Layout: Bannering/Tabula Rasa

[branchandroot]

Theme name/layout: Bannering
Author: branchandroot
Layout info: Layout layer
Image info: Header images public domain or open license from openclipart.org, sxc.hu, and user contributions; specific credits in theme layers.

Themes:
Over the Hills | Preview (default/display theme)
Neon Butterflies | Preview
Travel | Preview
Seaside | Preview
Frosty Night | Preview
Adjustable Gradient | Preview
Adjustable Stripes | Preview
Adjustable Stripes Diagonal | Preview
Wind Power | Preview
Sea Church | Preview
Sea Lions | Preview
Fronds | Preview
Tomatoes | Preview
Finches | Preview
Black Hill | Preview
Stonehenge | Preview

Conversion: the TR code needs to be stripped out of the layout layer. Image urls need to be changed. Extra propgroups need to be subbed to appropriate Style > Colors groups in the layout .pm file (see Funky Circles pm for an example).

Also: I was going to wait until the function for moving nav links between sidebar and header was ironed out, but that's clearly still in process. At the moment, this does it purely by css. If it seems better, in the end, to do it in the html, I suggest that option be cranked into the core layer, the same way the userpic side switching option was.

And many thanks to the image contributors!

Comments

[dancing_serpent]

Stonehenge is my favourite. ♥ Frosty Night doesn't show for me, though.

[branchandroot]

I did like how Stonehenge came out.

*pokes at her styles* Ah, okay, it should work now. Just had to reset that one.

[dancing_serpent]

Oh, very pretty!

[branchandroot]

Thanks! That was one of my first, I found a really good graphic for it. *pleased* Bless the people who put up their old graphics in public domain.

[asenathwaite]

Gorgeous! I especially like Frosty Night.

[branchandroot]

Thanks! I was very glad to find such a good image for a light-on-dark theme.

[laitaine]

I LOVE this. Again, a nice clear layout and a great choice of headers. I found two small problems though.

1) Finches: The colour of the header in changes in the middle of my screen.

2) Fronds: Part of the journal title text is obscured by the background on the left.

I can provide screenshots if needed.

[branchandroot]

If you could make screencaps that would be lovely! I probably just need to adjust the spacing on Fronds, but Finches may need some work with the image itself...

[laitaine]

No problem - they're here: finches | fronds

If it's useful to you, I'm running Chromium on Ubuntu 10.04.

[branchandroot]

Thanks! Okay, can you take a look again? I think I should have the spacing on Fronds reasonably fixed, and I made sure the color profile was embedded in the background for Finches. I hope that does it.

[laitaine]

I'm afraid Finches still looks the same to me, with the colour change.

Fronds looks much better. The text is slightly closer to the top of that gap in the branches than the bottom, so it wouldn't hurt to increase the top margin or padding a fraction so as to make it more vertically centred, but that is just me being a pedant - it's not essential.

[branchandroot]

*frowns* Hmm. I'm not sure what else to do with Finches, then. The blue is a slice from the edge of the bigger picture, it should be the same. I'll look around and see if anyone has any suggestions.

Thanks for letting me know about these.

[laitaine]

I'm just about to head to bed, but if I get a chance tomorrow I can take a look.

[timeasmymeasure]

These are all beautiful!

[branchandroot]

Thanks! A lot of artists on DW contributed photos or art for these.

About sxc.hu's image license:

[ninetydegrees]

Does this apply here?

Always ask permission from the photographer if you want to use the Image

* In website templates that You intend to sell or distribute.

Re: About sxc.hu's image license:

[branchandroot]

*nods* I emailed the artists for permission for the sxc images, for use in journal layouts. Quite some time ago, actually, since I used several of those in layouts first intended for InsaneJournal. I'm fairly sure I mentioned them in my initial user contribution agreement, though I'm not one hundred percent positive after this long.

Re: About sxc.hu's image license:

[ninetydegrees]

Oh, perfect then, thank you. Well, nobody but Denise has access to CLA files so I had to ask since I'm not sure you intend to patch these.

Re: About sxc.hu's image license:

[branchandroot]

No problem. *rueful* Term just started for us, so I doubt I'll be doing patching anytime soon, yeah.

Redistribution?

[ninetydegrees]

I'm trying to sort which themes go to dw-free and which ones go to dw-free and I'm unsure about several themes:

-- Do images you've obtained from Dreamwidth users and other personal websites can be redistributed? There are no licensing terms so I assume you've got a written permission/CLA from them too. Yes?

-- Gradient themes: you don't mention where the images come from. Are they yours?

-- Seaside, Fronds, Tomatoes, Finches: your credit comment somewhat contradicts what you've put into layout_resources.

-- Stonehenge: the URL doesn't exist.

Re: Redistribution?

[branchandroot]

In order:

--Yes, I told all my DW contributers to send a CLA to Denise, and they all said they had.

--Yes, the Gradient images were made by me.

--Whoops! That was an artifact of copy and pasting too fast. Those are now fixed.

--It exists, it just looks like she has a redirect to a new root. I edited the theme to reflect that, it should be good to go.

Re: Redistribution?

[ninetydegrees]

Wow! Fast answer! :)

Thanks a lot. I'll e-mail Denise to confirm she got everything.

[cesy]

Do you have a link to the bugzilla for this, or do you know if it's been patched and/or committed yet?

[ninetydegrees]

http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2996

Can't be patched yet.

For info, you can search for all bugs with the 'why-styles' keyword in Advanced Search.

Edit: also we use tags in this community to indicated the status of the style:
:files/:not filed
:claimed/:unclaimed
:patched
:committed

I should have mentioned that first. :)

[glymr]

Oh oh oh! I love these! This is what I'm talking about, themes that have *personality*. These are EXACTLY what DW needs more of. I've been browsing through themes all morning, and they're all just different colored boxes to me now. So the butterflies one jumped right out at me! It's gorgeous! And 'Frosty Night', so beautifully mysterious. They're all wonderful! ^_^ People are going to just *love* these so much! I can't wait until they go live!!!

ETA: Would it be rude/bad/wrong to take the code and stick one of these on my own journal before they officially go live? ^^;

[branchandroot]

Please feel free to use them before they go live!

This one is made so that it's easy to use your own banner images, too, even a two-layer image, so I'm hoping this will let users plug in any snazzy stuff they have.

[glymr]

Thank you so much!

I have to tell you, I think that this will revolutionize layouts on DW. I started experimenting with the second header background layer today and was eventually able to get the effect I wanted on my own journal. I will freely admit that I am usually graphic-design-impaired, but I'm really pleased with how it came out. Thank you again for making this available!

[branchandroot]

That's exactly what I was hoping for; I'm so glad to hear it works!

And snazzy butterflies, too.

[branchandroot]

So, what's going on with this layout? If there are still CLAs missing, can it be released without those particular themes? I have to say, I'm kind of reluctant to release more layouts in the comm or design anything else for this one while it's languishing. This was the one that got the best responses from testers and drive-bys.

[fu]

One sec -- let me follow up (I'm sorry for taking so long!)

[branchandroot]

No prob!

[denise]

It was totally my fault -- the email with the CLA check got misplaced in my inbox. I am tremendously sorry, and I'm going to do it right now!

[branchandroot]

Well, not like you've been insanely busy or crawling out of the pit of hell or anything. *wry* As long as I know it's moving, I'm good!

[denise]

*g* And they all check out, which I am emailing to the appropriate parties, with one question: Adjustable Gradient/Adjustable Stripes/Adjustable Stripes Diagonal have no artist credit in the layout layers, so I'm assuming you made the images?

(Oh, and I should add: as clarified earlier, two (or possibly three, I already sent the email and don't remember) have to go to dw-nonfree, because we have permission to use them but not redistribute them. In general, anything from openclipart can go to dw-free while anything from sxc.hu has to go to dw-nonfree.)

[branchandroot]

Ah, yes! Sorry, I thought that was noted down already. Those are mine, and are free to public domain. I always thought it was kind of silly to try to assert copyright on /stripes/.

[branchandroot]

*nodnod* Yeah, I'm trying to stay away from sxc these days because of the redistribution thing. But I'd gotten permission from those artists to use things in a web template a while back, so I figured I should throw them in too!

[denise]

*giggle* You'd be surprised what people try to assert copyright on!

Everything's good to go, then. I'm so damn sorry it's taken this long.

[denise]

Oh totally! They are awesome. :)

[skieswideopen]

These are beautiful!

[momijizukamori]

I'm going to start working on a patch for this - is it alright if I clean up some of the dw-free images? Black Hill has a bit of a line in it, and I think I can smooth out the vector effect in Stonehenge some.

[branchandroot]

Yeah, I think that would be okay. I know I got permission to modify Black Hill. I'm less positive about Stonehenge, but all the artists seemed okay with the idea of me (or another volunteer) cleaning up the edges.

[momijizukamori]

Alright! It's been pretty small changes anyway - touching up a few joins, and smoothing Stonehenge out a little (and fixing the color profile problem that was making it not match the background for some people!). If you want to see, the layouts are all on my Hack right now. Still trying to fuss out the join in Frosty Night.

[branchandroot]

Sweet! Especially the bloody color profile, the artist and I never did nail down that one and it frustrated me to no end.

I looked over all the previews, and they are lovely! In Seaside, though, it looks like the second picture, the blue wave, is missing? Did it just not get added, or did I mess up the background color in that header?

I don't see a join in Frosty Night, on my monitor; could that one be a color profile issue also? The backgrounds came from the same image, so you'd think not, but that issue is always a stinker.

[momijizukamori]

Oh bah, I thought I fixed the problem with Seaside. That was me misnaming an image file, your theme is fine. With Frosty Nights, I don't think it's a color profile issue, there's just some fuzzing right where the tile joins on one side - I think from the work to make it continuous. Not a huge thing, but for some reason I'm good at spotting stuff like that and then they drive me crazy *g*