How do you set alternating colors in the list of topics

[Greg11 (It Craftsmen Club)]

How do you set alternating colors in the list of topics? It helps usability a lot, but it is all white by default.

example:

[fefrei (Felix Freiberger)]

You can achieve this with a CSS customization. Here’s an example to get you started:

.topic-list-item:nth-child(even) {
    background-color: #EEE;
}

.topic-list-item:nth-child(odd) {
    background-color: #FFF;
}

Here’s how this looks on Meta:

[Silvanus]

And for those who are looking to change the background of topics, here’s the solution:

div.topic-post:nth-child(odd), div.small-action:nth-child(odd) { background-color: #FAFBFF; } div.topic-post:nth-child(even), div.small-action:nth-child(even) { background-color: #F6F6FF; }

[Falco]

And here’s the discussion about why it isn’t the default anymore:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-death-of-the-grey-no-more-tiger-striping-rows-by-default/28664?u=falco

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

@fefrei Care to extract this into a super simple theme component?

@Silvanus same for your topic tweak. I was thinking maybe we’d just include it in the “tiger striping component” but commented out by default, but we might as well make it a component of its own as they really are two completely separate pieces of styling.

[fefrei (Felix Freiberger)]

Care to extract this into a super simple theme component?

Sure!
Can you tell me why I cannot use $primary-low in the theme component? It’s used all over the place in core (e.g. as the background color of buttons), and I think it’s a good color for the darkened rows, but it’s undefined:

Error: Undefined variable: "$primary-low".
        on line 2 of theme_field.scss
>>     background-color: $primary-low;
   ----------------------^

[Johani (Joe)]

I’ve run into the same problem. What solved it for me was adding this at the top:

@import "common/foundation/variables";

And then you can use those colors.

That’s the short story, the long story is here:

How to use Discourse core variables in your theme

Discourse is incredibly customizable! The goal of this topic is to show you how make use of all the amazing options that are available to you as a theme developer. You know… so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel Variables? What variables? Variables cover a large number of things, from font sizes to colors to z-index values. You can use and override the vast majority of variables in your theme editor. Colors There are many colors available for you to use or override in your th…

[fefrei (Felix Freiberger)]

That did it, thanks

Here you go:

https://github.com/fefrei/discourse-tiger-stripes

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Why not stripes? I guess stripes are less… black and white?

[fefrei (Felix Freiberger)]

I guess stripes are less… black and white?

Sorry, I don’t follow. Can you elaborate?

[pqMMA (Chris Palmquist)]

How would you do this on a topic detail page for alternating replies?

[fefrei (Felix Freiberger)]

That it somewhat more involved. You can try applying the same principle to the post-stream class, but this not only contains replies, but also “gaps”, like the 2 years later above your post, so they also count and may be affected.

[rahim123]

What would be the best way to implement this with different colors depending on whether the light or dark theme is in use?

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

This topic may reply to your question :

No specific class for dark mode

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[ToyKeeper]

@rahim123

What would be the best way to implement this with different colors depending on whether the light or dark theme is in use?

There are at least two methods which work:

• Use different colors for different themes.
• Shade rows with a translucent medium gray, so it’ll work on both light and dark backgrounds. Like, give nth-child(odd) rows a color like background: #80808040;.

If it helps, I published a stylesheet override which demonstrates the first method… setting colors per-theme. For details, look in style.css for any parts containing nth-child.

Writing a fancy theme ... worth sending upstream, or no?

Hello! Last month, my favorite forum switched to Discourse. This was mostly an upgrade, but people complained* about the look and feel. So I decided to fix it, and ended up doing a major style revamp. Now I’m trying to decide if I should put in the effort to turn it into a proper theme and merge it upstream, or if that’s unrealistic. I think people on other forums might also appreciate it as an alternative theme, but I don’t know how difficult it would be to get things merged. What I did d…

Here’s an example of how it looks in a light theme:

… and each theme has its own color definitions, so the table rows fit each theme.