A most important skin setting

[Paul]

Hey all, I'm going to make a suggestion for all past and future skins. This is a little usability pet peeve of mine, and I'm hoping to stamp it out.

When you make a skin that has the same extension on more than one mode, please make use of the extforced= setting.

For example: a skin with a color chooser (which switches modes to change colors), every extension on every mode is basically the same except for the color. So, it makes sense that when you change colors (modes), the extensions that were open on the previous mode remain open on the next mode. This is what extforced= is for (it 'forces' extensions to open, close, or retain their state between modes).

It's a little thing, but it increases the usability of your skins dramatically (which also reflects on the usability of QCD).

Thanks!

[Mootang]

Done and done! I figured out how to use the function and it works nicely. http://www.quinnware.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Darin]

Thank you for mentioning it! I was never sure if keeping the same extensions after picking a color or what have you was just random luck or what! Some skins do sometimes and others don't.

But thanks for mentioning it... as it's something that really bothers me, too. I'm not a real skinner, so I wasn't aware what was and wasn't possible to do in that respect. But hopefully everyone will start using it. It is quite a hassle to change a color and get a different skin layout.

- Darin :carrot:

[Scarebear]

I wasn't ware of this bit of code (still learning). I have just figured out what it does and have it working on my Syncretism skin. I used ExtForced=0=,1=,2=,3=,4=,5= and it keeps the extensions the same from colour to colour. Is the way I used the ExtForced setting right/preffered or is there an easier way I missed?

[Mootang]

Nope, I believe that is the correct way. My question is the though, if I have 9 modes in my skin, do I have to repeat that bit of code for each mode or can it be entered under notes in the [family] section to be used for all modes?

[Young Twig]

I'm sorry, Paul. I'm a sucky skinner.

Have I mentioned I haven't started that thing in my sig yet? I've been doing website stuff lately. I have to build a website for my church and I'm learning PHP/MySQL... Yeah.