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)

( Other changes and fixes )

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