Fix image references in forum.css

double post due to server issue

Webchick/Dries can chime in here, but I think it's too late to make a front-end change like that (even though it is fairly minor). I would simply adjust forum.css to use the correct .png files.

You make a good point about being consisten though, so for that I would open a D8 issue.

the images combined into css sprite. either we add two new image or using css3..

Well, we could do something like this patch, or just add back the removed images.

From what i can see the reference to forum-new.png is legacy code and now redundant, since the sprite covers that one.

My preference would be to fix this properly and take advantage of the sprite as was originally intended, this is what the patch does. We need this to work with all browsers so any CSS3 trickery probably won't go down well here, in any case I can't really think of a decent CSS3 implementation that would work well, instead I opted to add markup.

The patch is pretty rough, such as the margins, coding standards etc - its a proof of concept.

I've attached the old forum-default.png, simply dropping this into /misc solves the issue also - I'd be perfectly happy with this also although we add one HTTP request which is what we're trying to avoid.

Certainly it needs work as there is a whitespace in there and I was a bit loose and free with the margin/padding and while it looks fine in Bartik maybe the margins are not great defaults.

Will this fly or not, that is the question. We could do a patch like the suggestion in #5, but I'm not so sure that it's the same same as topics - the topics icons are text-image replaced and actually really mean something, whereas this forum-default icon is pure decoration.

@13, I thought this also, however if you look in the template forum-list.tpl.php this is the code:

The classes are not really dynamic (no classes array here), thats just hard coded to ".forum".

See the screenshot, there are 6 new topics but the class is just .forum, is this what you are talking about or something different?

I was working on an alternative approach that used another td to display the icon (<td class="icon"></td>, but abandoned that idea pretty quickly, since doing so would require even more RTL-language support work, and it still added HTML cruft (and made fixing the forum indentation a pain).

I'm thinking we either stick with putting the graphic back in (forum-default.png)—which is by far the easiest/least annoying route, and also likely the least code-and-markup-heavy, or use Jeff Burnz's approach in #10 and add the graphic floated to the left (right in RTL). It would still be nice to have it on the left of both the forum title and description (see, for instance, drupal.org's forums).

See attachments for screenshots of before/after of the patch in #10.

subscribing

Ok, I think we're all agreed that /misc/forum-default.png should be added in the very, very next maintenance release. 404's in core are just bad.

Here's what it looks like with Jeff's patch in #10 http://a11yyow.ca/en/forum

It may not be ideal, but it's way better than a 404 so let's see what we can to to get this RTBC so this can be fixed quick.

The last submitted patch, forum-image.patch, failed testing.

Rerolled, I think it was just choking on the removed $Id$ tag.
Fixed the whitespace.

where's forum-new.png ??

Getting this in latest 7.x-dev. ...subscribing.

#forum tr.new-topics td.forum {
background-image: url(../../misc/forum-new.png

coding still there, how come it fixed ?

No, we have forum-icons.png in core, we should just use it. Whatever's making it work on the individual forum listing needs to be done on the main forum listing.

I'm not comfortable committing "band-aid" fixes to stable releases of core, with the possible exception of the most vile of critical bugs. This definitely doesn't qualify (though it is pretty embarrassing).

I have absolutely no idea why I started to look into this, but here's a proper stop-gap fix for D8 and D7.

Note, however, that this entire forums/container/topics/icon theming logic is so horribly broken that I'd actually recommend to git rm -r modules/forum for D8. Well, separate issue.

Tagging issues not yet using summary template.

Ok, I made a rookie mistake and wasn't looking in the log files for the 404 errors. I'll apply the patch from #37 tomorrow and see if that fixes things.

Sorry for the mistake. :-(

I've tested @sun's #37 patch in 7.x and 8.x, but I don't know how to do what @webchick did in #34 to show status for two branches. But the problem existed in 7.x and 8.x. @sun's patch from #37 fixes the issue in 7.x and 8.x

Here are the screenshots for 8.x (since that seems to be the focus); please note the timestamp file names, as the indicate the sequence of events

1. 404 error report after patch but BEFORE cache cleared
2. Forum reloaded after cache clear; note the default icon, which hadn't been showing before.
3. Forum with new topic added; note default icons
4. Same forum view, different user; Original poster was "d8coh", new user is "kojo"; note "New" forum icons
5. 404 error report after the above screenshots/changes; still 14 errors==>no new errors

So, Patch #37 fixes this issue in 8.x.

I hope this is clear and sufficient. If not, let me know what else is needed. I've gotten a lot of help from folks in #drupal-contribute, but this is my first time doing this.

My write up and screenshots for the 7.x testing are at http://www.wuxing.me/?q=node/9. If needed, I can put that stuff here too. Patch #37 fixes the issue in 7.x as well.

@xjm It should be changed so that there is a description perhaps in forum-list.tpl.php. Perhaps:

Similar open issue:
#1060700: Text in new topic and new post links does not describe its purpose

Agreed. Thanks @xjm. Do you want to modify the patch and add it to forum-list.tpl.php?

EDIT: This would go in the forum.module as per the example here http://drupal.org/node/821672#comment-3301374

klonos: if an image does not convey any information to a sighted user than there is no expectation that a text alternative is needed for a screen reader. If we were to include alt text then we would be adding a string (requiring a new translation into 12 bazillion languages) and this is akin to an API change with respect to back-porting this to D7

I figure (as a sighted person) that if I'm not certain (which I'm not) that I should ask (which I will). I'll take a straw poll & see what I can find.

EDIT: Talked to Everett & his view is that if . If an image conveys info it needs alternate text. This goes for the CSS background images too. I personally like to remove redundant info, but as I don't use screen readers it's not my call.

#50: To me the default icon isn't actually conveying information in this case, but I definitely defer to someone who has more direct experience with AT. Maybe with the patch in #52 we could do some user testing and see if the UI is correct in a screen reader.

Maybe we could use the version in #52 for backport, and change the strings in D8 to t('New posts') and t('No new posts')?

I think this deserves an alt attribute: whether or not a forum contains new posts is an important factor in information scanning. And since this is fixing a bug, I think we can break strings for this.

Edit. Gah. Bad file extension on the interdiff so it's gonna come back fail on that one. Testbot needs brakes a bridle. :)

Updated summary.

#58: forum-list-icons-alt-text-1008580-58.patch queued for re-testing.

Thanx Angie! One less patch to "babysit" after each install ;)