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Like many other sites, Portkey's layouts ("skins") work best with the Firefox browser. Here are sceenshots.. This Help page's second half list more features that IE users have been missing.

CREDITS FOR SITE LAYOUTS: Please read this. :) We've also been blessed to have a number of volunteers for our Layout Design Team.

Portkey forums without any customization: Log in and look in this forum to see what our forums would've looked like without any customization done by PK staff. Compare the font sizes, background colors for posts and the smileys table, quotes, everything!

HIDE SOME FORUMS: Read this to hide some boards on your screen. You can unhide and re-hide them anytime as often as you want.

MAGNIFY OR REDUCE FONT SIZES:

Browsers typically have the option to magnify (or de-magnify) text and images in webpages. Hit your keyboard's

Ctrl++ (Ctrl and the plus key) to magnify; OR
Ctrl+- (Ctrl and the minus key) to reduce font sizes;
AND/OR repeat as needed.

To reset, hit Ctrl+0 (Ctrl and the zero key).

Or you can click on your browser's menu as follows:
--in Firefox, go to View > Zoom;
--in Internet Explorer, click Page > Zoom.

SELECT ANOTHER FORUM LAYOUT (aka FORUM SKINS): Since mid-2008, we've enabled the option for non-mods to change the forums' layout. In techie speak, we've allowed non-mods to choose forum skins.

You can select other skins available (if any) in the dropdown menu at the bottom of every forum page. That menu's on the same row as the words "Lo-Fi version" and today's date, below the "Board Statistics" panel.

If you don't see this menu, that means the mod team has disabled it for your user group.

If the menu doesn't include our older layouts, it's because we've temporarily hidden them to make way for the new ones. We'd most likely rotate skins every month or so. We'd be loathe to delete them considering how much we've sweated over each one!

CANNOT CHANGE SKIN (layout) in SOME FORUMS We have at least one skin that's bandwidth-heavy, so we've decided to display it only in certain forums. You'd know which layout it is if it doesn't change even though you select another skin in the dropdown menu described above.

GRAPHICS INCORRECTLY displayed or aligned in INTERNET EXPLORER (IE) 7 and older:

IMPERFECT ALIGNMENT: IE doesn't correctly align several graphics we use, particularly in our headers.

TRANSPARENT LOGOS: At least one of our skins, the one with "alternating logos", has transparent letter icons beside the main logo in our header. ~~However, they don't show up as transparent letters in IE 6 + Windows XP.~~ They do get displayed correctly in Firefox (XP & Vista) and in IE 7 + Vista.

Update March 27 2009: Gillian Halliwell has fixed this issue for IE 6! *bows to Gilly* But we've noticed that Google Chrome v1.0 doesn't support transparency. Firefox rules!

The "alternating logos" skin also has a very slight mismatch between some logos' blue hue with the header's blue background. We've tried several times to fix this but no go. Please bear with this tiny inconvenience as we'd rather not ask our ever-helpful artists to spend more time than they already have on any one skin. :) We've already worked on this skin for months on and off.

HUES SHOWN DIFFERENTLY IN Internet Explorer or in Windows XP or Vista:

Most PK staff and skinners use Firefox and Vista, so our color schemes are best designed for them. But there seems to be an issue with Vista where it shows blues and greens colors that would show up as grays in XP.

If you find some color schemes ugly: gal-texter (PK staff) takes all the blame

for having only 0.00000001% of the talents of other people in Portkey's layout design team: Imran / NAPPA, Sundari Harmony, Harry/Hermione 4 eva, Gillian Halliwell, harry and hermiones daughter and Maeve. Also, please see FAQ above about Vista not displaying colors correctly.

You sometimes see the skin's beta versions: See FAQ immediately above this one.

UPDATE MID-APR 2009 ABOUT BROWSERS:

Internet Explorer (IE) 8 finally (!!!) fixes many problems with its older cousins. It now perfectly aligns our header images and displays text beside our ship artwork as Firefox does in this screencap. IE 8 also correctly displays some of our letter graphics (F Fanfics, R Recs, G Gallery, etc) as semi-transparent.However, IE 8 does not show effects such as blinking text, which we're using in a skin to be unveiled soon.

Google Chrome 1 has no problems with aligning header graphics and displaying text beside artwork. But it doesn't show semi-transparent letter graphics.

Firefox's light years ahead of these two browsers! No, we don't get paid for plugging it.

Ask what you could do for this site. Click here.

Layout Credits

This is part of our "H/H canon scenes" theme featuring Gwendy's illustrations: Sandwich, On the Wings of Love, Time-Turner Love, 2nd Task, Expecto Patronum, Purple Hex, OOTP hug, Dementors and 1st kiss version 2.
Bannerized by Maeve with inputs from Layout Teammates. Some caption ideas borrowed from this "Your H/H slogan?" topic or members' replies like this "Harry and Hermione bring out the best in each other" quote.

This layout's designed for a 1024 x 768 screen, Firefox and Windows.

Rest in Peace, fandom-mates

Farewell and thank you for contributing to the fandom. Our thoughts go out to your respective families.

2008 quote from JKR

JKR: "Just because someone had a view on Harry/Hermione didn't mean they weren't genuine, or that they were necessarily misguided. ..."

H/H shippers' reactions, related discussion and semi-debate with non-Harmonians.

For any concerns about the site, please contact our Mod Team preferably by posting in our FAQs and Help Desk but read all available FAQs first, please.

Read our Terms of Service and this for credits and our policies about privacy, copyright, quoting and other legalese. We are a site run by fans for fans for the purpose of enjoying or discussing the Harry Potter universe. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made. We are not affiliated with the creator, publishers, movie production company, cast or crew of the Harry Potter stories nor with anyone else who holds a legal claim to the Harry Potter books or movies..

Our site's best viewed on a 1024 x 768 screen, Firefox and Windows.

Lo-Fi Version

Time is now: 22nd November 2009 - 04:20 AM

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