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

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.

Re: Negatives black comments

[av8rmike]

The trouble is: inline content that's larger than the dimensions of its containing block (the sidebar in this case) isn't supposed to wrap, it's supposed to flow outside the container. So far I haven't determined if there's even a way to make CSS or HTML somehow split a long URL, which is essentially what is happening.

Re: Negatives black comments

[afuna]

Oh, I thought that it wasn't wrapping *at all* for any summary which doesn't make sense given that I've seen it wrapping

For the navigation list not wrapping though, I have a weird/hackish workaround: introducing a space in the list html

So that instead of <ul><li>a</li><li>b</li></ul>, it is <ul><li>a</li> <li>b</li> </ul>. The whitespace will be treated as a word break, and there will be wrapping!

Theory does not apply to openid users' urls, though.

Re: Negatives black comments

[afuna]

*pokes you to look at http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=907*

(And review+ or review-, if you like/don't like what you see).

Re: Negatives black comments

[av8rmike]

Does that actually do anything? The problem seems to be long words that don't fit in the container, which your change won't affect.

Re: Negatives black comments

[afuna]

I'm thinking specifically of the navlinks at the top (Recent Entries, etc), and for some reason, it does affect the wrapping!

(At least in Firefox).

Compare Negatives-styled journals here and in the s2team testing repository (latter has the patch applied).

Re: Negatives black comments

[av8rmike]

If I shrink the window horizontally, the navlinks in the header do wrap now; is that what you were referring to?

Re: Negatives black comments

[afuna]

Yup.

(I think this is what they were referring to when they said navlinks, in their first point)