aveleh: Close up picture of a vibrantly coloured lime (Default)
abby ([personal profile] aveleh) wrote in [site community profile] dw_styles2009-04-19 05:29 pm

Transmogrified! And notes on the style overhaul.

We're still going through old comments to add bugs into the ticket tracker, but there will be some top-level posts in between working on replies. I promise someone will get to everyone :)

With the last code push, a new style "Transmogrified" is now live. This layout was designed by [livejournal.com profile] absolut for the LiveJournal Style Contest in 2005. Most of the legwork on getting it to work with core2 was done by [personal profile] dani_the_girl and [personal profile] draigwen, who have been working with [personal profile] afuna, [personal profile] av8rmike, [personal profile] jadelennox, [personal profile] liv and [personal profile] rich. This style has really gentle default colours, and is a great option to have. You can see it in action at [site community profile] dw_styles or Select it as your Journal Style.

With beta opening up, now's the ideal time to talk about more about "the styles overhaul." In order to ensure that Dreamwidth styles are more accessible, easier to write, and easier to update, a number of volunteers have been working together over the last few months to complete a significant overhaul of various styles and the core code that powers them. Until open-beta, our priority is working to ensure that core and individual styles are working as expected, and then after that, we'll be able to start adding new features. And, wow, are there ever a lot of features we're going to be able to add!

One of our goals is that users will never have to choose a style because of the functionality it offers. Instead, you can choose a style because you prefer the way that it lays out items on your journal. So, options like "put icons on the left side of each entry" would be a per-style option. But we think that options like "only display the mini-calendar on the Recent Items page" should be available on all styles, and style designers should never have to write new code to implement it.

The way we're accomplishing this is to remove these options from each individual style, make sure that the basics are working in each style, and then start adding awesome new features to core2. I know this means that things are a little sparse and frustrating during the beta process. But this is really going to help the long-term growth of the style-system and make it easier to update old styles and write new styles.

I also wanted to add a reminder that if you're moving S2 styles over from other LiveJournal-based sites, you probably want to use core1, because that version of core is (almost) the same and is more likely to produce expected results :)
turlough: young man in hideous green-patterned shirt with rised finger, Xander from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' ((buffy) excuse me?)

[personal profile] turlough 2009-04-19 11:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Are you going to add the possibility for the calendar of having the week start on the Monday, as lots of us Europeans are used to seeing it, or is that something that we'll still have to code for ourselves?
kerravonsen: Yin-Yang symbol, black and rainbow-sparkles (yin-yang)

[personal profile] kerravonsen 2009-04-19 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
♥ Transmogrified!

However, there's one thing I've noticed in comments pages using Transmogrified; icon handling is a little flaky.
a) if the comment is from an openID user, the icon appears below the subject instead of next to it.
b) there is always a huge gap between comments whether there is an icon next to the subject or not. I mean, obviously, when the icon is there, the gap is needed, but when there isn't an icon there, it looks strange.
branchandroot: oak against sky (Default)

[personal profile] branchandroot 2009-04-19 11:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Oo! Oo, oo, oo! Oh, I've been wanting this style! I had it on my GJ and loved it.
ame: (Default)

[personal profile] ame 2009-04-20 12:05 am (UTC)(link)
Omg I love the new layout. It's really easy to use compared to the other two. :)
inarticulate: Ginshu from Amatsuki smiling. (come up from the dark without you)

[personal profile] inarticulate 2009-04-20 12:28 am (UTC)(link)
This layout is gorgeous; thank you guys so much. ♥
branchandroot: oak against sky (Default)

And a usability note

[personal profile] branchandroot 2009-04-20 12:37 am (UTC)(link)
Also, had an interesting conversation today. Apparently, for some people, the default entry-management-links are currently falling prey to banner blindness: the eye is skipping over them because they are icons.

So I wondered it it would be wise to crank into Core2 a wizard option to switch that set of links (and probably the userlite-interaction-links too) between icon and text representations.
ext_86153: (Default)

[identity profile] miracled.livejournal.com 2009-04-20 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
It makes my circle a thousand times easier to read! Thank you!
cesy: Computer geek - Maria. Lots of 1s and 0s in techie colours. (Maria)

Transmogrified

[personal profile] cesy 2009-04-20 07:02 am (UTC)(link)
I love this style, but I miss the Zesty White option to collapse the reading page to just subjects, which is so useful I now can't live without it.
northern: "northern" written in gray text across a raven (Default)

[personal profile] northern 2009-04-20 07:27 am (UTC)(link)
Yay! I love Transmogrified!

Only problem is, where is the link to view earlier entries on the Reading page...? I can't find it for some reason.
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2009-04-20 07:28 am (UTC)(link)
It's currently hidden (we made a mistake), but we've patched it up, and the fix should be going out soon-ish.
lanterne_rouee: multicolored paper lanterns (multicolored paper lanterns)

nav strip reload options

[personal profile] lanterne_rouee 2009-04-20 07:38 am (UTC)(link)
tbh, i'm not 100% sure if this is to do with switching to transmogrified or something else, so i'm sorry if this is in the wrong place. i've only noticed it since switching styles though.

when looking at a community, there are two options in the nav strip: Reload page in: my style light style

when looking at someone's individual journal, there's only: Reload page in: my style
northern: "northern" written in gray text across a raven (Default)

[personal profile] northern 2009-04-20 08:19 am (UTC)(link)
I see it! Thank you!
sophie: A cartoon-like representation of a girl standing on a hill, with brown hair, blue eyes, a flowery top, and blue skirt. ☀ (Default)

Re: nav strip reload options

[personal profile] sophie 2009-04-20 08:23 am (UTC)(link)
When you see the 'light style' option, you're probably looking at an individual post, rather than the 'recent entries' page. It currently only works for individual posts - I'm hoping, though, that it might be extended to allow the viewing of recent entries in light style too.
forthwritten: stained glass spiral (Default)

[personal profile] forthwritten 2009-04-20 09:48 am (UTC)(link)
I've noticed a bug in how it displays usernames in comments. I've recreated it here. Basically, lots of white space left after the <user name=""> tag.
ratcreature: RatCreature is thinking: hmm...? (hmm...?)

[personal profile] ratcreature 2009-04-20 09:52 am (UTC)(link)
Is there a way to get Transmogrified to display the Journal's subtitle beneath the title?
ct: a shooting star (Default)

[personal profile] ct 2009-04-20 11:16 am (UTC)(link)
I'm seeing this too, using Firefox 3.0.8 on a Mac.
turlough: The Girl (Grace Jeanette) yay!ing from car window, Art is the Weapon video, Sept 2010 ((mcr) yay!)

[personal profile] turlough 2009-04-20 12:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Yay!!!!

[personal profile] ex_ardisia396 2009-04-20 12:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Adding refinements to the core layer and making them accessible through all layouts is great.
Did I mention how happy this is making me. :)
Power to your creative muses!
alsatia: (Default)

[personal profile] alsatia 2009-04-20 01:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Will one of those things be to make an easy way to print the date as a series of links to month, day, and year views? Writing that code combined with the date format options took up a zillion lines in Gradient Strip.

I also have it applied to comments, with the links leading to the journal of the person who posted the comment. Really handy when the comment is something like "I just posted about this topic yesterday" and you're reading it a month or a year later.
frangipani: a stenciled sign on a wall saying: no drowning (no drowning)

[personal profile] frangipani 2009-04-20 02:54 pm (UTC)(link)
I want to apologise in advance if I'm confusing people, because I honestly don't know what a lot of the design elements/style thingies are called. *wrings hands* I can't find an answer to my main question in previous posts, but please direct me to it if you have.

Will we be able to customise the core2 styles so that our comment pages are viewable in the default (or our otherwise chosen) site scheme? I don't mean viewing in the "light" format, as that doesn't fulfill the reasons why I prefer viewing a comment page in the site scheme (and in any case the navigation strip has always been irritatingly intrusive to me, even in LJ). I find it extremely frustrating not to be able to access the horizontal menu bar so that I can immediately click over to my recent entries, reading page, and memories. This is especially useful when, say, I'm following a multi-part story and want to check if I've added an earlier part to my memories. It's just really handy.
Edited 2009-04-20 14:56 (UTC)
afuna: Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs" (Default)

[personal profile] afuna 2009-04-20 04:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh yes, definitely. The properties lacking in the Transmogrified wizard was an oversight. If you're comfortable with theme layers/user layers, you can put this line in:

set use_journalstyle_entry_page=false;

(And we'll try to fix up the wizard ASAP)
in_interval: (Default)

[personal profile] in_interval 2009-04-20 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I tried the preview option to see my journal in this style and got:

Error running style: Died in S2::run_code running RecentPage::print(): Can't use string ("") as a subroutine ref while "strict refs" in use at (eval 2467)[/home/dw/current/src/s2/S2.pm:232] line 294.

No one else seems to be having this problem so I'm a little worried that I've messed something up. Any ideas?
kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

[personal profile] kate_nepveu 2009-04-20 06:53 pm (UTC)(link)
And on Opera 9.27 on Windows XP.
mmeg: (Default)

[personal profile] mmeg 2009-04-20 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Does this mean there will eventually be a wizard option to reverse the order of my Reading Page to most recent entry at the bottom? :)? :)?

Also, I am waiting with bated breath for a style that lets me view my subscribed journals using the colors I chose on the subscribe change. Unless I've missed an option somewhere?

Page 1 of 5