Wide Lines

[cmshaw]

Wide Lines
This style is built out of lines, not boxes: it uses the entire screen to display entries. The effect can be clean and efficient or sprawling and relaxed -- there are many options for customization available through the standard wizard interface, and even more open to users with a minimum of layer use. Focus is taken by the content of the journal entries and never overwhelmed by an intruding layout.

The layout is based largely on Cascading Style Sheets, with fallbacks for incompatible browsers always provided. Much of the code was written from scratch, with only the comment structure and the calendar drawing heavily on the core functions. An evolving personalized version of this style has been in place on my personal journal for almost a year and can be seen there now (to users not logged in as the style owner, it should appear identical to Wide Lines). An early draft of this layout in S1 was posted to lj_style and reviewed there.

Code
The code for Wide Lines can be seen here.

Edited to add: Updated code can be found here on widelines.

Themes
Clean Breeze
XCalibrated
Dystopic
Austere
Sweet Hugs
Bleeding Edge
Tarot by Candlelight
Gentle Green
Spring Flowers
Autumn Leaves

Preview Links
A preview of my journal or test journal under Wide Lines with the "Clean Breeze" theme applied:
Recent | Friends | Friends with filter applied
Calendar: 2005 | Calendar: January 2005 | Day: November 2nd, 2004
View Comments | View Comments Chronologically | Post Comment

A preview of my journal or my test journal under Wide Lines with the "Tarot by Candlelight" theme applied:
Recent | Friends | Friends with filter applied
Calendar: 2005 | Calendar: January 2005 | Day: November 2nd, 2004
View Comments | View Comments Chronologically | Post Comment

A preview of my journal or my test journal under Wide Lines with the "Dystopic" theme applied:
Recent | Friends | Friends with filter applied
Calendar: 2005 | Calendar: January 2005 | Day: November 2nd, 2004
View Comments | View Comments Chronologically | Post Comment

A preview of my journal or my test journal under Wide Lines with the "XCalibrated" theme applied:
Recent | Friends | Friends with filter applied
Calendar: 2005 | Calendar: January 2005 | Day: November 2nd, 2004
View Comments | View Comments Chronologically | Post Comment

Please note that my journal occasionally contains adult themes, although the entries used here to preview this style are acceptable for all ages. My test journal tigertest is also available for browsing.

Screenshot

My own journal, with Clean Breeze applied


Another screenshot to show what can be done with the wizard customizations (and MS Paint): the entire journal scrolls within a fixed section of the background image


Another screenshot to show what can be done with the wizard customizations (and MS Paint): this one scrolls side-shifted entries over a fixed background; the text width is not fixed, so that at any resizing it fills all of the screen except for the left 200 pixels

Features

• The entire width of the screen is utilized.
• All colors and all text strings are customizable.
• This style displays well in all browsers tested so far, including pre-CSS browsers such as Netscape 4, text browsers such as Lynx, and mobile browsers such as Blazer.
• A hook (Page::lay_print_extra) is provided for paid users to place more widgets on the page.
• Link lists are fully supported.
• Comments may be viewed by thread or by date.
• Placement of header banners and/or background images (including shifting of entries to scroll within a defined area on the background) is supported within the customization wizard.
• Link decoration (underline, strike-through, etc.) is supported within the customization wizard.
• The style provides links to the login page, the recent comments page, the "add friend" page, and the "join community" page as appropriate for the logged-in status of the viewer and type of journal shown.
• The navigation links when viewing the friends page with a filter applied provide skip forward, skip back, show most recent friends filtered, and most recent friends unfiltered.

Features not yet included in this style, but which could easily be added:

• Different backgrounds for the recent entries, friends, and entry pages (and other pages as well, if wished)
• Support for imagemap backgrounds and corresponding suppression of navigation links
• Background image/color selector for LiveJournal's palimg feature
• Cursor selection
• Support for selecting the custom style or the old style for comment pages through the wizard
• Font selection (suggested by livredor)

Other work:

• Sort properties into more clearly described propgroups
• Clean up extra function calls in code
• Make sure all code is commented (including calendar and comment code lifted from the core)
• Add in more CSS classes for extended customizability (suggested by livredor)

Edited on 4/19/2005 to shift information from the comments up into the main entry text.