Layout Layers!

[stormy]

Good morning, Styles team!

At 7am, I had an epiphany. The largest complaint we hear at Dreamwidth is that we don't have enough good layouts. Well, we've had much less time to create our layouts than the competition, but that's not the issue; The problem is that not enough people have come forward to say what they want and how they want it placed. It's not even a matter of colors or design as much as where elements are on the page that people can't seem to get around. Colors and customization are easy, but positioning the elements fluidly so that they'll work for multiple users, and appear roughly the same on any monitor is very difficult. It's an even larger task to do this so that you can support some of the customization options on Dreamwidth - how many columns, where to place the metadata, etc.

I can make something look pretty, but positioning the elements fluidly so that they'll work for most people and still look the same is very difficult for me personally. It's why I don't submit things to styles (especially since I'm a fixed width girl), not that I wouldn't like to help elsewhere.

Might I suggest an entry or community for user submitted "paint layers"?

Users could create their ideal layout designs in paint with simple blocks of color and submit them in .png or .jpg format, hosted on their own servers, for designers to pick up and attempt to make a layout layer code that could meet all the demands of Dreamwidth's customization. Very similar to the way Tabula Rasa's fully customizable layout is - but with elements already positioned. Sort of a way to skin or color the elements are you please, but place them in a way that users will be able to actually use. It's such a simple design concept that any user with a paint type program could submit one, and you might start noticing something similar between multiple submissions that people want to see, but we haven't been able to give them yet.

Here's an example of a paint layout I would love to see (layout elements are not to scale):



And another example:



The idea seems feasible, but where to put it is my question. I could barely decide where to post this entry, let alone a slew of design related requests.

Comments

[cesy]

I think here or style_system is fine as a place, or even straight into dreamscapes as a draft collaboration. I'd love to help work on one of these, too.

[phoenix]

This is a really intriguing idea! I'm heading to my text editor right now to see if my skills are up to scratch to be an implementor and will be checking back on discussion here.

[ninetydegrees]

Thanks for this constructive entry. It's a nice change from all the 'ohmygodeverythingssougly' comments I've unfortunately read. I second cesy's comment. I'd say it would be useful to see this in dreamscapes. Designers mostly make styles *they* like, myself included, but I'm sure some will be willing to explore other possibilities (what you suggest is not hard to do; I think one or two people are working on #1; and there's a bug to make one-column work with modules at the top instead of shoving everything at the bottom just like in #2). It might also inspire other designers who haven't submitted a style yet.

[gypsy]

My main issue with most of the DW layouts is that they're very plain. Boxes of colors don't really do it for me.

My LJ has a generator (S1) based layout, which DW doesn't have as an option. You can see it here if you want to get an idea of what I'm talking about.. gypsy - if you roll over the navigation at the top, more images appear. It's my favorite layout ever, and I can't use it here.

[chaosraven]

I'm not really in the know with layouts or CSS but I do love to see something about layouts that's finally moving in a positive direction instead of just complaints about how DW doesn't have enough options. A+ idea. <3

[matgb]

I agree with this; encouraging people to actually say what they want, instead of complaining they can't find it, would be helpful.

I've never even considered a click to hide option, I wouldn't want it on the title itself, but somewhere near there would be nice. I shall give it a thunk.

[mmmag]

Okay, so I had to try that CSS entry-expand trick after you mentioned it. It's currently active on my reading & network page. You click anywhere on the entry to expand the content. It's a bit annoying for longer entries, but it works!

I'm not html savvy enough to figure out how to make a link that links nowhere and stays active. I think some sort of script will have to be used in order to make the entry expand and stay that way after you click something and collapse when you click again.

Anyway, good job with this! Hopefully it inspires some people to make more site layouts.

[auroraprimavera]

I really like this idea a lot. Personally, when thinking about layouts, I first think about how I want my elements and then after I have everything settled, I think about the actual design aspect.

It's sort of what I've been working on at my creative journal (relevant_creativity) - I want to focus first on making the elements work right and display correctly in different browsers and then I'll get to making it "pretty."

I for one, would be more willing to put time into designing more layouts/styles if I had information like this first.

[suncat]

Thanks for posting this concept. Yes, I create my own designs, but I also love building to other people's specifications. No one person can think of all the great ideas. Like your entry date format in your first layout, for example.

Don't know when I'll have time, but I definitely want to take a crack at some of your elements.