Experiments in CSS

[trainsinanime]

The problem with any new social media site is setting up a digital identity, and on a site like this, that requires a great deal of graphical things. Icons, obviously, but also the overall design and layout of the blog. The provided default ones are not necessarily all my favorites, so over the coming days, I will probably experiment a bit with various adjustments. To do these adjustments properly, of course, I need some sample content here; something that looks very much like a typical post, so I can check whether what I'm planning actually works. This is that post.

As a result of that, you don't need to read this post. Though if you do, please leave a comment or whatever it is the people here do, so I can check the formatting for them! But really this is just going to be me rambling for a bit because that is more fun than googling for Lorem Ipsum, or copying a post from my tumblr. (This is a test for the styling of links, by the way). Graphics of course also require images, like icons, and I'm not sure I'm in love with dreamwidth's approach to them. Why do I always have to crop an icon when I upload it? These are icons that I've used for decades, and they are the exact size and aspect ratio that I like. I also really wish I could upload my icons as SVG, to retain their quality, but I guess that is too rare a requirement for them to implement. (Or is it? I actually haven't checked. Hang on… nope, doesn't work.) I'm also not sure whether there are Javascript security issues here. Want to find out together?

The other big issue is actual images in the context of the post itself. My initial impression is that the Dreamwidth workflow for that is terrible, so I probably won't use this feature that much, but I guess it's still worth exploring.

Okay, I don't think I'm doing this properly with this image. This is yet another annoyance of Dreamwidth. Others include:

• Having to write HTML manually instead of providing Markdown. Yes, I know there's a rich text editor, but I don't trust these things.

• The name is just stupid. Dreamwidth? I suppose that comes from Bandwidth, but for dreams? Still, I can't help but wonder about Dreamheight and Dreamdepth, and I'm sure I'm far from the only one who has ever made that joke.

  I suppose it's not that terrible, and I've gotten used to Archive Of Our Own, so what can I say.

• What's definitely true is that this site feels very 2004 era, early web 2.0. The tiny fonts everywhere (that's definitely going to change on my blog), the overly sugary and incredibly tiny icons, the way there's a "mood" and "music" section under each post, it all makes me feel like I'm back in my early DeviantArt days.

Of course, none of these things really matter; Fanfiction.net is worse (I do have a presence there but I only ever cross-post things from Ao3 there these days) and still incredibly popular. What matters is the community. Finding out what that's like will be the most important part for me over the next few days and weeks.

Alright, I think that's enough content to test my CSS, isn't it? Maybe a bit more, just to be on the safe side. I have to admit: I hate CSS these days. Oh, sure, I started with web development in the late 1990s, I am familiar with it, but there was a point many, many years ago when I stopped being interested and decided to work on native apps (and these days microcontrollers) instead. It's so finicky, and I'm never super satisfied with the result. So it will probably take me some time to figure out.

If you've made it this far, thank you, and please leave a comment about the nature of styling of comments so I can check the styling of comments!

Comments

Test

[trainsinanime]

Testing

[type_wild]

I made it this far and can only say that Dreamwidht very much is a living fossil and that this is very much intentional.

I never had any issues with using images on DW, but that's probably because I'm used to writing posts in HTML anyway. The main problem is the lack of on-site hosting, which we all did back in 2003 but haven't really since. As for the layout, you can find ready-made ones and just tweak the images and colours.

But man, I feel you about the name.

[trainsinanime]

There is definitely something fun about going back to classic HTML and just styling a website by hand (you can probably tell that I started with a default layout and am now working my way from the bottom down).

The thing about images is that if I just have to host them elsewhere, I can do that, no problem. But there is a sort of built-in image hosting, which does not appear to be linked with anything else, you can just reuse the image URLs it gives you. That feels less than ideal.

[alexseanchai]

don't worry, everyone hates Dreamwidth RTE. and I thought Markdown was an option? it's definitely an option for this comment I'm typing, there's a dropdown

[trainsinanime]

Oh, you're right, there's a Markdown option for comments! Let me just try some bold text. Yeah, seems to work. That's great, thank you!

[silveradept]

Hello and welcome to Dreamwidth!

Markdown is possible for entry creation, but the parser has to be told it's Markdown with a !markdown at the beginning. And, as was mentioned above, you can use it in comments from the dropdown. (Everyone hates the RTE, and there's a lot of work that's going in to making it not suck, but it takes time.)

A lot of the things that are not great about Dreamwidth can be traced to the LiveJournal code that it forked from, to the point that Brad (who founded LiveJournal) is often the answer to why things are the way they are. (Which is also why you have mood and music as options for post metadata.) The image uploading interface isn't great, and people who are really image heavy would probably find themselves fighting the space quota anyway.

mark posted about the name decision, and, well, like so many things, it seems to have been the intersection of opportunity and creativity.

In any case, you're entirely right that there's not been a lot of movement toward turning Dreamwidth into something other than what it is. Some of that is finances (because bandwidth and storage still costs, and Dreamwidth can currently cover its costs if it's mostly text and small graphics), some of that is that people who are here often come/came from LiveJournal and wanted something that was like that, but without the purges that seem to plague other places when the advertisers get annoyed. There's been a lot of work going on to replace some of the oldest and most broken pieces of code with things that are more ept, but that doesn't do a whole lot for creating new user features in the meantime.

All the same, welcome and we hope that you'll find here a nice place to be and to interact.

[trainsinanime]

Thank you for the welcome, and the explanation! It's definitely nice to have a space that's not dependent on ads and app stores like the others out there. I'm still trying to figure out the community, who to follow and so on.

(I did also wonder whether I should turn my custom CSS into a full custom theme, but the documentation for that scared me, so for now I'm keeping it as custom CSS)

[silveradept]

You just missed the snowflake_challenge, but many of the people who participate leave their entries unlocked for people to drop by and say hello or get a window into their journals. If it seems like a good idea, there's a sunshine_challenge that will happen in July that's similar but different.

If you want to keep your ears out for general fandom exchanges, prompt fests, and the like (also very specific ones), fandomcalendar or fandom_on_dw have those. There are plenty of people who want to revive dormant communities, so any help you wanted to give them would be gratefully accepted.

And, there's also fictional_fans, which started as a way of showing new people how the Dreamwidth thing works and became a little bit of a fandom talking place in the meantime.

The theming stuff is kind of scary, but once you have it down and you think that others would like the theme, do publish it. (I don't know off the top of my head which communities are the theme design ones, but I'm sure they exist.)

[trainsinanime]

Thank you, I'll give those communities a look!