I have a Dream...

[theweaselking]

...width account. I've had one since January 2009.

But I don't use it for two reasons.

#1: S2 is hideous and unwieldy and completely craptacular. I do not know how to make a working non-shitty Style in S2.
#2: Other people's esthetic decisions are HIDEOUS. And lacking an acceptable Style of my own, converting my current "append ?style=mine to all livejournal pages" script to affect Dreamwidth is pointless.

Hook me up, lazyweb.

I need an S2 style that:
1) has "next 50/last 50" links at top AND BOTTOM of the page. Next/Last 100, 250, or 5000, or, best yet, CHOOSABLE BY ME links are preferred.
2) has NO SIDEBARS EVER. Posts, both mine and Friends, should be the full width of the page.
3) provides a "link" that is a permalink to the post beside every post.
4) In fact, Reading List/My Journal should look like this. Top links, big "date" bar when days swap, reasonably big date/poster/icon/permalink block per post, post contents to the right of that at a fixed width,, "comment on this post" link to the bottom (or top!) left of the content. Continue in the colours of my choice, overriding the journal choices of other people, distinguishable for public/friendslocked by colour.
5) Individual posts should look something like my individual posts. I don't REALLY care for my current single-LJ-post style, but it gives me My Post, then comments, in order, threaded by response, using editable-by-me colours.

From there, I will edit my Firefox scripts such that I NEVER HAVE TO LOOK AT YOUR INCOMPETENT UNREADABLE SHIT STYLES EVER AGAIN. Because, fundamentally, other people's esthetic decisions are hideous.

Should I stick a bounty on this? I will pay real-world real-life money for these features. Not MUCH money, because this is a toy, but certainly at least a month's paid account, LJ or DW.

(For the record, your solution should either work on both, or DW-only, to earn the prize. Alternately, it should work for Wordpress or a similar blogging platform and parse the LJ-friends list, so I can install THAT, keep my LJ-friends as RSS reader, and post to there without dealing with OTHER PEOPLE'S UNBELIEVABLY BAD AND UNREADABLE FONT/COLOUR/LAYOUT CHOICES. Sheesh!)

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Hi--I'm from the Dreamwidth styles team, and I'm willing to do this for you. A lot of other people have been requesting a style like the one you've been asking for, so it's obviously a gap that needs to be filled--hopefully I can do okay!

I am also happy to report that this weekend I'm finishing up a DW feature I've been working on for a while that will make your Greasemonkey unneeded (persistent style=mine) and will go into the next code push; until then, if you want, I can hook you up with mine that I use.

[foxfirefey]

Hrm, but do I want to call it Handlebars or Barfly...

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I vote Handlebars. :D

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I'd appreciate that. Fundamentally, I don't LOVE my current Livejournal style, but I don't hate it, and that's something I have yet to say about any S2 Style I've ever seen.

I can totally handle the scripting and automation of styles, along with the options of not-using-my-style for some reason. What I want is a "my style" that doesn't make me stab my eyes out with a spork, and the only ones I've ever managed on Livejournal have been S1.

[maelorin]

i get the feeling you don't like other people's styles. just a vibe i'm getting.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ya think?

i gave up on my custom s2 style a while back.

[maelorin]

this is pretty much why i use a black-on-white, vanilla style for all of my blogs. so they're readable without destroying the laws of nature, and good taste.

[ashbet]

I'm seconding the request for posts that go the width of the page, or preferably are width-adjustable by the user (i.e., my S1 layout on my journal.) I've never gone with S2 because *all* of them want to give me a narrow strip of text down the middle of the page, or a huge hideous sidebar. Gah!

For people who have custom S1 LJ layouts, is there a potential way to just import that into Dreamwidth via cut-and-paste of the custom CSS?

(I'm not in any way a web designer, and I customized my journal years ago and have forgotten half of what I did to get it looking the way it does -- but I like it, and I'd hate to give up the width option in particular.)

Thanks much,

-- Andi (who just created a DW account earlier tonight!)

[foxfirefey]

I don't know if you've seen the layout selection on DW, since it's very different from LJ's, but a lot of them let you go with one column or just two column layouts (on the right or left) and adjust the sidebar side. Example layouts that have sidebar on the right with adjustable width, or no sidebar, are:

* Crossroads
* Basic Boxes
* Modish

(Apologies for all the edits, I CANNOT get auto-format to turn off lately.)

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

creation codes for you:
here" (http://dw-codesharing.dreamwidth.org/)

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

aaand this is exactly why everyone I know is moving to DW. Thank you. Sincerely.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Code: HASRYJS2MH277AAABYMK

Other code: YP7BYK5HGSAC9AAABYML

Create away.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm not "moving" so much as "a number of people I know have stopped crossposting or blocked LJ comments so I need to visit dreamwidth to actually read and respond - and while I have an account, Dreamwidth is unreadably fugly"

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also: I'm absolutely certain there's a greasemonkey script for that waiting to be made.

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

will you be crossposting? or just lurking?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I haven't decided.

And I don't think "Lurking" is quite the right word when it's really "syndicating into a reader"

[matgb]

Go here:
http://www.dreamwidth.org/openid/

Type http://therayven.livejournal.com/ into the big obvious box. You now habve a Dreamwidth reading account.

[matgb]

See, it never occured to me that peopel would like that sort of style. I know John's weird (even for a Canadian), but still.

Having said that, pretty much everything should be doable in CSS in Tabula Rasa I'd have thought. Or one of the other styles.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

I just setup a Dreamwidth account last week, and I can't believe how universally ugly the provided styles are. Every single one of them has something ugly or wrong in it. I don't really care to spend the time to create or modify one either, from past experience down that way lies madness.

I ended up settling on Night Sea, but even that has CSS overlap issues.

[foxfirefey]

Not this, though--I finally managed to track down CSS that would give me stackable equal height boxes with the left side static and the right side fluid (aka taking up the rest of the space), but it required me to add some wrapper divs, and, of course, change which divs things are printed out in.

My guess is that a lot of people like this style who really depend visually on the colors they give to people they're reading.

[matgb]

I was going to do it so the Header box goes to the left, but move the header text out of it into the main bar, different approach but doable.

one of the weirdnesses about most DW styles, and some LJ ones, is the userpic is normally put as part of the entry, I've always viewed it as part of the metadata/header area, and styled it as such. Course, I think I've moved it within my layer code several times now to make sytling/wrapping it easier, but I don't mind rearranging my entire layout code just to move something a pixel or two...

But yeah, I've never used person colours until recently, and might actually go back and recode the whole thing, see if it's possible to use custom colours for both aspects of my friends page and comments area, so I can define the colours within the site, rather than my CSS code. Should be doable.

But I think I ought to get my head around whatever I need to do in Docs first. Need to print and sign that CLA so I can get started properly.

[foxfirefey]

I guess you're right in that the specs here didn't call for a full color bar, but I added it since other people seem to really want it.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

I want a Dreamwidth style that looks exactly like my LJ style. EXACTLY.

What I have on Dreamwidth right now is sort of close, though.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I tried to find, and failed. My LJ style isn't perfect by any means, but plain looking is okay when the alternatives are all actively ugly or broken.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

If the codes upthread are used up, reportedly the code "VOX" will work for everybody until they decide to disable it.