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

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)