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CSS for subscribers is finally here!! Your local neighbourhood zilla is here to give a few pointers to the novice CSSers who want to give their journals a make over with a few pointers and a list of handy resources.
As a general rule it is better to keep things simple, not just if you are a beginner. Remember the following points when you design your page:
1. Mock it up Try your design in Photoshop first (or which ever app you have) that way you can play with colours and styles without needing to refresh your journal too much.
2. Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should... try to avoid making things like the text size too small. The current journal style works well, so just start simply by changing colours.
3. Contrast is good. Making the colours of your text and links the same, or very close is bad m'kay. Make it easy for people to differentiate between things. Also, making your journal text too dark on a black background or too light on a bright background can be tiring on the eyes of the reader, resulting in them just not reading your journal!
4. Complexity-schmexity Complex backgrounds are all very well, but if they interfere with the journal text then again like point 3, you have lost your reader. Plain colours or simple gradients are fine. Remember that the text is the most important part!
5. K.I.S.S - Keep it simply sexy! You are not reinventing the wheel here, there is no point in trying to be too clever at first. The journal CSS is limited anyway so likely as not you will find you cannot do the complex overlays you are trying for.
6. It's not a competition. The initial flurry of activity over this will generate some friendly competition as people try to push boundaries. This is all well and good, but leave this to the 1337 h4x0r5 and try and do a journal which reflects your personality and style more. The journal is about you and a good journal design will help to enhance that. (unless you are me and have wierd freaky fingers and stuff and everyone thinks you are a wierdo)
For those of you who want to have a crack at it, I've collated a list of some of the more usefull articles and features floating around so you don't have to go searching.
journal stylesheet generator - by tobyf
This is the ultimate one stop shop for your journal. A great template generator for anyone that needs something simple and doesn't really want to learn the complexities of CSS.
Basic Journal Template by quenjamin
Not-So-Basic Journal Template by quenjamin
Both do what they say on the tin
dA v4 template by zacthetoad - A neat little template to make your journal look like Version 4 of dA. How very retro...
Journal Structure: a reference by nichtgraveyet - A great visual reference of what the different classes represent on the page. Essential if you are new to CSS.
The BasiCSS by zikes - A good starting point for those that want simplicity.
CSS Rundown + Template by NyssaDuck - contains a tutorial to help you through the basics and on to more complex stuff.
For those that don't want to have to struggle, why not try entering the following competition:
Get Yourself a CSS Journal - Contest
being run by duhcoolies - head over to his journal to see more info.
As a general rule it is better to keep things simple, not just if you are a beginner. Remember the following points when you design your page:
1. Mock it up Try your design in Photoshop first (or which ever app you have) that way you can play with colours and styles without needing to refresh your journal too much.
2. Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should... try to avoid making things like the text size too small. The current journal style works well, so just start simply by changing colours.
3. Contrast is good. Making the colours of your text and links the same, or very close is bad m'kay. Make it easy for people to differentiate between things. Also, making your journal text too dark on a black background or too light on a bright background can be tiring on the eyes of the reader, resulting in them just not reading your journal!
4. Complexity-schmexity Complex backgrounds are all very well, but if they interfere with the journal text then again like point 3, you have lost your reader. Plain colours or simple gradients are fine. Remember that the text is the most important part!
5. K.I.S.S - Keep it simply sexy! You are not reinventing the wheel here, there is no point in trying to be too clever at first. The journal CSS is limited anyway so likely as not you will find you cannot do the complex overlays you are trying for.
6. It's not a competition. The initial flurry of activity over this will generate some friendly competition as people try to push boundaries. This is all well and good, but leave this to the 1337 h4x0r5 and try and do a journal which reflects your personality and style more. The journal is about you and a good journal design will help to enhance that. (unless you are me and have wierd freaky fingers and stuff and everyone thinks you are a wierdo)
For those of you who want to have a crack at it, I've collated a list of some of the more usefull articles and features floating around so you don't have to go searching.
journal stylesheet generator - by tobyf
This is the ultimate one stop shop for your journal. A great template generator for anyone that needs something simple and doesn't really want to learn the complexities of CSS.
Basic Journal Template by quenjamin
Not-So-Basic Journal Template by quenjamin
Both do what they say on the tin
dA v4 template by zacthetoad - A neat little template to make your journal look like Version 4 of dA. How very retro...
Journal Structure: a reference by nichtgraveyet - A great visual reference of what the different classes represent on the page. Essential if you are new to CSS.
The BasiCSS by zikes - A good starting point for those that want simplicity.
CSS Rundown + Template by NyssaDuck - contains a tutorial to help you through the basics and on to more complex stuff.
For those that don't want to have to struggle, why not try entering the following competition:
Get Yourself a CSS Journal - Contest
being run by duhcoolies - head over to his journal to see more info.
New stuff?
For those curious as to what I've been up to in the past couple of years outside of working on DA, you can go check out one of music projects - Outrun The Day - here on Spotify: It's a musical "stream of consciousness" project where I just dump out all the stuff coming out of my fingers when I practice. Which is neat for me because there's a lot of different stuff there, but perhaps not great for the listener because it can be pretty divergent at times. Anyhoo, that's that, for what it's worth. How you doin' ?
...and 5 years goes by
Even for me this is a new low. It's been five years since I last posted a journal and I only just realised. In my head I keep thinking "oh, it's ok, it's only been a few months, maybe 18 at the most" and yet here we are Five. Freakin'. Years. Later. What's worse is that I'm not sure a) I have anything worthwhile to talk about (other than my tardy journal posting nature) or b) anyone who watches me is still active/alive/cares. So let's do a little update shall we? Stuff happened. Mostly it was good. Yup, that's covering it. In all honesty though part of the reason for lack of anything is because I don't feel like I have anything constructive to say here, I don't have time for art, or really a need to make art in the same way I did a few years ago. Every now and then I have the itch to be creative that I scratch in various ways (mostly playing guitar, man that hobby got expensive really quickly... it's an addiction I tell you!! I should probably just write a journal on what I'm
Star Wars The Force Awakens (no spoilers)
I went to a midnight screening of SW:TFA last night.
So does it live up to the hype? Was it better than the prequels? Is it a fitting continuation of the original films? Should you go see it? Am I really tired?
Yes. Omg yes. Totally yes. Absolutely yes. Yes.
Ignoring a few tiny things which made me go "really?", this is a Star Wars film through and through. Absolutely everything is on point, it runs beat perfect and scratches that itch the prequels never did. It makes it feel like the prequels were just a bad dream. And boy is that a good thing.
The lighting, the shot setup, the set pieces, everything will remind you of the original trilo
BETA Watch 2.0 Notes
We just released a BETA preview of the new Watch. Go check out the launch article. There's a host of info there, you can try it out and watch videos of all the new features.
I don't normally comment on any feature release directly in my journals. I prefer to keep them to personal updates, not work related ones. But I'm going to break that habit and give some comments and feedback on this launch. Why? Because whilst I like to jump straight into launch articles and comment directly on people's feedback, it is also super time consuming. As part of this process I see a lot of very similar comments. Some really awesome (both positive and construc
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If you are still active on DeviantArt, maybe you should look into Spark, a CSS library I am working on.
Maybe you could even add it to this Journal's list ov resources.
I couldn't find many CSS, in the sense ov Cascading Style Sheets, related posts on here, so I thought this might be a nice place to mention it.
In short: Spark is a lightweight, easy-to-use CSS library that lets you focus more on the HTML than the CSS.