View source for Skyglade Skin Evolution

The idea of a new theme for CoN to replace what we now call "Persona" goes as far back as 2005, three years after the debut of the last theme.  At that time, we were facing increasing bandwidth costs, and it was felt that the extremely image-heavy nature of Persona, particularly with the large number of images that might be randomised on every single page, was a significant contributor to this.

It was with this in mind that Tiddles created the first draft of a theme called "Skyline" in April 2005.  You can see a very early iteration of this concept here: http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/skyline/20050424/ (revise URL - just screenshot with corrected Arial Black etc.?)

Though it looks a bit like someone's been sick on it, you can see a lot of the design elements here of what would later become Skyglade.  Though the intent was always to have a different colour scheme and skyline for each game, it may come as a surprise that Vector, and not Narshe, was the first to be developed.  This was primarily as a reaction to the increasingly cold, blue hues of CoN themes through the ages; an overtly warm theme was chosen initially as a contrast.

As this initial design predates the creation of the current CoN logo, the skyline bar shows an identity design much more akin to the 2002 Persona Classic styling than the modern look, the main difference being that the italics have been removed and the site name has been converted to plain Arial rather than Arial Black.  This was a highly unpopular look and was refined several times before the final design.

The Kefka used in this picture is [ find actual fanart link ] and was always intended as a placeholder, with a new set of face artwork to be commissioned at a later time.  Members had often commented that they preferred Persona over the alternatives due to the use of fanart; the use of a character head in these themes was a nod to that much-liked feature.  It was always the intention to have only one character head per theme, unlike the multiple identities shown by Persona, both as a bandwidth saving measure and an attempt to strengthen the visual identity of each theme.  We wanted to keep the original colours in the artwork this time, as it would not be used behind text and would not present a legibility issue; we also felt that the forum version of Persona was more likable than the site's version due to a wider range of colour and wanted to reflect that in the new theme.

This was not our only idea for a new theme, however.  A short time later, Rangers51 began developing an alternative replacement theme, which became known as "Tangent".  You can see the last developed rendition of this here: http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/tangent/?game=t (again revise URL, maybe screenshot - definitely want the Tactics version).

This shared a navigational scheme with Skyline, and the updated body typography that would be used in the 2007 "Modern" update to the existing themes, but little else.  Although this version sports the correct "Caves of Narshe" logo typography, this was still not true for most of the theme's life - the title text used Persona Classic's familiar Arial Black Italic in spite of the headings in the body text having lost this style.  You may notice the familiar chocobo to its left, though: at this point, this was merely a game-specific logo intended to display a Final Fantasy Tactics page, though the iconic quality of this image was hard to miss.

In July 2005, we sent a survey to a few selected staff and members showing previews of Skyline and Tangent as they were at that time.  The results were not particularly encouraging: pretty much everyone actively disliked at least one of the themes, with the most positive comments being along the lines of "I could get used to it".

Skyline continued to be developed in spite of this criticism.  It had, in fact, already seen significant improvement by the time of the survey preview version, which you can see at  http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/skyline/20050515/ [ revise URL again ].  The Narshe, Vector and Mt. Ordeals themes were all present in this preview, and could be changed using a browser's "Use style" menu (a feature which now tends to be well hidden, unfortunately) - however, the Mt. Ordeals theme was actually added in after the survey.  Although the choice of Narshe for the main site theme heralded the return of a blue standard theme, the colours elsewhere in the theme were deliberately kept much warmer and earthier than past iterations.

By this time, Skyline was also developing a nested boxes theme, inspired somewhat by the shortlived and little-remembered Windows logos of the Windows 2000 era [ picture ? ].  The next major iteration [ http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/skyline/20050921/ ; revise link ] added some snazzy gradients and effects to try and liven up the flat earlier design; the "comb" of scanlines underneath the sidebar was added specifically to address feedback from the survey that criticised the uneven margins of the page area below the end of the sidebar.  All of these additions were designed to use semi-transparent white gradients laid over flat colour, so that the same images could be used for each colour theme, reducing bandwidth usage.  This version also introduced the tab/cutout style you see in today's Skyglade for active and hovered navigation links, where the white highlight merges into the page.

Meanwhile, a third possibile future theme was developed by Rangers51.  Eventually known as "Glissade", its concept page was originally named "As-yet untitled CoN buggery", which led to its original nickname becoming the unfortunate "Buggery".  You can see a fairly advanced version of this theme at [ http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/glissade/ revise it etc ].  The typography is somewhat different here from Skyline, Tangent and the 2007 CoN design, with a more modern look that wasn't ultimately used in that form, but essentially formed the basis for the typography update in Skyglade.  Glissade retained Tangent's use of silhouettes to represent each game covered, though it is worth noting that the Tactics icon has been changed to Ramza here.

It was during development of Glissade that the now familiar CoN chocobo-in-diamond logo was developed, although its original Glissade-style blue and orange colour scheme as seen here has rarely been used.  Many style and colour variants of the logo were developed to fit with individual themes and events, though it is most commonly seen in its neutral "white glass" scheme that was developed for Skyline (sometimes with a Narshe skyline blue background), or in the colours of the then-current Persona theme.  The "Caves of Narshe" text logo treatment is first seen here too.

The logo text was added to Tangent, and the italic game title was straightened out to match it, but this was to be the last change made to Tangent, with Rangers51 ceasing development in favour of Glissade.

Tiddles continued to work on Skyline in the background, eventually bringing the logo elements debuted in Glissade to the theme.  Initially, only the updated text was added in place of the bland original "Caves of Narshe" string, with strange looking transparent bars in an attempt to stop it from covering up the "feature" on the left of each skyline.  You can see this strange effort at [ http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/skyline/20060314/ ].

The next version [ http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/skyline/20060331/ ], while retaining the strange logo text, moved to a more sensible layout to include the logo, which was still rather flat at this point.  The layout, however, would be retained for all further Skyline iterations.  Note the unusual styling of the top right navigation in this version - this didn't last long!  The heavy-set capitalised page headings used in the 2007 themes and retained in Skyglade make their first appearance here too.

This version was the first to include the final artwork, replacing the early placeholders.  This was drawn up by fanart regular Rujuken.  By now, if you're a forum regular, you will probably recognise that the same artwork was used on the 2007 refresh of the default Persona forum theme.  The artwork was, in fact, commissioned for use with Skyline.  We had intended to release both Skyline and Glissade with the tenth anniversary update (hence the X logo on the Glissade preview), and update Persona in recognition, but time was short, and completing both themes in time proved impossible.  Choosing a new default between the two had also proved more or less impossible, with Rangers51 and Tiddles both diplomatically but stubbornly backing their own creations.  Such unpalatable suggestions as a forced selection on site entry and polls based on it were even put forth as methods of selection, but ultimately never came to fruition.  Merging the best elements of both designs had also been proposed, but it was difficult to envisage a successful combination that did not dismiss some of the iconic features of at least one theme.

Having missed the 2007 changeover, Skyline took on few major changes after this point.  The last revision developed for CoN can be seen here: [ http://con6.cavesofnarshe.com/style-test/skyline/20081126/ ].  Though this dates from late 2008, it differs very little visually from what might have been used in a 2007 rebranding.  The logo and associated text have now been replaced with the glassy variants tha would be retained for Skyglade and used as theme-agnostic variants elsewhere.  A much smarter design has been put in place for the top navigation elements, and the table heading gradients have been made more subtle and pleasant - these versions are also retained in the current theme.  A small extra margin has been added above and below the main page box, to accentuate the "boxes" theme, and a slight notch has been cut out of the hover cutout for sidebar items.  Most of the skyline themes are complete or partly complete in this revision, and have changed little since.

Glissade was also on the back burner, but did see some changes.  In the spirit of a unified design, we had agreed to try retrofitting the Skyline colour themes to Glissade.  In fact, the Glissade preview version shown previously did contain a Mt. Ordeals option, though not a particularly pleasant one compared to Glissade's main colour scheme.

Between 2009 and 2012, a much revised Glissade was developed, though only visually: no Web page previews were produced.  You can see some images of it here [ screenshots ].  It is notable that this iteration's colour scheme is much closer to the Narshe Skyline theme; the "northern lights" style backdrop at the top and the sidebar style will also seem familiar if you've been using Skyglade lately.  It was with this background that the spectre of merging Skyline and Glissade was raised once more, with Tiddles producing a mockup [ image ] which proved satisfactory to both designers.  It was this that served as the basis for Skyglade, its name a loose portmanteau of its parents'.  Skyglade incorporated the very distinctive top bar from Skyline, including the well-liked fanart feature, with the more modern and pleasant navigation and page design of neo-Glissade.

[[Category:CoNniversary XV]]
[[Category:CoNHistory]]