knowledge on my part may remedy that.

• The split posts mod panel for the same reasons as mentioned regarding the "Forum History" section of the stats.

The decision to dispense with the use of tables, is not any sort of statement on semantics or accessibility.

That said I did try to follow standards and make it as semantically correct as I could. Though I fell down in several areas, I'm sure. There are some hard coded bits of style for example. Other failings will be due to my own limits on knowledge.

There are also some areas where I would perhaps choose a different mark up now that they're done.

One last little note f interest is that this template is being relesed now so that it does get a release. Otherwise I fear there would one more tweak after another. I'm not really happy with it and so there may be changes in future versions.

Browser compatibility

The theme appears to works well in modern browsers that keep good pace with standards. We're talking Gecko engined browsers like Firefox. Opera also and I'd strongly assume Safari, though I've not been able to check, any info on that would be good.

Last I checked Konqueror display inconsitancies needed a bit of work. Hopefully I'll get round to that a later time.

Internet explorer prior to IE7 is a different matter. A huge chunk of the stylesheet is devoted to hacks intended to make things work in the various flavours of IE. Though I'd suggest using a different browser if at all possible. A lot of time spent means that it does work well in IE version 6.

Earlier versions of IE should work ok given the theme was based largly on the Endar code base but I haven't checked.

IE on the Mac I have no idea about, I may even hide the stylesheet from it in a later theme version.

Due to the nature of the template, it required that the vast majority of the XHTML was written from scratch. There's not much left of the original default SMF HTML left. This means that despite my own testing there will doubtless be bugs which live use will show up.

If you find any you believe important enough to report you can do so at The Jasidog forums.

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Basic Customisation

Included in the download package for Terra Incognita. Along with this very readme file, you should be able to find a zip file called. "Terra-logo-psd".

In this zip file is a sliced PSD of the logo/header. Presuming you have photoshop you can use these to add your own text and/or images.

Then simply place the images in the, Themes/Terra-Incognita/Images/ directory of your message board.

The PSD file was somewhat simplified (layers merged etc.) in order to try and keep the file sizes down.

Should you be without photoshop or having difficulties you can ask for help or the adding of your logo text at The Jasidog forums.

Header Details

Note that the border graphics in the logo PSD, top and sides must be included in your new header. As they join up with. Are part of the whole graphical border round the board.

This was perhaps not a wise move for those customising but things weren't done with that in mind.

If you alter the height or the image types used, say PNG files instead of GIF. If Indeed you want to make more drastic changes you'll need to edit the css file. Either by opening the file ( terra-incognita/style.css ) or using the admin panel editor.

Look for this section to make your changes in -

/* header section */

#header {
background: #E2DBBF url(images/head-tile.gif) repeat-x top;
}
#header-right {
background: url(images/head-right.gif) no-repeat top right;
}
#header-left {
background: url(images/head-left.gif) no-repeat top left;
}
#logo a {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
display:block;
text-decoration: none;
height:108px;
position: relative;
text-align:center;
}
#logo a span {
position: absolute;
left:0;
background: url(images/logo.gif) no-repeat top center;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}

The "#header" section is where the image that titles across the header background is defined. "#head-right" is the image on the far right of the header and "#head-left" is the image on the far left of the header.

Most important is "#logo a" and "#logo a span"

"#logo a": this crucially gives the overall height of the header. Where the value "108px" should be replaced with your header height in pixels. Note that if you do alter the image height for the logo you need to make all the header images the same height.

"#logo a span": This is also crucial. In that it defines the image used for the logo and it's positioning. This is all contolled with the following line.

background: url(images/logo.gif) no-repeat top center;

If you wish thelogo left or right alighned then chnge the word "center" to "left" or "right"

If you know enough CSS to understand the rest you really don't need to be reading this and can change the whole thing much further under your own steam. Including changing the HTML in the "index.template.php" if need be.

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To alter the forum width is pretty painless. The theme is set at a fixed with of 750px by default. But you could easily change that value to another size or to percentage value so that the width will be fluid depending on screen resolution.

To change it all you need to do is open up the Terra Incognita CSS from the admin panel or even easier the CSS file it's self. The "style.css" is located in the Endar template folder.

Your-SMF-Install/Themes/Terra-Incognita/style.css

Look for the following -

/* overall width of forum */
#wrapper {
padding:2% 0;
margin:0px auto;
width:750px;
text-align:left;
}

Where it says "width:750px" edit the pixel value to suit. So for example if you wanted an overall width of 90% for the forum. You would change it to the following.

/* overall width of forum */
#wrapper {
padding:2% 0 0 0;
margin:0px auto;
width:90%;
text-align:left;
}

If you wanted a fixed width (Say 800px.) you would change it as follows.

/* overall width of forum */
#wrapper {
padding:2% 0 0 0;
margin:0px auto;
width:800px;
text-align:left;
}

Easy eh?

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If you need any problems and need help or have questions about the Terra Incognita template you can ask at The Jasidog forums

The best place to look for updates or addons to the theme is the SMF section on the Jasidog site.

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