Styles, the code push, and you: external stylesheets and comment titles using heading elements

[foxfirefey]

There are a couple of important style happenings that could affect people who make their own custom styles; remember that if you end up having problems with your style, you are always free to ask for help here or in style_system. We are more than happy to assist you!

External Stylesheets

So, we've flipped the property to make style sheets load externally by default (external_stylesheet). This is actually going to be great for styles--it means that instead of putting the CSS in the HTML page on every single page load, increasing load times, browsers will be able to cache the externally linked CSS! It does mean, though, that if you have manually overwritten the print_default_stylesheet function, you might end up with some problems--to solve them, take away any <style> tags you may be printing out, as the system will add any necessary ones inline.

Comment titles now use heading elements

Comment titles now use heading elements--this allows people with screenreaders to jump by a certain element level, which increases accessibility. We've updated the CSS for official styles for this (let us know if anyone finds anything amiss), but you might have to add extra CSS for any custom styles.

And now, on to the fun stuff!

There are a LOT of new themes, thanks to timeasmymeasure, dancing_serpent, busaikko, and sarken. Layouts with new color themes include: Drifting, Bases, Negatives, Skittlish Dreams, Nouveau Oleanders, Modular, Blanket, and Brittle. Other fun changes include:

• Sunday morning now has one column and two-columns right layouts. (ninetydegrees)
• Transmogrified now has a two-columns-left layout. (ninetydegrees)
• More official styles support the placement of icons to the right or left side of entries now. (ninetydegrees)
• More official styles also support placing metadata at the top or bottom of the entry. (ninetydegrees)
• There's a new journal search module! If you're a paid user (or can search the journal you are viewing), and are viewing a style that includes the search module, you can use it to search the journal! (foxfirefey, ninetydegrees, fu)
• You can now use community icons instead of the poster's icon on your reading page for community posts (kareila and fu)

• sarken fixed Skittlish Dreams' metadata being hardcoded to red, so you can now change that color in the wizard.

• ninetydegrees fixed Sunday Morning's navigation module from wrapping poorly
• ninetydegrees fixed the custom reply/# of comments text on the network page to use the same values as the reading page
• ninetydegrees has made sure all the layout.pm modules look the same
• ninetydegrees fixed the author's name in Bases
• ninetydegrees implemented one column and two-columns right layouts in Sunday Morning
• ninetydegrees has made official styles support the placement of icons on the right or left side of entries
• ninetydegrees separated out color settings from the nav and calendar module in Bases
• liv has added additional classes to the body tag letting you know if the viewer is logged in, the owner of the journal, if they have access, if they're a subscriber, if they're a member of the community, or if they admin or moderate the community
• deborah has improved tag cloud semantics and accessibility
• fu fixed 24-hour time on customized core1 styles
• yvi made the current active filter visible in the page title, if you're viewing a subscription or access filter
• aveleh made a bare-bones style for feed accounts
• kareila fixed the crosspost label text from saying xpost
• ninetydegrees fixed the datestamp on comments in Modular
• penemue fixed a username from breaking subject entry links in the active entries module.
• ninetydegrees made changes to distinguish collapsed comments from screened/deleted/suspended comments
• ninetydegrees made Funky Circles use the latest CSS3 properties
• ninetydegrees fixed archive and tags pages in Tehotenion (Transmogrified), which had white text on a white background
• deborah and jadelennox fixed alt text from being overescaped in S2
• foxfirefey made it so S2 can now access whether the viewer is allowed to manage tags on the journal they are viewing, so that it will show if, say, you are an admin on a community
• deborah cleaned up the files for Nouveau Oleanders so they're neat and alphabetized and reference the right things
• ninetydegrees made it so modules that don't work in Sunday Morning's header can't be moved there.
• foxfirefey made S2 backend changes so the style system can know whether the viewer has access, is subscribed, or is the administrator of a community--which could then get used to add body tags
• poulpette fixed long entry titles pushing usernames to the right in Fluid Measure on the Chrome browser
• yvi made it so you can view the entry creator name in community's recent entries in Bases
• ninetydegrees fixed padding/margins for modules in headers and footers for some styles
• fu fixed a problem in Tabula Rasa based layouts where when the entry was narrower than the sidebar and the sidebar was on the right, the right sidebar would barge into the entry area and overlap the entry. It should now scroll horizontally instead.

This was a huge update, so if I missed anything or missed giving credit, please let me know!