In Gecko and KHTML, on Konqueror 3.2.2/Gentoo Linux 2.6.5, and Mozilla FireFox 0.8/WinXP SP1, the new site take a long time and a lot of CPU cycles to render. I think this is because of the transparency effect(td background tag)
I haven't tried in IE, so i don't know if it's any faster...

Yeah... I was wondering how they did the transparency thingy. Does it require any fancy coding or is it a new tag that can be used? I haven't worked in HTML for like 5-6 years now. So much has changed...

=(

EDIT: Looks like CSS and javascript. Was afraid of that. Ack!

Yeah, I liked the old site more, but i'm not in charge of that.

Meh, this one looks prettier...

I did such effects with an 12x12 pixel gif every second pixel is transparent. Was for a UBB forum with lots of threads, it crashed some browsers, and killed the most versions of the IE. Slow computers used to hang.

Same thing is done here. But it renders very well for me, i like it.

It looks pretty, but takes forever on IE and Gecko.

Perhaps stick it in an option setting somewhere? It'd be like themes for the forum...

Errr... I don't think it's a gif with every other pixel transparent. It looks like a smooth 50% transparency of some sort. Unless it was scaled down dramatically to give it that illusion. Grrrr, tell me how it's done a1k0n. Pleeeeaase!

=(

wow youre right, i wonder that this works in my opera. o_O
Theyre using pngs and some odd 'DXalpha' tag.

Alpha masking on a PNG. Interesting. I gotta learn how to do this. It looks spectacular.

You can for example use the gimp for transparent PNGs; just export your transparent stuff in Photo Shop format; import, export to PNG and there ya go. Well atleast it's something like that. But I thought transparency didn't work in IE. Odd..

Yeah, it's transparent PNGs. And yes, I have to handle the transparency differently in IE than in other browsers. (And the way to handle transparency in IE makes links unclickable... so I wasn't able to put those table backgrounds everywhere I wanted. Grr microsoft.)

Anyway, for those interested, these two CSS definitions are what make it work:

--------
TD.Head1 {
background: url("http://images.vendetta-online.com/images/background2.png");
}

TD.Head1 {
background:; filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='http://images.vendetta-online.com/images/background2.png', sizingMethod='scale');
}
--------
The first definition is all you need for non-IE browsers. The second one overrides the earlier style definition in IE only (due to a quirk in its implementation - other browsers ignore it.) The filter is what makes the transparent PNG display properly, but it's also what breaks any links inside of that TD block.

Thank you, Walyon. I've always wanted to know how to do this. Even Google yields obscure results on how to make transparent PNGs. Good stuff.

www.mozilla.org <---cool thing called FireFox here.

But, Vlad...the 'reply', 'post', 'back' and 'index' links are clickable in Safari and IE 5.2 (Mac) and are inside the TD block.....

Is this just a Windows/Linux problem?

Those links don't have a transparent PNG behind them. (In other words, they ARE inside a TD block, but not one that has a background.)