Tabula Rasa - Blanket / Brittle / Leftovers / Patsy

[sforzinda]

I've just sent the signed/scanned copy of CLA to the e-mail address stated :)

And before adding the layouts, I need to make some things clear that I will not be able to 'work' on the stylesheets as mush as I was able to before, because I'll have limited time to spend on computer. I also tried to 'fix' the stylesheets to make them meet with the requirements in the guidelines but alas, my CSS knowledge fails there :D I did 'fluid' layouts before, but I never thought converting px measurements into percentages would be hard! So my 'epic fail' was definitely re-creating the layouts using the percentages!

I tested all the layouts in Firefox 3.0, Opera 9.6 and Safari 3.0 with 1280x1024 and 1024x768 resolutions, on Mac.

I'm giving these layouts to you, to fix/tweak them if needed, as I'm not able to do it!


Theme name/layout: Blanket / Tabula Rasa - 2 Column (sidebar on right)
Author: sforzinda (Naz)
Layout info: .css file
Image info: originally it had tiny pixel icons from pinvoke.com but i removed them. and this one had a background image that i found somewhere on the internet but i also removed it because i don't know the exact source.

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Theme name/layout: Brittle / Tabula Rasa - 2 Column (sidebar on right)
Author: sforzinda (Naz)
Layout info: .css file
Image info: originally it had tiny pixel icons from pinvoke.com but i removed them.

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Theme name/layout: Leftovers / Tabula Rasa - 2 Column (sidebar on right)
Author: sforzinda (Naz)
Layout info: .css file
Image info: originally it had tiny pixel icons from pinvoke.com but i removed them.

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Theme name/layout: Patsy / Tabula Rasa - 2 Column (sidebar on right)
Author: sforzinda (Naz)
Layout info: .css file
Image info: originally it had tiny pixel icons from pinvoke.com but i removed them.

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Comments

[foxfirefey]

Hi, sforzinda! Sorry this stayed in the queue for too long--but it's nice to see you offer them up. I do have one question though--Tabula Rasa comes in a few different default forms (no default, one column, two column left, two column right, three column left, three column right, three column sides). If you could say which one(s) of those fit which of the layouts above, I'd much appreciate it! We could probably figure it out on our own, but this way is much easier. And once again, thank you for the submissions! We will keep you posted about their progress.

[sforzinda]

Ah, I knew I missed something while making the post :) The layouts are all in 2 Column (sidebar on right), and I just edited the post to add these.

[afuna]

Hiya, hehe :) Just wanted to let you know that I've been poking about a fair bit, hammering out how to do conversions, and that I'm going to try to push to get Blanket out soon! Just got distracted by other things, and still need to test and stuff *g*

[afuna]

So I'm working at Blanket right now, am in the process of fixing some backend buglets that it uncovered in Tabula Rasa (so progress has been a bit slow!) but I just want to confirm first: you said 2-columns-right, but the layout has no sidebar. Did I break something, or is it meant to work without any of the sidebars?

[sforzinda]

it's meant to work without sidebars. i mean, i wanted the layout have no sidebars when i first made it, so i disabled them in .css :)

and sorry for not replying to the previous comment, i just saw it. thunderbird is really weird lately, i don't get notification e-mails about comments time to time :|

[afuna]

No worries! And thanks for the info.

Hmm.

Oh! And one more thing: is the "Blanket" the layout name or the color scheme? That is, if we ever managed to offer multiple color schemes based on this layout, would the Blanket refer to the basic layout of elements on the page, or this specific peach-and-blue colors?

[sforzinda]

blanket is the name of the layout, and frankly, i've never thought a name for the colour scheme of this layout :D

[afuna]

*grin* no worries. If you've no particular preference for the color scheme, I'll probably base it on the colors, or ask someone to help with the name (because I have distressing tendency to choose really, really, literal, but non-creative names *laugh*).

Thank you!

[afuna]

Hi! I have the converted Blanket up on http://afuna.afuna.dreamhack.afunamatata.com/?s2id=106. The theme is named Peach.

I ended up some tweaks in the process, but I hope that nothing I did goes against what you want. (Take a look around, if you will, and tell me if there's anything "off")

So, FYI, a quick summary of what was changed:

* converted text to use ems instead of pts
* converted the widths to be percentages instead of px. Converted column width is 60% (I assumed that the base monitor width aimed for was 1024x768; 600 was approximately 60% of that)
* adjusted where the header padding and borders were being set (to #header > .inner) so that the percentage width would work; I think I ended up moving around a few other width settings as well
* added a visited link color
* increase contrast for textarea (same as the page text)

Okay, and here's the big one: After some thought, it seemed that hiding some/all modules would break expectations. So I played with the layout a bit, and put the modules at the bottom of the page.

Please take a look, tell me if you're comfortable with the changes! As always, I'm here to answer any questions :)

[sforzinda]

oh the layout looks lovely :)
just one tiny thing that i'll probably die if i don't ask :D what about making the ~styles of modules matching the layout? i mean, like making the background white, adding a border on the left, making the titles like the ones in entries? because tbh, it looks quite raw right now. but if not, it's still lovely :D

[afuna]

Ohh, now there's an idea. Do you mean each module, or just along the left side of entire module section?

(And yes! The layout looks very lovely :-) I've really enjoyed working with your code; just needed to put in a few polishing touches)

[sforzinda]

i think left side of entire module section would be better.

(and thank you :) i wish i had enough knowledge and time so i could also help you with tweaking other layouts. but for two weeks now i was making dreamwidth versions of some of my livejournal layouts so i may be trying to ~tweak them as well sometime :))

[afuna]

Done! I also added some lines above/below the tag cloud module, sort of like the line below the entry, I dunno *g* Does that look all right now?

And - thank *you* for writing the layout in the first place :) I'm not very good at writing stuff from scratch, but I'm happy to help convert and polish and tweak and what not!

[sforzinda]

ooh it looks awesome now!!

i'm converting my layouts from LJ to DW, but this time i'll be trying to ~tweak them a bit myself, i feel like it's too much to only post the .css here and ask for you to fix it.

[afuna]

I don't mind at all! (Only, I'm kinda slow, hah, as can be seen by how long it took me to finish prepping Blanket).

Have fun converting your other layouts, too :) I'm excited and looking forward to seeing what else you have!

[ninetydegrees]

Hi Afuna, did you leave the header and footer border color hardcoded on purpose? It seems to me it's a pretty big feature of this layout.

P.S. I'm asking because a theme maker remarked on it as she had to use CSS to color them (http://dreamscapes.dreamwidth.org/19565.html).

[afuna]

Hmm, I can't remember. I think I made them match something else. Module background, maybe?

[afuna]

Ohh, wait, border color, right? The stripe on the left? Nope, I didn't do that on purpose. Please do file a bug so we can get that fixed!

[ninetydegrees]

Done! You probably got or will get an e-mail about http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1824#c5 but I wanted to ask you if we should use/create a property for the day names too or if it wasn't worth the trouble.

[afuna]

Hmmm. I think it would be better if we could use an existing property. Is there any currently in the scheme that we'd be safe using?

[ninetydegrees]

Now that I think about it, I believe it may work better if we change var string month_header_colors = generate_color_css( $*color_page_title, $*color_entry_border, new Color );
to
var string month_header_colors = generate_color_css( $*color_page_text, $*color_entry_border, new Color );

I'll have to do some testing.

[afuna]

Hrrrm. I think, tentatively, I like the look of that (pending your testing, etc).

[ninetydegrees]

:/ page_text or entry_text don't really work. We could go for entry_background hoping people would choose to have enough contrast between the background and the border (this wouldn't work for subtler themes). Thoughts?

[afuna]

Could we change the background, instead so that it uses some color that's a background, not a border?

[ninetydegrees]

Sure. I thought of that actually but it makes the style not look as nice, in my opinion.

[afuna]

*think think think* How about making the color a darker shade of the border, using $*color_entry_border->darker()? Light-on-dark schemes could put in a couple more lines of CSS to use $*color_entry_border->lighter();

[ninetydegrees]

You mean combined with the entry_background color or something else?

[afuna]

Hm, I was thinking keep the current $*entry_border, but have the foreground be $*entry_border->darker(100), or something like that.

[ninetydegrees]

That's an excellent idea! I'm testing it with all the themes we have.

[afuna]

The background color of the module is the same as the sidebar for the moment; need to fix a couple of IE bugs, and then I'll go do the modules again, with your suggestion :)

[yati]

Hello! Just letting you know I'm working on converting Brittle right now. Here's how it looks like right now: http://yati.yati.hack.dreamwidth.net/

I'm not sure what you meant to do with the custom text module -- is it supposed to be under the navigation links, as it is right now?

I had to make some modifications and tweaks, but please let me know if there's anything I can change to make it look the way you want. :) Here's what I did:
* changed the width to % to make it fluid
* changed the fonts to use ems instead of points
* instead of applying "display: none" to the sidebar modules, I pushed them to the bottom; users can disable them on their own if they want to
* upped the text contrast a bit
* added a visited link colour
* ummm some minor changes to the archive page, I think.


I've called the theme "Rust" for now, but let me know if you have something better!

[sforzinda]

oooh the layout looks lovely, i really have nothing to say against it but have a tiny suggestion, what about customising the items in the bottom-sidebar part a bit? i mean they look good now but they seemed kinda out-of-order to me. but well, that's just me so it's okay if you don't customise them, the layout looks absolutely perfect as it is now :)

and rust is a cool name, me likes :D

[yati]

I'm open to suggestions! How would you like to order/customise them? (I can code but am not good at design. Alas.)

I'm glad you liked the name! It was the first thing that came to mind. :D

[yati]

Hello again! I'm done with testing the layout, and it's pretty much ready to be submitted, except you mentioned something about the modules at the bottom and I've no idea what to do with them.

I can still put in the tweaks for those modules if you can let me know how you'd like them to be. (I don't mind making and testing a few more changes, really!)

I had a lot of fun doing this! Thanks for making such a pleasant-looking layout. :)

[sforzinda]

hi! i'm so sorry for the delay on replying but school's been killing me so i tend to forget everything lately :|

for the modules at the bottom, i think changing the font size would be enough, they look smaller than the rest of the layout. other than that, thanks a lot for taking the time to convert the layout, it really is awesome :)

[yati]

No worries! I know how it gets; I only manage to work on this on weekends myself.

That's pretty easy to fix (and no need to vigorously test everything after :D) -- I've adjusted it to be a bit larger.

[momijizukamori]

Hey, I know this is super-old, but I'm trying to get through our styles backlist at long last - sorry it's taken this long! Are you still interested in Patsy and Leftovers becoming system themes, and if so, do you have a more current link for the CSS files? The ones here are redirecting me to a login page, unfortunately.

[sforzinda]

Hello! Sorry for the late reply (and for the inconvenience also), but sure, here is a new link for the CSS files (x).

[momijizukamori]

Not a problem - thank you! I'll add these to my to-do list :)