Hello! I ran into your skin Fading echoes and was curious if you had any tips for coding a main forum that is hover/tabbed for the rp section like that? I've been searching everywhere for something similar, or even tips on how to start that style. I saw one waaaaaay back in the day and fell in love. I'm an amateur skinner with big dreams, so if you have any advice or sources that would help learn to make a main forum body like that, I'd love to have them!
Sure! I can't claim that the method I used for Fading Echoes was the most efficient, since it was my one of my first attempts actually getting tabbed forums to work - on a skin I planned to sell, no less - but hey. If it works, it works.
I would like to also mention in advance before I explain these convoluted methods that Niobe & FizzyElf have a script resource for tabbing forums and categories. I didn't come across this until MUCH later, after I'd already sold Fading Echoes, which may be a better and more efficient method than the ones I'm about to explain.
The "Style" of Skin
First things first: typically, when you're making a skin for a Jcink forum using HTML Templates, you're expected to only put one type of markup/structure per template and the system then repeats it for every instance where that structure is meant to occur - i.e. you only write a single forum row structure, and that structure is repeated for every forum, etc.
For example, we have my WIP "Kingdom of Calamity" skin, which has the same forum row style in every category, each of them identical to the last and the next:
(Where you can see all the structures are identical when viewed from the index, and there's only one set of markup in the Forum Row template for the skin.)
When you mention skins "of that style" in your ask, I'm assuming that you mean skins with a highly customized index like Fading Echoes, where every category has a different layout for their forums. In these instances - a custom index where forums in certain categories are going to have a drastically different structures from one another, and isn't something manageable with CSS - I give each of them their own markup.
This means that you'll have multiple sets of markup for each different structure you want, for each different template. This is less important for the Category Headers, and more important for the Forum Rows.
As an example in this case, take my WIP "Garden of Dreams" skin: it has a different layout for its forums in each category, and even the layout of each forum per category wildly varies from one another-
If you look under the hood of the skin inside of the HTML Templates - specifically, the Forum Rows - you'll see that I have a lot more markup here than a normal skin calls for:
This is because for each different forum that's going to have a different structure or layout, I'm writing completely new markup for it.
That's the general "gist" behind skins with custom indexes or ones done in this style: we're not using a single markup style with hard-coded elements (though that can also be done) but customizing each category and each forum to its exact placement on the index and in the skin.
To do this, I do two things:
First, slap IDs on fucking everything, and I mean everything. You can see in my screenshot the first few forums (for "announcements" and "moderation" respectively) that the first attribute on those containers is an ID for "fr-(ID variable)". I also have IDs on the category for "cat-(ID variable)". I've started to make it a habit in my newer skins to put an ID variable on anything and everything I can get my grubby little raccoon mitts on in the skin, up to and including even the body element and anything within that such as categories, forums, post containers, profiles, etc.
That sets you up for the second thing, which is setting all forum/custom containers to "display: none" with a style attribute. I do this to prohibit any and all structures from displaying by default in every category, and potentially mucking stuff up when their styles, size, or formatting isn't compatible with the new/other/different category and surrounding forums.
These two steps, when combined, make it so you can selectively chokehold any elements on your index and wrestle them into submission with CSS - making sure they're visible where they need to be, and hidden where they don't need to be.
(And please, for God's sake, make sure your ID's are unique to only that container/element. That's a mistake I made often in my earlier skins that could have saved me a lot of grief: CLASSES are for repetition and grouping. ID's are not.)
Tabs on the Index
So, I can admit that I've never experimented with a hover on the forums before - mostly, because I still consider complex hovers and transitions to be my arch nemesis (although, it is on my list of things to eventually master) and I can't imagine that hovers are so different that the information provided above wouldn't be helpful in some manner. So, do as you will with that.
Tabs, however, can be accomplished in a variety of ways. In general, I consider there to be two separate ways to get tabs on something:
Using Javascript/jQuery/some type of script to trigger events for clicking.
Using radio button inputs and CSS to control display, also for a click or selection event.
They're both means to the same end, in some regard: you click on something, usually a button. That button controls what shows or hides. It's just the inside stuff that changes.
Funny enough, using a script of some sort is going to be what I consider the more "beginner friendly" option, and it's what I used for the tabs in Fading Echoes. In fact, I used this script in specific, which is a tutorial one from W3 Schools, and I just modified it to use the forum stuff instead of city names. It's important to keep in mind that for Fading Echoes, I also had unique Category Headers (new markup) for every single category, as well as unique Forum Rows like discussed above. I put the "tablinks" (the buttons/labels used as tabs) inside of the category markup, and I just created a new forum layout for the IC/RP forum containers as the "tabcontent". That make it so the tabs only displayed in that category, and specifically only worked for the forums with a corresponding ID number.
There are also other scripting methods of doing this, like Noire's script that I mentioned at the start of this. And that one, if memory serves, wouldn't force you to make multiple different category types like Fading Echoes did.
The method of radio buttons/inputs is also possible to use, though it does require you to have a good working understanding of using radio buttons for toggles - because if you don't understand what's going on with :checked attributes, you may not understand how to write your CSS in order to select the correct forum to display. I've done this method only once, on my vaguely "House of Night" themed skin that I'm still working on, and while it's a little buggy in some regards, it's also very much functional!
Here, I just made a second forum row structure (the other forums all use the same type of structure) and put the input/radio button inside of the forum, along with it's label, and corresponding elements for the forum. Then, the toggle - or which forum is displayed when you click on the tab - is controlled via CSS, as is the case with most input-based tabs like this.
Full disclaimer, the "little buggy" part I mentioned is that I had to use jQuery to get the correct tab to select when the page first loads, before a user clicks on any tabs. Otherwise, it was trying to select the first radio button/label combo on the page, which was technically in another category for a forum that had that "display: none" property set on it. (Remember, each forum structure you put in your "Forum Rows" HTML Template will get used for every forum being displayed. By putting IDs on them, we're just hiding them from showing with CSS, but they still very much exist on the page.)
If you've never worked with CSS tabs before, I have a few versions on my portfolio site that are considered "base" templates you can play around with:
Basic HTML & CSS Tabs
Basic HTML & CSS Accordion
Basic HTML & CSS Checkbox Toggle
I'd highly recommend getting used to them as a template for a post, to make sure you're really grasping how they work and the CSS selectors at play, before you try putting them into a skin.
I hope that helps, and as always, I'm willing to answer any coding questions people might have - not just stuff related to my work, but also general "how does [X] work" or "how do you do [Y]" - provided that I know the answer. I'll be the first to admit that I'm very much self-taught, and not a professional. I don't know everything, but I'm a Google search away from learning at least one new thing.
