Another day, another layout

[jadesfire]

I'm much, much, much happier with this one. My gerbera no longer looks like the wrong colour and the column width makes everything much easier to read. I still don't know if I'll stick with it, but I'm liking it more at the moment.

Plus brown has always been a better colour on me than grey ;)

ETA: In the past 24 hours I have also moved to Firefox 3.5 and downloaded the Chromium skin (so much quicker, so much nicer), changed my Dreamwidth layout twice (I'm sticking with pink until I find a brown one that I like) and Gmail have moved the labels menu. That's possibly enough rearranging of the mental furniture for now. I'm having trouble finding things...

Comments

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, much warmer than the last one, but still nice and clean :-)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*nods* that's what I wanted. I was finding the lack of contrast hard on my eyes, especially on my friends page.

I'm still not 100% sure about this one, but it's easier to tweak than a custom CSS theme!

Thanks :)

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

I like this! pretty, and more contrast and wider text area :) I always have such a hard time changing everything, though my latest change (adding the tab kit addon to firefox) is so happy-making that I can put up with the learning curve :D

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*nods* It kind of does away with everything I didn't like about the other one, while keeping the bits I did. Plus because it's an LJ layout, I can play with it more without screwing with someone's CSS.

Ooh, what's the tab kit? *goes to investigate* I love add-ons...

[rivers-bend.livejournal.com]

the best BEST thing about tab kit is the ability to drag and drop tabs. so if I open something from gmail that "belongs" in my LJ set, I just drag it on over there. and I love how I can see all my tabs at once, and how it color codes them. But the dragging and dropping is still my favorite :D

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Ah, I tried the different colours thing with tabs, but couldn't get on with it. And one of the things I love about this Chromium theme is that it lets me do the cool tab-grabbing thing that Chrome does - you can pull a tab 'out' and it'll open it its own window. It's very cool!

What would we do without our widgets, eh? ;)

[blackmare-9.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking of changing my journal style too.

I recently discovered I have the same LJ style as another fanficcer whose works and attitude are ... generally not to my taste. And I'm kind of tired of the look of it anyway, particularly the narrow format which squeezes comments into a tiny vertical tower as a thread progresses.

Where are you finding all these alternatives? They don't look like standard LJ styles to me.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

This is an 'Expressive' theme, which are generally prettier and shinier than average. If you go to your profile, then from the 'Journal' drop-down menu choose 'select journal style'. Under "select a new theme", choose "all" and you can see everything that's available to you. Some of them like 'Flexible Squares' let you do as much customising as you want (that's what I used to use). Some, like this one, are a little more rigid. There's lots to play with!

Enjoy :D

[blackmare-9.livejournal.com]

But, see, that's the thing. I have no idea how to customize a journal theme.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I can see how that would be a problem.

Once you've chosen a style of journal that you like, scroll down to the bottom of the page. For most styles, you can choose what you want in the way of columns - for this one, I could have a column on the left, one on the right, one on either side or two on the right. Then look to the right and there's a button that says "customize selected theme"

What you get then are tabs down the left hand side of the screen, and options in the middle. Depending on the style you've chosen, you'll get different tabs. The list below is for mine and I *think* is the most extensive.

The top tab is for the basics of what your journal looks like - mood theme, whether you want userpics to show up or not, that kind of thing. Everything's labelled.

The next tab is 'text'. You know how the reply button on Perspi's journal says "leave a track"? This is the screen she used to type that in. You can have the text saying anything you want.

Then you've got the 'sidebar' tab. Here's where you can choose what you want to show in your sidebar. I like having custom text (my Groucho Marx quote) and my link list. I don't like having my tags because they're such a mess. This is the screen I use to choose those options

I have a 'misc' tab that doesn't have anything on it, then there's a 'links list' tab, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

The one thing I *know* is missing here is a 'colours' tab. For layouts like Bloggish and Flexible Squares, you can set all the colours of everything yourself. Use an hexadecimal code list (google for it, but there's a good one here (http://www.immigration-usa.com/html_colors.html) - they're codes for mixtures of red, green and blue, so there's potentially hundreds of them. If I don't like the exact shade, I tend to tweak the numbers until I do) and just keep playing with colours until you find the ones you like. It tells you which elements you're changing and is one of those things that's easier to do than explain!

There'll also be a 'custom CSS' tab, which is for people using their own style sheets. If you want to insert your own header, you also do that here, and I can give you instructions on that if you want them :)

Does that help?

[mad-jaks.livejournal.com]

Honey, just so you know? This scheme is the one I cut my teeth on with customisations, Expressive is fun to play with.

Provides handy linkity:
http://community.livejournal.com/s2expressive/

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Hee, it's fun if you have a clue what you're doing with CSS! I can normally interpret it once I see it, but actually doing it is a little beyond me.

If I'm feeling brave, I shall have a look, though :D Thanks!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I like this one much better than the last, I can actually figure out and follow the comments and which goes after which.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*nods* It just has a roomier feel somehow, I think :)

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

I like this layout. Nicely balanced and easier to read.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Me too :) It's funny how even the really pretty ones can be not quite right, isn't it?

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

Heee! There are layouts where, when I click on the comment page, I can't even read what I'm typing in the comment box.

[mad-jaks.livejournal.com]

Oh did I miss one?

I used to run this one, only with plain background instead of the tiled image. It's like meeting an old friend :D

I had been meaning to make a post asking if there was a way to sort my googlemail labels out (maybe into folders?) and then viola! they gave me a way to hide them instead. Not quite the same thing but it will do (I have a LOT of labels ;-))

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Heh, yup, I tried out a grey one last night that didn't quite work. I need the contrast to be able to distinguish things easily, and I didn't like not being able to customise the little details.

I like the wallpaper - it would make a nice dress fabric :)

Hee! I'm as inconsistent about labelling as I am about tagging, so maybe the new way of doing things will help me out!

[mad-jaks.livejournal.com]

The wallpaper 'flowers' remind me of the local High School's summer uniform only that is green instad of brown.

When I first joined googlemail I thought their labelling system was a bit belt and braces. But I pretty soon found out that it meant I could group all the comments, and replies to comments, for one fic together, which is useful, so I have a whole raft of labels that are 'titles'. I think being able to drag a (current) label FROM the sidebar TO the fic is going to be alot quicker than using the drop down menu at the top as mine seems to work with a really delayed action (possibly because I have SO many tags).

[perspi.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I like this one!

I ended up changing my layout again, too. Do you like it?

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I love the colours! They match your 'friends only' banner really nicely :)

I swear, I could choose a new layout every day, there are so many pretty ones!

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, purdy. I think this one suits you better.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*grin* me too! Thanks :)