Updates, updates, updates (we have a style!)

[afuna]

Hi! So with the latest code push, styles has gotten some much needed love.

The most visible change is that we have a style! Negatives was written by phoenix for the 2005 LiveJournal styles contest, and was rewritten by the styles team to be compatible with core2, which means it supports "newer" features (expand, tracking, tags, proper alt text for userpics) for free!

Other things that went out:

• everyone who was using the default style has been moved over to Negatives. This does not mean that Negatives is going to be the default style! We'll revisit that question once we have more styles on the site.


• bullet point above fixed the problem with the customize page


• renamed the sidebar variables to use "modules" in their names -- this may break existing layouts which were ported to core2


• tweaks to core, to solve some issues that were reported to us from the first run (closing tags, etc). Note that this does not fix everything -- we still have a few issues reported to us that we are looking at.


• tag cloud module


• some additional rel links (next, prev, help), for accessibility and people with browsers smart enough to do something with these


• ETA: we've made the items in the entry management links (track, memory, etc) a <ul> (thanks, janinedog for reminding us!)
  

We're still working on:

• more styles (of course!)


• documentation, guides


• exposing variables through the wizard


• and an idea for improving the wizard. Details once we have something we can show you!

Still have no wizard, but we're getting close to the point where we can open up. The main problem with the wizard is that it establishes expectations that it's safe to play with the variables and we're not ready for that. Almost, but not yet.

We have one more major change in mind, to make the module names easier to read/write. They're currently "primary", "secondary", "tertiary", "quarternary". Or is it "quaternary"? I don't know, and I've been working with this code for ages. So we're thinking of renaming them to primary module_group_one, module_group_two, module_group_three... and so on. Easier to read, easier to remember, easier to expand upon.

(ETA I mashed together combine two separate things that Abby and I were talking about. To clarify:

Previously, module groups in S2 were named module_group_primary(), module_group_secondary(). In HTML, these were laid out in #primary, #secondary, #tertiary. #primary contained the entries, #secondary contained module_group_primary(), and so on, and it was confusing.

So we're renaming module_group_primary() to module_group_one(), etc. HTML layout will continue to use #primary to indicate the main content.)

Please report any new issues through your usual bug-reporting channels. If you don't know what those are, feel free to comment to this entry! But first, check the list of open styles-related bugs and the list of all styles-related bugs. (Note: we still have some issues reported through comments that aren't in bugzilla. We'll be going through those and opening up bugs as appropriate, soon).

Currently known issues:

• Negatives sidebar is pushed to the bottom when fonts are too large / window sizes are too small - Fix committed
  
• Negatives header overlaps the navstrip - Fix committed
  
• Negatives currently lacks a <title>
  
• Negatives defined text for properties should be removed, to fall back to core
  
• Need to clean up Negatives commentbar arrangement / text
  
• Links in the black/bottom bars are difficult to read, posing an accessibility issue (will revisit after we have color schemes)
  
• Summary links in the sidebar don't actually bring you to the entry (comments are okay)
  
• in Negatives openid comment poster links are weird
  
• IE6 showing the header links vertically, because it uses display:inline-block - Fix committed
  
• html syntax errors causing display problems for comments in IE and Opera
  

Comments

[janinedog]

Another change I noticed: it seems you guys wrapped the entry link bar icons in a <ul>. I noticed because mine suddenly had bullet points and were vertical on the screen. :) So people may need to adjust their CSS to account for this.

As for the module names, I think you should make the first one module_group_one, not primary. More consistent!

[aveleh]

*nods* Yes, I'm trying to put everything that makes sense to be in a list in a list (I'm behaving, I personally like entries and comments to be in lists too!) Once it's finalized, I want a "base CSS" type thing that's easy for people to pull in, which will make it easy to be lazy and still display those lists inline.

As far as the modules, pretend you didn't see that (and continue to pretend until fu gets a chance to edit the entry); it got mashed up in translation. The modules will definitely be a module_group_one, module_group_two type sequence. It's the CSS that will be changed to something like "primary" for the body and "groupA, groupB, groupC" for the sidebar type areas, because (1) it's too confusing to put the secondary module in the tertiary div, and (2) most of those don't have priority, only ordering, but I want to make it easier for new-to-CSS people to understand that the primary div should have primary information, such as entries.

[foxfirefey]

This might not be a bug, but one thing the new style doesn't have is a <title>, and I think it should, unless for some reason that was done on purpose?

[aveleh]

Nope, not missed on purpose. And noted; thanks!

[rho]

Am too lazy to zilla these, so you get them here.

1. Calendar needs to be changed to archive.
2. The comment links need to be brought inside the «» go.bml links.

[aveleh]

Yeah, I'm totally happy to move stuff into bugzilla as necessary <3

1. And Journal should be Recent Entries. Somehow we didn't take out the style overrides there. (All text can be overridden in the wizard - or at worst by using the theme layer- but defaults for official styles should be the site defaults.)

2. *nods* A couple of things to clean up there, including making those links actually called previous/next entry as to not be confusing.

Thanks!

[forthwritten]

This is really cool, go team!

Couple of issues:

- I'm finding the bottom links (to comment, edit entry, edit tags, etc) difficult to read. This is probably a combination of small netbook screen and my shitty eyesight, if there is an accessibility issue there it may affect whether or not you run with this as a default style.

- module_group_one, module_group_two etc sounds more intuitive and easier to remember.

[aveleh]

The CSS is still a work in progress; so it used a particular default. We'll definitely check on sizes before they get finalized. In the meantime, are you okay with it, or was basic core2 easier for you to read and do you need instructions for how to make that your default? (Aka, we want to make it easier for everything to be accessible, but we know it won't be yet. So do let me/us know if there's anything we can do to make your experience accessible even if the style itself isn't going to be accessible asap.)

Yes, the module notes were a mashed-in-afuleh-translation and they will be called something more sequence-y :)

[dani_the_girl]

I would suggest that the tag cloud module probably shouldn't display tags with zero uses. Also, thank you for fixing the day page :) I'll continue to poke and let you know if I see anything else...

[dani_the_girl]

Re CSS for comments (you may well know this, in which case disregard...)

1) There's no css class for each comment - there's an *id*, but they could use a class too so I can apply things to each comment
2) There's no way to uniquely identify the header of the comment - that div doesn't have a class either.
3) The poster is wrapped in a span tag, but the IP address, multiform and date aren't, giving no way to reposition them on the page

[branchandroot]

Had a thought. Would it make sense to make the link for "x comments" go to some kind of anchor for the comments rather than the permalink? Considering that the default appears to be that the entry header goes to the permalink (which I think is brilliant and wonderful), and therefore there's already a link for that. A way to go directly to the comments/bottom-of-entry, also, seems like a really handy thing to have, and linking it to the "x comments" seems like the most intuitive thing.

[afuna]

A couple of styles already do this, and I'm hoping to standardize it across the system styles, because that has always been a peeve of mine!

(We have the link in the subject, and will probably have permalinks as well, so people will still have their link to the entry itself!)

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

When you use larger font sizes the page summary moves to the bottom of the page. That isn't intentional, right?

[av8rmike]

Not as such-- that's a function of floated content. If there isn't enough horizontal space for a float, it "sinks" to the bottom of its container. I think I know a few CSS tricks to keep that from happening.

[domtheknight]

A couple things in case no one has reported them yet (definitely didn't see in zilla) - the summary links on the sidebar don't actually move the page to the referenced post, and on some posts (like this one) I'm seeing weird things with comment threads not lining up. On posts in my own journal so far they appear to line up where I think they should.

[afuna]

Hmm. I'm not sure what you mean by comments not lining up. Can you screenshot?

[exor674]

http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/2421.html?thread=39797#t39797

"ext_2915" links to the thread and squeaky.insanejournal.com links to an invalid profile (which for some remaps to the current user?).

[afuna]

Thank you, Dre! We're fixing by calling the proper function from core instead of leaving the layout to implement it on its own :DD

[ysobel]

Borkage I mentioned in IRC:

top of page, in Negatives, has huge gap - http://pics.livejournal.com/isabeau/pic/0013pc88

bottom of page stops before content does (i.e. I am scrolled all the way down and cannot see the last chunk) - http://pics.livejournal.com/isabeau/pic/0013qx3s

[afuna]

Is this still happening? I vaguely recall in scrollback you said it was working now, but not sure if it was related to this.

[msilverstar]

I can't customize Negatives at all. I click on the Customize TEXT area and I get this:

Text - expand all - collapse all

(plus some buttons)


I click on the MISC area and get labels but no edit boxes.

The weird part is that I can edit these in Zesty, but not Negative.

Help?

[aveleh]

I'm so sorry for missing your comment earlier!

There was a mistake with how the wizard was pushed with Negatives, which made it confusing because it offered options that were not available. There's more coming!

[helens78]

Noticed an odd Negatives glitch: in dw_beta, in the sidebar, there's a second "previous 20" link, and it overlaps different things depending on browser resolution:

Firefox
< 1600 wide -- in the middle of the "tags" section
= 1600 wide -- at the bottom of the "tags" section

Chrome
< 1600 wide -- in the middle of the "tags" section
= 1600 wide -- in the middle of the "page summary" section

Internet Explorer
< 1600 wide -- in the middle of the "tags" section
= 1600 wide -- at the bottom of the "tags" section

In most other comms and journals using this style, regardless of number of tags or posts, there's no second "previous 20" link at all!

[afuna]

Thank you for pointing this out! It looks like it's about 50pixels up from the first visible screen of the page, and we've tracked down the change that caused this. We wanted to make it at the very bottom of the sidebar, but it's not working out as we planned, so we're backing out that change soon.

[hatman]

Using Negatives with FF3. Have a few questions. I believe they're mostly relevant here:

1. You know that "previous 20" link on the reading page and such? Is there a way to make one appear at the bottom of the page (as well as the top)? It's not that big a deal to ctrl-home to go back up and click it, but it'd be nice to have there.

2. Actually, there does seem to be a second one which appears about halfway down my Tags list (and why is my Tags list appearing on a sidebar to my *reading page*?), perhaps coincidentally occurring between "psa" and "random ideas", although it's somewhat offset and kind of overlaps both. I'm guessing that's a bug of some sort.

3. There are people running around with styles other than the listed options. Imported from LJ, I think? How does that work, then? How would one go about making such a thing happen?

[hatman]

Ah, I see 2 is addressed in the comment just above mine. That's what I get for being lazy. Sorry.

Oh, and the by date bar at the bottom (with the current month and day-by-day links) is pretty neat. :)

[domtheknight]

In case you haven't heard this yet, in personal journals (like mine, say) the text is "posted by on [date/time]". That 'by' is weird there, since it's not a community, and the username isn't filled in.

[aveleh]

Thanks!

[bethbethbeth]

Has this been addressed yet and I just haven't seen it?

I'm using Negatives as a default, and in my journal, the sequence of info I see in comments is as follows:

Date:
Delete/Screen/Freeze/Track This
IP Address (User Name)
Select (with box)
Comment

Surely "Select (with box)" would be better placed above "IP Address (User Name)" instead of right in the middle of the commenter's name and their comment? Y/Y?

[aveleh]

There are plans to move it, yes :) Thanks!

[cesy]

Have you already got a bug open for the "Previous 20" link being hidden in the middle of the tags?

[aveleh]

Yup, thanks!

[zvi]

unhappiness re: missing yet obvious div

[aveleh]

Thanks, I left a reply. There's a bunch of patches coming up for that area.

Negatives black comments

[aithine]

Stuff I've noticed while puttering around with the negatives style:

• navigation (module-list) doesn't wrap for larger font sizes and creates a horizontal scroll bar
• summary module on an entry page with comments from OpenID folks doesn't wrap and causes horizontal scroll
• remove the calendar links at the bottom of the reading page - all it does is cause confusion

Is there somewhere to leave suggestions about improvements to the main DW site CSS/layout?

Re: Negatives black comments

[afuna]

Coming back to this a bit late --

Thanks for the reports. I've put the non-wrapping into the system, to be looked at. The calendar links are probably going to be part of a larger fix to choose whether to show a specific module in a particular view or not.

For general bug reports, see http://domtheknight.dreamwidth.org/7342.html.

[watersword]

Mac OS X 10.5.6, Firefox 2.0.0.20, http://dw-styles.dreamwidth.org/3045.html stops loading about halfway down the page. Screenshot.

[afuna]

Oh hey, is this still happening? I'm hoping it was a problem with bad HTML which we fixed a short while back.

Previous/Next link color in Negatives style

[velocitygrass.livejournal.com]

The Previous/Next links above and below the entries in Negatives style are black on black (the ones in the sidebar are fine) and are only visible once you hover over them.

Screenshot (http://pics.livejournal.com/velocitygrass/pic/000ctrs2)

There is already bug 877, but it doesn't address this issue specifically (maybe because the links were added later?) and is more about cosmetics, while this issue hides the links from the user.

Re: Previous/Next link color in Negatives style

[velocitygrass.livejournal.com]

I just noticed that this problem extends to the links to the other pages of comments (if there are several) and unexpanded comments.

[girlnamedpixley]

I found last night that if you import a large picture, it gets cut off to fit the window, and there is no scroll bar there to let you see the rest of the image.

I'm sorry if this has already been reported -- I did look, but I didn't see it anywhere.

[afuna]

Oh hey, could you give us a link to a sample post with a picture, as well as which browser you're using?

Thanks!

quickreply color

[zvi]

The ?silver? for links in negative blacks is almost invisible in Quickreply, where the journal name and picture to use are on a white background.

[sallye]

I'm using the Negatives style and was wondering why the calendar is set to the side, when I have it in the side module? I can't see all of it. is there a fix, or is this how it's supposed to look?

[afuna]

Hmm, that's a buglet, since the style that's supposed to be for the calendar when it's horizontal and at the foot of the layout is being applied even when it's a table and in the side.

We'll fix it, though!