seeking an LJ style

[cellio]

Edit: I think I've got something adequate now. The indentation of comments in threads isn't quite as clear as I'd like, but it'll do. It's the price I have to pay for a legible font. Thanks everyone! Suggestions for ways to improve this are still welcome, but it's not as urgent as it was. (This wasn't how I wanted to spend my evening. Thanks LJ...) End edit.

Thanks for all the comments on the previous entry. I've read them and tried the suggested changes and for some reason I can't view my journal in other styles using the standard URL settings. Bizarre. Also, I tried posting what follows by email and it didn't show up; if it does later, please ignore it.

I chose the style for my journal and reading page because it has two important properties. First, it maximizes the space spent on actual content, omitting stuff like sidebar links, calendars, indented text with outdented userpics, and so on. I don't care about that and I don't want to give up the real-estate. Second, it isolates individual entries, so one humongous picture or ultra-long link doesn't hose the entire page, only that entry on it. (I think the relevant implementation detail here is the use of tables. Not sure.) Anyway, it actually took some digging to accomplish those two simple goals, many years ago; most of the styles available at the time I did this were "artistic" and IMO unusable.

That style's handling of individual-entry pages is poor. It doesn't show nesting for comments (essential!), and if I recall correctly it doesn't show userpics (also pretty important). So while I use a custom style for my journal, I've checked the "use the site default" option for individual entries to get around those problems. That doesn't give me the colors I want, but it'll do.

Now that style is broken. :-(

So far as I'm aware, I cannot set one style for journal/reading pages and another one for individual entries. So if the site default no longer works I need a single style that works everywhere. There may well now be such a style; it'll take many hours crawling through the gazillions of LJ styles to try to find out.

Does anybody happen to know a style that meets all of the following requirements?

For journal and reading pages:

• Uses most of the browser width for entry content (no sidebars/multi-column layouts).
• Prevents one wide entry from messing up the whole page.
• Shows poster userpics.
• Has, or can be configured with, a reasonable font size and face. My current style is fine.
• Lets me change colors (I think they all do?).

For individual-entry pages:

• Has, or can be configured with, a reasonable font size and face. The old site default is fine.
• Threads comments.
• Shows poster and commenter userpics.
• Makes all the functionality you'd expect (like editing comments) available.

I don't care about S1 versus S2; I just want something that works, ideally without spending a bazillion hours learning the LJ style system and hacking something to fit. Any ideas?

Many thanks!

Comments

[devreux.livejournal.com]

I have been using, since I started with LJ, the Gradient Strip theme.

http://www.livejournal.com/customize/?layoutid=5252844

I think that it might suit your needs - it has no sidebars, and offers a "Width of entries as a percentage of page width" which can be set as high as 85%. The colors are generally customizable, as is the font size and face. Has threaded comments, shows userpics, and seems to still have all the functionality it's always had. (Comments can be edited unless they've been replied to, at which point there is no editing other than outright deletion, but I seem to recall it may always have been that way.)

I don't *think* that big pictures or other inconvenient content screws up the whole page, just the affected entry, although I'm not 100% certain on that.

It's not a fancy theme, but I've liked it because it was so straightforward. Maybe not elegant or slick, but largely uncluttered.

[devreux.livejournal.com]

Wait, are you already using Gradient Strip? Sorry, I was messing around with some of my own settings earlier and at one point had LJ imposing my style on everyone's journal, so I might've been thrown for a loop there.

What has broken for your style? I think that, for me, it's still doing the things it used to do ...

[cellio]

The comment threading on the individual-entry pages isn't as clear as the (old) site default with the alternating lighter/darker blue bars (and maybe a few more pixels of indent), but the last time I applied Gradient Strip to individual entries it didn't do threading at all, so this is a big improvement.

[devreux.livejournal.com]

Aha. Yeah, the threading on Gradient Strip is fairly subtle compared to the old default alternating background colors, but it's not terrible. And I think it's certainly better than the *new* default crap ...

[cellio]

Thank you! Gradient strip was what I was using; way back in the day it didn't work for individual entries, but now it seems to. I just knocked down and rebuilt a style (I thought I had saved everything from the original but was wrong; fortunately I had exemplars to look at). I think this will work well, and its font sizes don't suck. :-)

[devreux.livejournal.com]

I think that it was mentioned earlier by someone else, but if the new site default really doesn't work for you, there's a setting in My Account Settings: Display for "Comment Pages" where you can toggle "View comment pages from my Friends page in my own style." This will force your own journal style onto other journals.
I find it a little confusing to do so (mostly due to the big buttons at the top now linking to that individual's friends page instead of my own friends page, &c) but if the interface is that much superior you may find it worthwhile.
It's only really an issue when you want to comment on/read the individual entries of a journal that uses the site default style instead of having a specified style of its own. Among journals you read, I don't know what percentage of them are site-default-style ... this is definitely a case of "your mileage may vary."

[devreux.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm nor sure (without extensive additional research) but it seems like some otherwise-defined journal styles use site-default *commenting* styles, and others have their own defined commenting styles.

I'm not digging the new site-default commenting style at all, but I do find it disorienting to show every comments page in my own style -- I'm used to different persons' journals having different appearances, and making them all look like *my* journal would take some getting used to. I'll have to see how much I really hate the new site default myself.

[cellio]

I previously had that "use my style for individual entries" turned off, so I saw my style for my journal and friends page and the site default for all entry pages. The colors on the site default were kind of harsh, but the comments were easy to read and that was ok. Now I've flipped that switch so I'm forcing my style onto the entry pages too, in order to bypass the hideous site default, but it'll take some getting used to because of the differences in how threading shows.

I was also using the "force my style onto other journals" option (there are some lovely ones out there but also some I find too hard to read), so the effect of that was that I saw the site default for all entry pages, mine and others. Nice and uniform. I think I'd find it too hard to use a different style/interface for every journal I wanted to post a comment in. Obviously your mileage varied. :-)

Still this is going to take some adjustment...