Welcome to Circles - a new theme for ElkArte.
Overview
Circles combines an elegant, stylish look with new functions to give you a great feeling using ElkArte. It comes with:
- Pages for your own texts, which you can use to introduce your crew or tell more about your project.
- Direct links to all that's new on the board: new topics, new answers, new mentions and more.
- A direct link leads to your drafts. They are now much more easy to find.
- Forget the old info center at the bottom of your board. Circles provides information and statistics on extra pages for a better overall view.
- There's a dark variant too! It saves energy when used on your mobile devices. Use our theme settings to choose the dark variant for mobile view only, for desktop and mobile view - or never.
Circles uses gentle colors for icons and the best contrast for text. Nice hover effects and morphing graphics give ElkArte a totally new look and feel.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/theme.png)
The above image can be shown in original format if saved on your computer.
Let's look at some details of Circles.
Informative header
The header of Circles shows not only the logo of your project. You can register or login, you can contact the project team, and you find the main menu here. Large buttons with nice hover effects will lead to all thats new, your messages, your mentions and your drafts. A little number behind the NEW button indicates if you have new topics, new answers to your posts, new polls or if there are new members registered after your last visit. Little numbers are also shown for new messages, new mentions and how many drafts you have saved.
The newsflash (called What's hot?) shows different announcements. Visitors can browse them via the small buttons at the bottom of the newsflash or wait till the next announcement will appear automatically.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/header_details.png)
The above image can be shown in original format if saved on your computer.
Have we told you before Circles comes with a dark variant for mobile devices?
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/theme_dark.png)
The above image can be shown in original format if saved on your computer.
Categories and boards
Each category can have boards and each board can have subboards. Before each board name an icon indicates what kind of topics can be found inside. A small user icon appears if a board contains topics you have posted in. With darker and lighter grey colors Circles shows which boards contain posts you haven't read - what's new is a little darker. You can easily choose the icon for each board within our theme board settings.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/boardicons_details.png)
The above image can be shown in original format if saved on your computer.
And Circles is more. It uses an all new profile page for example. We will show you more from Circles soon, including the mobile view, statistics page, and theme settings.
And before you ask: No, you can't download and use Circles at this time, sorry. All rights reserved. Do not use or copy without asking first.
Thats beautiful !
All new member profile
What's important about a member profile in a discussion board? To show exactly the information needed without too much nonsens nobody cares about. Circles comes with an all new member profile!
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/profile.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
It is clean, elegant and informative. It shows general information about yourself, plus your latest contents and additional information. Staying in touch with you was never easier since Circles provides all contact information you are willing to share. More social media profile fields can be added via Circles' member settings.
Take a look at the new member statistics! Limited to what's important, never seen before, beautiful pie charts show exactly how many topics you started, how many posts you made and how long you are online, always compared to the boards total.
Depending on the viewers permissions two buttons will be shown to edit the profile (if it is your own you are looking at) or to take other actions. For example: if you are an administrator you can ban this member. Click on the actions button and give it a try.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/profile_details.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
Changing your profile
By clicking on the icon described above you can change your profile. Long story short, here's what this will look like.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/profile_edit.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
Board settings for everyone
Ever asked yourself why all the options are spread all over different pages? Circles is different! Yes, we admit you have less options then with an ElkArte default theme. But Circles offers everything you really need to discuss in an ElkArte board and is so much more effective! Besides your profile settings there are general settings you can change. Take a look!
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/settings.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
Do you really need more? We don't think so!
Circles is new. Circles is different. Circles is better.
We will present our mobile view soon. Stay tuned!
All rights reserved. Do not use or copy without asking first.
Pretty neat the category on the left side instead of crossing the page!
I am really enjoying the ideas. I'm going to see if I can trick you up some here... the admin panel and search. I want to see what you got for those. Oh, still want to see the messageindex (when you click on a board).
This looks very modern, elegant, and sleek.
Great work! Looks great.
Well, I'm impressed. :)
Love it
@Jorin . Keep it up.
Awesome sauce for sure !
Oh. My. God. I think this is one of the most beautiful minimalistic themes I've ever seen. You just put scores of theme designers to shame, sir. Bravo!
Do you plan to make this available to the public?
Thank you everyone. Glad to hear you like it.
@Eliana Tamerin Wow, I am honored :-[ Thank you very much.
@badmonkey As I said before, I can't code and this is only a preview what a future theme could look like if ElkArte will integrate some of it's features in future releases. It's only graphics.
We are running a bit out of time lately, but here's a little preview what the message index of
Circles will look like.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/messageindex_preview.png)
And we thought about keeping it simple and clear:
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/topic_icons_details.png)
Message Index
When opening a board you will see a list of topics. You are right, we know this from all other themes out there. So what's different and new with Circles? Let's take a closer look at the enhancements Circles offers to the message index screen.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/messageindex.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
Did you realize the icons on the left? That's an easy, quick way of starting a new topic, get notifications of new posts inside this board and mark all topics inside this board read with just one mouseclick. When you start a new topic, our brand new editor will open. We will show a preview soon.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/messageindex_detail1.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
Where am I?
On the top of the message index, right below the forum's header, you will find the all new breadcrumb. It shows your current position inside the forum's hierarchy. It shows higher and - that's new - sub boards according to your actual position, and you can click on them to switch into these boards with one click. Sub boards will therefor no longer be listed in the message index itself. Darker and lighter grey lines with an arrow at the end show you exactly where you are, and the board where you currently are is colored.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/messageindex_whereami.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
Pages
If there are too many topics inside the board you are looking at to be shown at a single page, new pages will be created automatically. At the bottom of every page you will find the current page number and small arrows to browse through the pages of the current board. If you click on the page number a list of page numbers will be shown and you can click on the page number you want to switch to.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/messageindex_pages.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
Easier to work with
Working as a moderator or administrator with Circles should be easy and fast. We gave a lot of thought about the look and feel of our theme, saving you time and give you pleasure. In the message index you can - if you have the permission to do so - easily mark topics and then move them into another board, close them or delete them, which will move them into an invisible board, waiting to be restored sometime.
(http://elkarte-hilfe.de/circles/messageindex_moderation.png)
Image can be shown in original size when saved on your computer.
That's all for this year. We hope you enjoy our little introduction into the world of Circles. Please tell us what you think about our theme. Sharing your thoughts is really appreciated. Thank you for your time!
Best looking theme I've seen anywhere ! Is any coding being done or is it still in the storyboard state?
Thank you! O:-)
No coding done. :( I don't have the skills to work on this alone.
Wow. Just wow.
Implement such a theme would have two advantages:
1) have a wonderful theme,
2) face several challenges to make Elk even more flexible, because certain parts are quite different from the current structure and they would require some tricks, for example the "triple menu" (the buttons in the header, the "menu" just below and the other "menu" above the footer).
Congrats for the design, very original from what we are used to see on forums. Hope someone will code this ;)
Thank you both. O:-)
@emanuele You remember what I mentioned before? ;)
Would the checkboxes always be shown? Not sure I like having those buttons on the left. It seems like a lot of wasted real estate.
Only if you have the permission to moderate the board.
I am not totally happy with the message index too. I think it can be much better with a little bit more time to think about it.
Nice design. I generally don't like the basic flat look myself (yes, I know it's currently fashionable) but this is a very good example of the type.
Should be pretty straightforward to code. Offhand I can't see anything particularly difficult about it.
Have you thought about the responsive side of the design, as in how things will fit on postage stamps, etc?
Thank you!
It can be dark or light, as shown in first post. The rest: nope, sorry. :-[
Well dark or light is easy enough with variants, and doesn't affect layout. If you are looking to make it usable as a working theme (and people seem to want you to) it would be a good idea to think about how you want the design to look on non-desktop screens. What do you want to drop, and what do you want to shuffle around? Mock that up too, so you have what you feel is good design consistency combined with reasonable use of available screen space.
Once you have the concept sorted for a range of screen sizes, then I'm sure you could get people interested in helping with coding it. :)