Classic GameFAQs Boards: gfaqs8 CSS

"[W]e don't want to just toss you aside." -Allen Tyner

Note: This will not work work with gfaqs11. You might try this instead.

On November 8, 1999 the GameFAQs message boards were opened with a layout which will go down in history as the pinnacle of web design. It remained largely untouched until the site upgrade "gfaqs9" in May 2004. Unfortunately, the new layout was less of a layout and more of a defacement. Fortunately, the unpopularity of the new style compelled GameFAQs to offer a classic view about a week later. Although it wasn't a perfect reproduction, and only rendered correctly in Internet Explorer's quirks mode, many were just relieved that they could switch from the gfaqs9 standard style.

In April 2006 GameFAQs underwent an upgrade to "gfaqs10" and further departed from the classic style, and although users had the option of changing the site skin, a classic skin was not available. (Currently one skin claims to be "Classic GameFAQs (2001-2003)", though it actually looks nothing like classic GameFAQs.) Fortunately, gfaqs9 was made available those who didn't want to use the new skins. However, in August 2006 the "v9 End of Life project" began with the goal of eliminating gfaqs9. If a user didn't actively use gfaqs9, their access was removed. During 2008 users were ruthlessly pruned and by the end of the year there were no known survivors. In this way GameFAQs was able to remove all traces of the classic style from the site with a drawn-out series of complaints, but no angry mob.

This is a CSS which aims to fix this problem; a rendition of what the GameFAQs boards would look like today if they had kept the classic style around like they should have. It may be applied over any of the default styles or used by itself, though the Message Poster Display should be set to "Above Message". Additionally, to display the topic icons a small amount of JavaScript is required. This is not my fault; for whatever reason GameFAQs chose to hard-code the topic icons.

Many browsers have some way of automatically applying custom CSS or JavaScript to pages. For example, the Firefox Stylish and Greasemonkey extensions. If you have these extensions the classic style can be installed automatically from the pages userstyles.org and userscripts.org.

Screenshots

Sources

Discussion