Organizing layouts

[denise]

We've been talking a bit about how the Select Style page should be categorized and laid out as we get more and more styles added (and OMG, I am loving the styles that we've been adding!), so it is time to discuss how we should categorize things.

afuna and I have already been talking about a few options, but I wanted to throw it out to the community at large to see what you guys think first, before we talk about what we've been thinking, to see if anyone has any great ideas that we would have missed!

To that end, a poll:

Poll #1158 Layout choice

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 313

View Respondents

When looking for a design for your journal, how do you expect to be able to browse/select one?

View Answers

By color family
171 (54.6%)

By color contrast
37 (11.8%)

By font size
23 (7.3%)

By base layout
282 (90.1%)

By header image content
66 (21.1%)

By something else (explain in comments!)
15 (4.8%)

Discussions, ideas, pros-and-cons, and other thoughts go in the comments. :)

Comments

[av8rmike]

No offense intended to janinedog, because I know she put in a hell of a lot of work re-designing the customization pages for LJ, but it's pretty clear from the response that I've seen over the years (and even now) that people really did like the old way better. With the sheer number of themes available on LJ, the "top-down" approach of selecting a layout first, then drilling down to a specific theme seems to make more sense.

But, since we're talking about Dreamwidth here and not LJ, I'm thinking we should add some kind of top-down selection system. As Zvi pointed out to me, having the only list of layouts that exists be squirreled away in the Advanced Customization section isn't optimal, given that we have the power to change it.

[piranha]

*nod*. this has become really clear to me in the last couple of weeks since i now have every existing layout and style in use, and the list is ... basically not useful. as somebody said above, everything blurs together and while they do all look different they all start to look weirdly alike. and i _know_ these styles intimately. i can only imagine how confusing this looks to somebody who doesn't.

[cesy]

afuna's just put in a category of "Base layouts", which should help in the meantime - it's currently in the review queue.