[BlueOnyx:25615] Re: BlueOnyx 5211R development - progress report

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Dirk,

> whow, tons of work.
> I wish you lots of strength and patience 😊

Thank you! Yeah, so far I only had 2-3 complete burn-outs during the 
5211R development and that helped to keep it mostly on track. :p

> 1-2 years ago we had the topic of a new layout for the GUI.
> Either I didn't read carefully or there was nothing about it. But wouldn't this be an opportunity to refresh the layout at the same time?

The thing is: It's never a really good time for it. :-/

You see, when I started to port the old CodeIgniter 3 pages to 
CodeIgniter 4 I suffered through weeks of "nothing is working", "why 
does the GUI look like crap and why is there tons of stuff missing?!?"

At that point all I had to worry about was code. If (for example) 
/swupdate/news was missing the GUI menus or part of the ScrollList 
display? I knew it wasn't the jQuery, the HTML or the CSS of the GUI 
theme that was causing it, but that the issue was in one of the PHP GUI 
libraries.

Doing the porting form one framework to another, one PHP version to 
another *and* one theme to another at the same time? That's just a 
disaster waiting to happen.

On top of that (as I just wrote in my reply to Ernie): I do have 14 GB 
of raw GUI theme related data sitting on my Windows workstation and got 
the whole smear of Adobe related software installed there. I trolled 
ThemeForest and other resources for months and found lots of 
"interesting candidates". Some free, some paid. By now I threw around 
1200-1500 USD at paid templates and nothing really fits or has the level 
of detail, attention and functionality that I could replace our current 
Adminica template and it wouldn't feel like a step (or two or three) 
backwards, but actually like one step forward.

I even tried repeatedly and with varying degree of success to piece 
something together myself or to augment an "almost OK'ish" theme with 
the missing bits and pieces by supplementing them from another theme.

But it just ever pans out. It bloats the CSS with redundant entries, 
colors and shapes don't match up and eventually the result looks like a 
Ferrari or Porsche that first has been "tuned" by a Saudi Prince with a 
serious case of bad taste and then got some Redneck extras bolted on by 
the 2nd hand owner.

Dirk, I know I owe you for this and I'm seriously depressed that so far 
I couldn't deliver. But Pixel-Pushery isn't my forte and I fear this 
needs the hands of an artist, which we don't have on call.

But perhaps we could try to find one to do a custom theme, provided we 
could get it funded? Or maybe someone here has an in-house webdesigner 
with some time at hand that could try to touch up one of the better 
theme train-wrecks that I have aggregated so far?

As is the plan is to finish and release 5211R with the existing Adminica 
theme, but ideally it ought to be done over in the somewhat longer haul 
once an alternative becomes viable.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber