Tag: livejournal

#mylivejournal #lj18 #happybirthday

I’ve liked the features and layout of LJ’s new default style, Air, for a while now, but I’ve really hated the colors. Last week I started investigating what I could do to alter it to suit my preferences, and I think I’ve gotten it pretty much the way I like (it matches the colors I have set on my friends feed – I call it Autumn Evening.) Take a look at my journal directly (or use this link if you view all journals in your style) and tell me what you think. After a bit more testing I’ve got a few more ideas for some other themes to work on.

If you’re willing to go a step further a try it yourself, that’d be great. Unfortunately only paid and permanent account holders can do this because it requires access to the Developer Area of Journal Customization.

1) Go to Your Styles and scroll to the bottom of the page to create a new style. Enter a name and click Create.
2) Choose Air from the Layout dropdown list and click Change.
3) In the Theme dropdown list choose Other…, enter “99444848” in the LayerID box that shows up, then click Save Changes.
4) You’ll be back to your list of styles, so scroll until you find your new style in the list. Click on the Use button to switch from your current style to this one you’ve just created.

Current issues:
* The profile buttons at the top of the sidebar are currently blue. I’m exploring avenues on how to change them to match the theme, but nothing’s really working yet.
* In the same vein, the arrows for previous and next are a middle shade of grey. Again, I’m exploring a couple ways to get them to match the rest of the theme.
* By creating a new theme layer to hold all the code for this it seems to have automatically turned on the Use Custom Comments pages option. The property that controls that is disabled in the style so there doesn’t seem to be any direct way to control it. During my testing I did accidentally return to default comment pages a couple of times, but I’m not clear on what I did to trigger that.
* Another consequence of creating a theme layer is that the arrow that indicates whether an LJ cut was expanded or collapsed just up and disappeared. I ended up expanding the circle out into a rounded rectangle and putting the words of the cut back in. For some reason though the words aren’t showing up on mobile devices, just on laptops/desktops.
* This is kind of minor, but if you have a Writer’s Block entry, the tail of the speech balloon containing the questions is stuck at white because I cannot find what bit of CSS creates it.
* The navigation bar for the calendar page currently shows all years in-between your first journal entry and today, even if you don’t have any entries during that year. It even shows all of these to users who shouldn’t see that there are any entries. This is a problem with LJ’s calendar function in general, not specifically this style.

Sometime in the last day or two LJ made some code changes that finally broke the old xColibur site scheme. This mostly manifests in comments not loading on non-journal styled entry pages, but some menus appear to be broken as well. People have been writing in to Support asking about this, and have been individually answered, but there hasn’t been a general announcement yet.

Support staff have been replying that LJ is aware of the issue, but given that xColibur was officially deprecated a decade ago there’s no timetable, nor even a guarantee, that the issue will be resolved. They are recommending that people switch to one of the modern site schemes (Horizon, Vertigo, or Lanzelot) in order to be able to read comments again. Switching to the new site design would also fix the issue.

Honestly I think it’s good advice. LJ’s policy over the last three owners has been to not remove old features (until they get too broken and/or unused) but not to fix them either when something breaks. We’ve seen a bit of that over the last year with the removal of some of the very oldest journal layouts and I think it can go either way whether LJ fixes xColibur or removes it entirely.

Have a hacky workaround

Someone just discovered^* the simple way to switch your journal between using the /friends page and the /feed page.

1. Visit the Admin Console.
2. a) Enter set modern_feed off and click Execute return to the /friends page.
   b) Enter set modern_feed on and click Execute to return to the /feed page.
   
3. Visit the LJ homepage, click on the link to your friend page and check that it worked.

That’s it. No muss, no fuss, no need to open a support request.

Special note for users with S1 Journal layouts
If the above instructions didn’t work, go visit the Journal Style page and check to see if you’re using an original S1 journal layout. Apparently there’s a bug right now preventing user with S1 journal layouts from using the original /friends page.
LiveJournal deprecated S1 over a decade ago and while they’ve been pretty good about keeping it working I’ve got a feeling this might be the incident that prompts them to pull the plug. So you can either wait for them to maybe fix the bug, or it might be time to explore some of the newer S2 layouts. If you do switch be aware that there is no longer an option to switch back to your S1 layout.

Other display options that affect seeing the new design
There are a few other options that affect whether or not and where you’ll see the new LiveJournal design. And as a reminder the overall new design, the friends /feed, and the new Air journal layout all match each other visually, but are affected by different options.

1. We’ve already talked about the /feed page up above. The default colors for that match the white, blue, and grey of the new site design but can be altered by clicking on the gear icon on the left side of the feed. For instance,
2. The new site design itself. In the old days we called it a site scheme (Dystopia, xColibur, Vertigo, or Horizon) but now it’s just “the new design.” This is the white, blue, and grey you see on all the site pages on LJ (your profile, post an entry page, memories, the homepage, etc…) There’s currently no way to change these colors so you’re stuck with these default colors.
   a) If you’re using the new design and want to switch back to one of the old site schemes visit Display Settings, check the box at the bottom of the page labeled “Set old design version” and click Save.
   b) If you’re currently using one of the old site schemes and want to switch to the new design just click on the “Switch to new version” link at the top of any site page.
3. The new Air journal layout is now an option for users to select for their journal. All new users now start out with this layout, but older users can choose to switch to it as well. It matches the new design and the /feed page in look and feel and again, the default colors are white, blue, and grey with no way to change them.
4. Mobile devices. There’s a new setting that affects whether users on mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc…) will see your regular journal layout or the new Air layout when viewing your journal directly. By default all personal journals and communities were switched to showing Air to mobile users but there is an option to go back.
   a) To display your chosen journal layout while on mobile devices visit Display Settings and check the box in the middle of the page labeled “Use my journal’s style when viewed on a mobile device” and click Save.
   b) Conversely, to display the new Air while on a mobile device layout uncheck that box and click Save.

   If you opt-out of using Air for mobile devices there’s still another distinction: Basic & Plus journals will only show their chosen styles to themselves while logged in. Paid & Permanent journals will show their chosen styles to all users, logged-in or otherwise.

^* I found it via an entry I saw on the homepage, but unfortunately it was on my iPad I don’t have a way to find it again for credit.

Repost:

Share: