Gradiance

[kaigou]

Theme name/layout: Gradiance
Author: Kaigou
Layout info: originally Tranquility III
Image info: 10 substitute icons (5 per style)
Layout url: http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/layersource?id=87751&fmt=html

Users can change the 8-scale gradient, the page background, the default text color, the content/comment background color, and colors for active & visited links. As long as the contrast between the 4th color and the 8th color is enough to make text legible, the gradient can go from darkest-dark to lightest-light, or from medium-dark to medium-light, depending on the amount of contrast required. The CSS looks a little funky as a result, but it makes for some easy cut-and-paste to create new color schemes.

The links all go to a test post on my journal, which has multiple replies of varying types (anon, registered, openid) so you can those in action.

Gradiance Amethyst — Gradiance Amethyst Verso
Gradiance Carmine — Gradiance Carmine Verso
Gradiance Celadon — Gradiance Celadon Verso
Gradiance Cerise — Gradiance Cerise Verso
Gradiance Cerulean — Gradiance Cerulean Verso
Gradiance Cobalt — Gradiance Cobalt Verso
Gradiance Emerald — Gradiance Emerald Verso
Gradiance Forest — Gradiance Forest Verso
Gradiance Fuschia — Gradiance Fuschia Verso
Gradiance Grayscale — Gradiance Grayscale Verso
Gradiance Halaya Ube — Gradiance Halaya Ube Verso
Gradiance Harlequin — Gradiance Harlequin Verso
Gradiance Heliotrope — Gradiance Heliotrope Verso
Gradiance Indigo — Gradiance Indigo Verso
Gradiance Jade — Gradiance Jade Verso
Gradiance Lemon — Gradiance Lemon Verso
Gradiance Maize — Gradiance Maize Verso
Gradiance Majorelle — Gradiance Majorelle Verso
Gradiance Midnight — Gradiance Midnight Verso
Gradiance Moss — Gradiance Moss Verso
Gradiance Nadeshiko — Gradiance Nadeshiko Verso
Gradiance Ocean — Gradiance Ocean Verso
Gradiance Ochre — Gradiance Ochre Verso
Gradiance Olivine — Gradiance Olivine Verso
Gradiance Peach — Gradiance Peach Verso
Gradiance Pistachio — Gradiance Pistachio Verso
Gradiance Racing — Gradiance Racing Verso
Gradiance Sangria — Gradiance Sangria Verso
Gradiance Sapphire — Gradiance Sapphire Verso
Gradiance Sienna — Gradiance Sienna Verso
Gradiance Sky — Gradiance Sky Verso
Gradiance Slate — Gradiance Slate Verso
Gradiance Spring — Gradiance Spring Verso
Gradiance Storm — Gradiance Storm Verso
Gradiance Thistle — Gradiance Thistle Verso
Gradiance Vermilion — Gradiance Vermilion Verso
Gradiance Viridian — Gradiance Viridian Verso

The substitute icons fill in when there's a blank for an anonymous poster, an RSS feed, a DW user, or an OpenID user. The last image the blockquote background. [ETA: after further testing, the regular icons look fine even on a reversed setup, so not seeing reason to do that extra bit.]



There are still some outstanding issues that I can't figure out. None of them are really deal-breakers, but if I can find answers to these questions, I'll edit the existing code to reflect the fixes.

I'm presuming separate layouts for reversed (light-on-dark) color schemes, but it seems like it'd be a LOT easier to give users the option of reversing the colors, with a simple yes/no question (which would then flip color_001 for color_008 and so on). Or is it better to treat each as separate themes, on the grounds that users wouldn't be aware ahead-of-time that the colors can be easily reversed in the wizard?

...I think that covers it!

Comments

[wyntarvox]

I really like how these look! I just have a few things to clear up.

What's the logic for having two separate layouts with differring levels of customisability? Or maybe to rephrase, what's the logic behind restricting the customisability of this layout?

Make sure when you re-submit when you're ready for someone to patch it to add it to the site you pull out any colour definitions from the layout layer. Our policy is to only make colour definitions in theme layers. Also make sure you indicate which theme you want to be the default theme for your layout.

I also feel a bit weird about defining the custom text content; in my opinion, this should be left blank by default and left up to the user to decide whther or not he/she wants to use it. I kind of feel the same about the link text ('# voices', etc), especially since they're pretty specific. I feel like these should be pretty generic, but that might just be me.

re: 3.: If you really want the permalink to persist (even though it and the comment link point to the same place), what you could do is change the function CommentInfo::print() to remove the "} else {" block around the permalink.

[kaigou]

Oh! The custom text is temporary (that's why it says TEMP) because that's MINE, and not necessarily something to keep. I mean, I'm using this style, and I happen to dislike the default text, so I put in my own. And since I keep switching colors as I'm checking, I figured I'd just put it in the base style rather than have to redo it each time.

Shorter version: no, that TEMP section doesn't stay in final version.

Yes, I know the title link points to the same place as the "link" link, but in terms of usability, it makes no sense to have a link that appears and then disappears, even if it is duplicated. Either don't have it at all (and use the title link consistently), or leave it in consistently. So I figure, leave it in consistently. I'll look for the commentInfo bit and twiddle with that.

What's the logic for having two separate layouts with differring levels of customisability? Or maybe to rephrase, what's the logic behind restricting the customisability of this layout?

1. Because I had originally included gradient images as part of the backgrounds, and that means a slight drag on the server. It seemed like a free version shouldn't have that, or the extra bells.
2. The colors were narrowed down to just customizing the basic eight colors, after a bit of discussion on whether or not (and how!) to set up a page for customizing when the final tally comes to something over a 120 different entries for color, even though it's only 8 colors total. It's not that this is impossible, just a real headache, so it seemed like the best way to start was with a simpler version, and to leave the really customizable version as a special whistle.

Will it stay that way? No idea, really. It's just an idea I tossed out there, as a way to have a beefed-up version of the same layout as a treat for paid users.

[afuna]

I think for the link, it should be consistent among all layouts. Ummm. Perhaps throw it into suggestions, to see whether having there are any strenuous objections to having "link" always show?

I like the idea of having two different levels of customizability (as I've told you before *g* if forced to choose, I think I'd prefer simpler to defining everything at once), but hmmmm. I don't know if we're restricting any layouts to paid only. I don't actually know if we can, since even free accounts can just copy and paste (assuming they have the technical knowhow)

[kaigou]

if we're talking about users who can code on their own, then... no, there's really very little restriction at all. I've been able to do some pretty wacky layouts even when on a basic free account. It's the users who don't know how to do that who'll end up using either whatever's listed as available.

Are there no pay/free variations? Because I'm pretty sure there's that option on the customize pages that says something like "only show me the layouts I can use" or something like that, which I thought was supposed to narrow down to layouts available to certain paying/free levels.

if forced to choose, I think I'd prefer simpler to defining everything at once

From a coding perspective, it's MUCH easier to just say: here are the 8 colors! Having to go through and set up the colors dependent on where they are and/or what they do, whew. I'd never have done this many gradient ranges, that's for sure!

[afuna]

Oh, that is old (left over from LJ). I've been meaning to ask about whether we can just remove it since I don't see it having much use, practically speaking.

Heee. As long as the descriptions are clear about what they're being applied to, and the color combinations are flexible and won't lead to surprise unreadable text (and I think with the variety of gradients you've tried here, you've pretty much covered all the bases!), then, you know! *g*

[kaigou]

Oh, that is old (left over from LJ). I've been meaning to ask about whether we can just remove it since I don't see it having much use, practically speaking.

OH I GET IT. You just left that in to confuse people like ME. Yeah, yeah, I see how you are!

[afuna]

You see right through me! Alas!

[wyntarvox]

Oh, sorry, I completely missed where you commented in the source the temp stuff. My mistake! :)

Like Fu said above, if you feel strongly that the permalink should always be there across all layouts, throw up a suggestion and we'll see where it goes. She has a good point about it being consistent across layouts.

Regarding the free vs. paid distinction, we don't currently have any paid-only layouts and I don't know what the policy/plan is regarding them. If we do go down that track, I don't think the fact that it's tricky to set up the customisation wizard is a good enough reason to make the layout paid-only. If the server issues are significant I guess so, but other than that it should be free as well in my opinion.

Having said that, I'm still not sold on having two different layouts for different customisation levels. I'm worried that it'll clutter the select style page with essentially-identical layouts for relatively little gain, unless I'm misunderstanding how it would work? In my opinion we should go with one or the other. Either let users fully customise it via the wizard, or have only the basic 8 colours customisable in the wizard and users who want more specific customisations can do so with custom layers/CSS.

[afuna]

I have a thought, but it makes for ugly code:

1.) eight properties exposed through the wizard
2.) bunch of other properties, which are defined noui, so you can edit them in a user or theme layer
3.) blank noui properties will be initialized in prop_init to match the properties exposed through the wizard (so you could have a "page_border" property exposed through the wizard. It, in turn, sets the colors of "entry_border" and "content_border" which are both noui, if these don't already have a color defined
4.) the noui properties are what are used in the CSS

But hmmmmm, I think the approach above will take a lot of work, and that eight is enough. The biggest problem we had, and the reason we eventually split up things into more and more properties, is that some color combinations would not work with light on dark (you could pick a good color combination for the main areas, but then, surprise unreadable text in small sections! especially when it came to links on accent colors :-))

Since this layout was built with the balance of changing color combinations in mind, I think we don't need to offer as fine-grained control over individual colors, if that makes sense?

[kaigou]

Right. Uhm, I think you lost me around "1) eight properties..." and the rest of that is, uhm, well. It's very impressive. Not really sure what it means, but it looks cool! But if the upshot is: "hey, you don't have to entirely recode the color section of the CSS to allow for twiddling on every single color instance," sounds fine to me.

Though if you scroll down in the base code, I did make notes about the color logic. There are basically four boxes, and each one has a set of proportions in its colors. So they shade equally darker or lighter, to the same degree. There are odd colors that sit outside those proportions (like on the tags page, or the archives pages), but in general, if you wanted more than the most basic 8-color control but not the wacky 120+ color control, that was my idea of a potential compromise, to list the four boxes and the colors for each part.

(And then draw from those what the 8 base colors are for the oddball colors, but I'm not really sure how that'd quite work.)

[kaigou]

Honestly, beats me. I was under the impression that such was either part of the intention or already part of the scheme. And since I really had enough on my plate just figuring out the basics of the S2 whatever-it-is and whatnot, I didn't want to have to deal with doing an endlessly-scrolling page of separate colors, so figured I'd do a simpler version. So I figured if a) there was a separation, and b) someone would eventually tell me the style should let people customize completely, then I'd c) say to leave that for the fancy bell-and-whistle version.

I'm not really that hung up on it. I just really don't want to do a page that breaks out every single instance of a color-use in this style. I mean, if someone else wants to set that up, be my guest!

[wyntarvox]

Yeah I get what you mean about not wanting to set up the ~120 colours. That would probably be a pain to customise as well as code.

I think the best option is to have the one free layout with the 8 colours customisable via the wizard, since that's the essential point of this layout. If users want to customise it further, they still can using custom CSS.