Forum to Generate Valid HTML5/CSS3 code

You ask to "let us know what features you want".

The thing that drew me to Nabble initially, is that it is embeddable and simple for newcomers to do the basics of getting it to fit the style of the site in which it is embedded.

However, now that so many users use mobile devices, and it is vital to have a workable forum on a small screen, it has become far more apparent there are three major barriers to to its great customisation potential:

1. The HTML generated by the NAML code is based on a tabular structure.

2. There are inadequate number of HTML tags with CSS classes attached.

3. The CSS code is almost entirely constructed with "visual" classes, applied in multiple situations.

Taken together, these make it impossible to:

• Make a forum to re-flow gracefully on small screens
• Remove "optional" data from display on small screens
• Customise appearance in one area without having an unwanted impact on another.

In short, any new forum should generate valid HTML5 code that will accommodate a variety of screen sizes and is populated with many functionally named CSS classes.

I am less concerned with the most elementary bells and whistles (even smilies, let alone "Solved" flags) and replicating social media features (such as "Likes") than I am with having a discussion/communication platform that embeds seamlessly with any site viewed on any device and is ultimately customisable by more advanced forum administrators.

(Basically, it's Nabble for the 21st Century that I would love!)

Blasma won't have NAML.  Instead it will have themes like Tumblr.  In the themes, you can have any HTML style you like.  There will be separate themes for desktop and mobile.

I personally think that modern programming concepts are horrible, including HTML5 and standard CSS.  They reflect the general decay of modern culture where everything is increasingly complex and dysfunctional.  So in my theme, I will violate all the rules to keep things simple.  But your theme can be however you want.  Themes will be much simpler than NAML, so you will be able to easily make your own theme.

I wasn't expecting NAML in Blasma. Hugo had indicated a while ago that NAML was not going to be developed further.

As for modern programming concepts, I was fine with Z80 assembler, but got lost when 16 bit processors came along. I never got my head round high level "Object Oriented Programming" languages and became still further lost when programming had to cope with WIMP environments. (As a result I haven't even come to terms with JavaScript or PHP.)

I don't see HTML or CSS are "programming" languages. They just define the content of web "pages" and how it is to be rendered - and for some strange reason I find them very easy to cope with.

Now that the Netscape/Microsoft "Browser Wars" period is nearly 20 years old and all browser publishers see the benefit of universal compliance with W3C standards, life is a whole lot easier, in spite of the complexity introduced by having the content on a web page that can be so much more than text and a few static images.

In short, I don't care whether it's NAML, C++, Java or anything else that generates the HTML and CSS code that actually defines how the forum content is to be rendered in the browser.

The one feature I regard as essential for any new embeddable forum is that it must work well with with any sized screen and allows those with visual impairments to have the content accessible in non-visual media.

And that was my sole answer to the question "What features do you want in Blasma"?

If I can assist with checking/testing that element of the new forum, I'll do what I can to help.

Thanks, so the short answer is that you will get what you want.  I will start working on Blasma consistently now and should have something to look at soon.