Hacking my layout around

[matgb]

So, following a few how-tos and some half remembered tricks from last time I messed around with my LJ layout, I've hacked into the Zesty theme and done some surgery to it.

ETA: I'm not currently using the Zesty layout, you can see where I got to here:
http://matgb.dreamwidth.org/?s2id=5702 and read this entry using it here:
http://matgb.dreamwidth.org/359787.html?s2id=5702

Firstly, I added in some code to let me define an off-site stylesheet (which I'm hosting in a Wordpress theme on my server as I can edit it online easily, a trick I'll build on I think).

Then I took out all of the "theme" CSS from the layout code and saved that in a seperate file. Now I'm adding in CSS from my normal colour scheme, slowly, in order to try to get the general look and feel of my LJ layout, but improving on it based around stuff I've learnt since I last did it.

Seems to be going OK so far, I have at least got a bearably readable friends page—it'd be nice if one of the themes available during Beta wasn't a white background, it was giving me headaches and I'm nowhere near as bad as some are.

I plan to write up a how-to anyway, would people be interested in full source for it? I've always found fiddling around with S2 to be more effort than its worth, hence the need to get a stylesheet I could edit ASAP. I reckon it'd definitely be worth getting the codebase for Zesty (and eventually Negatives for SB) into a styleable position, but I'm guessing I'm doubling up some work already being done.

Ah well. Haven't done proper code hacking for ages—it's still a bit flaky, need to finish some tweaks just on what I've managed.

If anyone can figure out how I can get my header to shrink down a bit, or how to get the navigation menu over to the right of the page, I'd be grateful.

And I do plan to get back to this layout at some point, I'm currently using just Core2 with my own stylesheet, I like it.

Comments

[innerbrat]

You know what I'd like? The opportunity to have multiple self-designed stylesheets to offer readers, so my journal can be personal, and yet also maximised accessibility-wise.

I'll just carry on dreaming.

[matgb]

That's something you can do on Wordpress, but on LJ the closest you're likely to get is style=mine.

There#d doubtless be some way of making that possible for OpenID users fairly easily, the DW navstrip helps with that I think.

[innerbrat]

There's a more obvious 'view in my style' on the LJ navstrip, as well.

It's just a shame, because I personally hate using style=mine for ay journal other than my own; it was designed to display my journal/friends page ad looks odd with anyone else's. But I want an accessable journal that I can read (I need light-on-dark) and you and Jennie can read without having to use style=mine. For me, format=light is the best option usually, but it loses stuff.

[matgb]

I never have a problem with a short term looking at someone's layout, at all, it's long periods, and I look at my friends page a lot, thus need it to be non-bright.

Your layout has always been fine, it's large spans of white that really seem to start hurting, hence I have a bookmarklet to kill white backgrounds and similar.

I believe the LJ my style option is paid only, and it then sets a default whereas DW is for everyone, and just changes the view--it also includes format light, which is an added bonus.

[innerbrat]

Oh I do have problems with short term looking at violent colours, and large fonts like the current default. That's why I use the LJ-cut unfolder, and need to set LJ-Addons to be Dreamwidth as well.

I have no idea what's available for free vs paid users on LJ. I'll probably run into all sorts of problems when my DW account switches back to free as well.*clings to my icons *