Forum:Problem with skins - partial black-on-black display

Forums → Ten Forward → Problem with skins - partial black-on-black display (reply • watch)

I have been doing anon edits for over a year and decided to stop being shy and get my own account today. I am an old devotee from 1966 and very happy to be here.

I think I'm putting this report, which is technical pertaining to the site rather than content, in the proper area. If not, perhaps you could redirect me.

I was trying to change the 'skin' for viewing, and noticed a peculiar problem with the main ones. This happens in every version, "brick", "beach", etc. Much of the page is actually being displayed in black-on-black type, one has to select all in order to read it. I imagine this is a broken light-colored image that is supposed to be behind the text, or something similar?

I looked through this forum and could not find any references to this problem. It may be my browser -- but I've tried this on both Firefox and IE (latest versions, and I have winXP Pro SP2). Thanks! --KTJ 17:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi KTJ, welcome to the land of usernames :)

The problem isn't just with your browser. I recently tried to install a skin for my own viewing purposes at User:Scarecroe/monobook.css which is just the default MediaWiki monobook skin (the dark colors here hurt my eyes). However, some color elements seem to be hard-coded into the css since there are remnant colors showing up for me as well. Special pages mostly look okay to me with black text on a white background, but the front page is black text on dark grey background, and some article templates look the same.

Has anyone successfully created their own black on white skin for Memory Alpha? —Scott (talk) 02:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Lots of folks have customized their own skin as seen here. By my count 63 of them, not including those that show as 0 bytes. I suppose I could go through them and start trying out each one on my own css file, but I'd really rather not for obvious reasons. —Scott (talk) 01:37, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I have designed a number of websites and know a bit of css, but I know practically nothing about creating css skins or implementing those from other users. I'll look around the site for information on how to do that -- hoping it's not too complex. I hope something can eventually be done by the admins at Starfleet Command or whatever about the existing skins. Thanks! --KTJ 14:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi there, and sorry for not having answered earlier. Regarding the various other skins to choose from, there are still unresolved issues with those - for the moment, please stick to using "Monobook".

As for customizing the Monobook skin for your own needs - yes, this can be done. Please keep in mind that you might also have to create a customized version of Mediawiki:Common.css in this case - "Common" is supposed to contain all formatting information that is used by more than one skin. -- Cid Highwind 14:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)