The whole styles thing...
Thursday, May 7th, 2009 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianRegarding the recent miscommunication about styles: I guess the reason that people are so irritable about the whole style system is that it's seemingly broken for no reason, while the rest of the site is mostly as functional as LJ. Obviously, this is open beta, so everyone ought to expect that things are under construction and continuously being improved, but some people don't know that, I guess. However, looks like DW is going to be really generous and allow free users to have advanced styles, so probably people won't be complaining as much about the styles in the future.
Most LJ-code using sites start with a fair amount of layouts available, even if they can't use the proprietary ones. DW is boldly creating a revised style system of its own. However, because of the complexity of the style system, many LJ users have never touched it, so it is difficult to explain to them the potential benefits of the revised style system.
Er... I include myself there. I don't really understand why the new style system is better than the old one, from the end-user perspective (someone who doesn't use Advanced Customization). I probably would understand if I created layouts, but I don't, I'm afraid.
As far as I can figure out, the main innovation is that the sidebar options will be either totally consistent between styles, or at least much more consistent, kind of like Wordpress's widget system. (What would be even cooler would be a drag n'drop interface like WP)
Possibly (though I'm not sure) all layouts will support the same options, so we won't have situations where some layouts support text boxes and sticky posts, yet others don't?
In the sidebar, you can now re-order the elements, whereas before you couldn't do so easily. (I think) This is called the Modules system.
However, how will this work for layouts where there is no sidebar at all, such as A Novel Conundrum? Everything goes in the bottom, I suppose? Hmm.
Most LJ-code using sites start with a fair amount of layouts available, even if they can't use the proprietary ones. DW is boldly creating a revised style system of its own. However, because of the complexity of the style system, many LJ users have never touched it, so it is difficult to explain to them the potential benefits of the revised style system.
Er... I include myself there. I don't really understand why the new style system is better than the old one, from the end-user perspective (someone who doesn't use Advanced Customization). I probably would understand if I created layouts, but I don't, I'm afraid.
As far as I can figure out, the main innovation is that the sidebar options will be either totally consistent between styles, or at least much more consistent, kind of like Wordpress's widget system. (What would be even cooler would be a drag n'drop interface like WP)
Possibly (though I'm not sure) all layouts will support the same options, so we won't have situations where some layouts support text boxes and sticky posts, yet others don't?
In the sidebar, you can now re-order the elements, whereas before you couldn't do so easily. (I think) This is called the Modules system.
However, how will this work for layouts where there is no sidebar at all, such as A Novel Conundrum? Everything goes in the bottom, I suppose? Hmm.
