dreamscapes

(Version 5 or so! :)

What kinds of entries belong in dreamscapes?

S2 or CSS layers/stylesheets, finished or unfinished, that you'd like to be turned into official styles and themes. BTW color themes do count as submissions and we're always happy to have more! See The Quick and Dirty Guide to Creating Color Themes if you don't know how to create one already.

Entries related to making official styles and themes (requests for help with a layer, calls for collaboration, sharing resources, tutorials, or sharing common issues/useful tips,...)

Posting is open to everyone; you do not need to be a member of the community to submit an entry.

If you've made something but don't want to have it turned official

dreamwidthlayouts is the place you want to post it to. Requests for help with an official style should go to Support or

style_system.

What do I need to do when submitting a style or theme?

( Read more... )

ninetydegrees

Here are a few things you can do to help developers patching themes. If you have the time and energy to do any of them, please consider it. Otherwise, don't worry, 'k?

-- Alphabetizing themes when your submit them seems like a tiny detail but actually makes editing our giant spreadsheet (currently at over 1,000 lines) ten times easier.

-- Keeping code lines alphabetized and removing any empty ones such as set blahblahblah = ""; makes patching much easier and faster.

-- Making sure you have set color_page_text as black may not be the default for everybody.

-- Keeping the # symbol before any color code. This one is pretty unexpected and very easy to miss so pretty please?

-- Using #000 for black and #fff for white instead of the full hexadecimal code. This works for #333, #666, etc.

-- Setting apart code lines which aren't color settings or things which won't end up in the theme such as module settings is very helpful too.

-- Sorting colors into categories -- page, header & footer / entry and comment / module -- would be most helpful, even if it's just by adding blank lines between section.
Besides testing, reformatting themes to sort settings into categories and adding proper headers is what takes patchers most time.
Here's a good example of what a color-only theme look like and here's another one with one with fonts, images and custom CSS.

Also, we've had about 200 new submissions since August. What have you been eating?! *is stunned*

ninetydegrees

One of the most frequent issues in styles is the use of 'unreliable' color combinations. I explain. When there is no property for the element you want to color, you often use another existing property as DW asks you not to hardcode any color. And it's good and it works... for *your* themes. Unfortunately, further down the road, someone will make a darker theme, a lighter theme, or use a background color where you didn't and that's where text becomes unreadable because the text color is set to page_text and the background color is set to entry_background and, while page_text always works on page_background, it doesn't on anything else. See? Fail–safe property combo vs not-really-fail-safe property combo.

I'm not pointing fingers here. If I did I would point one at myself because I've done that. Funky Circles used to have some silly combos like entry_border over header_background or some other nonsense and I hadn't realized how bad it was till I tried to make some new themes.

Of course, it's something patchers should pay attention to as well but remember that you know your style best and two brains are often better than one. :) So if you assign a color to something there is no property for and you have to set it to another existing property please try to mention it in your entry so that the patcher can see if new properties need to be created.

You can also create new properties yourself in your layout layer using this:

propgroup colors_child {
    property Color new_property_name { des = "Description of what this color is for."; }
    property Color other_property_name { des = "Description of what this other color is for."; }
}

Theme designers, you can help too. If you notice something which is not working or make theming hard please mention it so that a dev can investigate.

And a reminder that all existing color properties can be found at http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/advanced/layersource?id=550&fmt=html starting at 'Journal style - basic colors'.

Finally, keep on rocking. <3

ninetydegrees

Current Mood: productive

Last updated: July 26, 2013.

Dreamwidth makes great effort toward providing the same options in all of its styles but it can be hard for designers and developers to keep track of updates and integrate all options into the designs. I hope listing current required standards will make it easier for everybody.

All styles should:

-- Have no hardcoded font faces. (bug #2629, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Have no hardcoded font sizes for major elements (see existing options). (no specific bug, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Have no hardcoded colors. (several bugs, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Have no CSS resets which would prevent the correct display of HTML elements users might include in their posts. (bug 4045, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Support the one-column display mode. (bug #1798, IN PROGRESS) *

-- Support left and right sidebar placement if a multi-column mode is available. (several bugs, bug #3185, IN PROGRESS) *

-- Support all Tabula Rasa presentation options. (several bugs, bug #3775, IN PROGRESS) *

-- Support all Tabula Rasa color options. (bug #3190, IN PROGRESS) *

-- Support all Tabula Rasa font options. (bug #2195, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Support all Tabula Rasa image options. (several bugs, bug #3052, IN PROGRESS) *

-- Support the placement of any module in all available positions or restrict the positions certain modules can be in. (several bugs, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Make sure header modules, if there are any, wrap correctly when screen size is reduced. (several bugs, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Have a 'Back to Top' link at the bottom of every page. (bug #3472, IMPLEMENTED)

-- Have at least one light on dark theme for each style. (unofficial, IMPLEMENTED)

* Not true of all styles yet but style designers should keep this in mind for future styles.

afuna

Just discovered something that can make testers' lives easier. Usually, to be able to preview a style on your journal, you need to create a new style in advanced customization with an "Other" theme id, and then append that style id in the URL (?s2id=...).

However! If the layer is public, and you have been provided the theme id (for example, I am using the strata theme from this dreamscapes entry), you can set up a preview by simply adding the theme id to the URL:

http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/preview_redirect?themeid=77090

That will create a "preview style" for you, and redirect you to a URL like this:

http://afuna.dreamwidth.org/?s2id=472

You can then take that "?s2id=472" and append it to the URLs of the different views, in the same way as if you had set up the style manually :-) Same result, just less buttons.

(I think that if you redo the trick with another theme id, you'll get the same "s2id=472", but now you'll see a different style)

So, theme authors, please add the following line to your theme layer:

layerinfo is_public = 1;

Thanks!