New feature: style layer gallery

[swaldman]

Title:
New feature: style layer gallery

Area:
Styles

Summary:
It would be very nifty to have a "gallery" of not full styles/layouts, but little "snippet" layers that tweak one feature.

Description:
DW has a huge amount of customizability thanks to the Styles system. However, this is inaccessible to most as they (we!) do not have the technical knowhow to write style layers. Even those who do know what they're doing probably reinvent the wheel from time to time.

I suggest a gallery of "snippet" layers that modify or tweak one specific thing. Users can submit layers (whether directly or via developers in the same way as themes, I'm not sure) and other users can apply them to their journals.

This approach would allow a great deal of customization of how things are displayed for those who want it - even non-technical users who can't write their own S2 - without cluttering the UI with endless choices and tickboxes.

From a quick look through recent dw_suggestions, here are examples of recent suggestions that I think would be nicely implemented as little layers of this sort:
http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/1383840.html
http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/1383840.html?thread=4348320#cmt4348320
http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/1378835.html

Possible drawbacks:
- People breaking their journals by applying poorly-coded layers
- Layers that conflict
- Other interaction problems, probably
- Difficulties for Support from all of the above
- Might increase pressure on the maximum number of layers that people can use
- If there is some screening / manual adding of snippets, then time of people who do this
- Probably other stuff ;-)

It'd be a major enhancement, so would have Impacts... I don't pretend to be able to forsee them all :-)

Poll #11812 New feature: style layer gallery

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (21.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.4%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
14 (33.3%)

(I have no opinion)
17 (40.5%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.4%)

Comments

[melannen]

I've bounced off the style system several times, so I'm still not sure of how far its powers extend, so bear with me. It sounds like this could work kind of the way people use, say, widgets on Tumblr - a library of fairly complicated customizations that people could install one at a time, if they wanted to change the way their journal functions?

I have mixed feelings - on the one hand it could be really cool. On the other hand, though, one thing that can happen with sites like Tumblr is they get dependent on the customizations, so all power users forget what the site is like without a dozen extra widgets and don't agitate for change, and the result is that the site becomes increasingly unusable for new users and non-members.

(see also: my feelings on killfiles. :P)

[zvi]

um, actually. could you expand on your feelings on killfiles, so we.can better understand your feelings on this.

[melannen]

Okay, um, assuming you're not being sarcastic, because I am failing to read your tone accurately (if you are being sarcastic, ignore the below):

If all the regulars killfile the trolls, the regulars don't see the trolls. Thus, there is no motivation (or knowledge) on their part to keep the trolls out. Thus, when new people come into the forum, they see a place that is troll-infested and leave, without ever bothering to learn how to set up a killfile.

This doesn't happen to places that are heavily modded, because the mods handle the trolls, but I saw it happen to a several forums in the last days of Usenet (and I've seen it happen in an analog way in RL groups where the regulars have learned to just avoid the unpleasant people, so the unpleasant people drive off all the new members instead.) DW places vary in their modding level, but quite a few of them depend at least partly on the members taking a role in enforcing their norms, and I suspect the places where killfiles got most extensively used would be the lightly-modded places where the problem would be most likely to develop.

I know the DW management is highly in favor of killfiles, though, and I know there are also very good accessibility-ish reasons to get them, so I am not trying to talk you out of it, I'll just to learn to deal with it.

But the same thing can happen in any website where a large majority of the power users are heavily using customization for basic usability/accessibility/social features, where the response to "we need to fix this" is always, "just install this customization". DW Dev is actually very good at keeping a weather eye on what logged-out users see, but I've seen that sort of thing happen repeatedly, so I worry. What often results is a site where you have to be willing to invest a lot of time on learning how to customize before you can even figure out why the site is worth investing time in. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with a social site that consists entirely of the same power users talking to each other, it's just not my preference.

[zvi]

No, I wasn't being sarcastic, I've just never heard why you don't like killfiles before, so incorporating those arguments by reference didn't tell me anything, and I assumed that was true for other people reading this discussion.

[cesy]

Initially I liked the idea, but this convinced me - better to have more documentation and guidance on the main styles, and make the options easier to use.

[green_knight]

A reverse lookup would be wonderful (and sounds like a summer intern project or something like that):

simply a FAQ type listing of all the relevant element. A sort of reverse loookup that's solution-focussed, so that I can look up 'how to do three columns' or 'what widgets are available' or, my personal nemesis: 'how do I integrate an element which display custom friend colours on my reading list'.

My favorite computer book of all time is organised like that: it simply lists all the things you might possibly want to do, and then gives you the code.

And now, scrolling down, I see that a vehicle for that already exists- the cookbook might not have the answers, but that's the sort of thing I had in mind. If it contains enough examples, users should be able to create styles from it.

[marahmarie]

We have a Cookbook! Did you know (forgive me if you already do)? It's never updated, at least not that I know of; it was previously written and maintained by foxfirefey, as far as I know, and it lacks many, many cool code snippets I've seen on DW (most of them written on the fly by foxfirefey and ninetydegrees for members of style_system). But! If we could get the Cookbook updated and maybe get a link for it embedded on the Advanced Customization pages, that could be a start, yes, no? :)

[ninetydegrees]

Two problems I see there is that 1) layers are linked to a specific style so you'd have to make the same customization snippet for every style we have 2) customization code is often tailored to a specific user's needs (they want to add this link there, they want to add an image which is of a certain size) so people would often not be able to apply the layer as-is. I think I'm more in favor of expanding the cookbook.

[swaldman]

Do layers have to be linked to a specific style? If so, why? AIUI most styles don't override most things? (I'm guessing this relates to the problem I identified of layers that conflict with one another)
I don't know the style system in detail, so maybe this is just a stupid idea... But at the same time, it seems that at present this huge multilayered system is only really used for wholesale layout changes, which seems... limited?

Expanding the cookbook is all very well, but it still requires somebody to learn how the style system works and be prepared to write some code. Unless it got to the level of "to make this happen, copy & paste the following" - which would suffer the same problems of not working everywhere - I don't think it would do much for the majority of users.

[ninetydegrees]

Do layers have to be linked to a specific style? If so, why? AIUI most styles don't override most things? (I'm guessing this relates to the problem I identified of layers that conflict with one another)

Yes, they do. It's a required part of the layer creating process. I think the answer to why is because of the combined inheritance/hierarchy system. You're correct that styles don't override most things but that's because they don't have to since they're all children (layers of) the Core2 layer and therefore inherits everything from it. And yes, that's how you avoid conflicts.

Expanding the cookbook is all very well, but it still requires somebody to learn how the style system works and be prepared to write some code. Unless it got to the level of "to make this happen, copy & paste the following" - which would suffer the same problems of not working everywhere - I don't think it would do much for the majority of users.

I was thinking of the latter. I know we have some stuff like that here which comes from style_system. One major issue is keeping it updated and I see that as an even bigger problem if it was made official. There aren't many devs working in styles and S2 is a love-it-or-hate-it thing for a lot of people. I mean I like what you suggest; it would be awesome. But I'm not sure we can make it work.

[swaldman]

Yes, they do. It's a required part of the layer creating process. I think the answer to why is because of the combined inheritance/hierarchy system. You're correct that styles don't override most things but that's because they don't have to since they're all children (layers of) the Core2 layer and therefore inherits everything from it.

Hmm, that suggests to me that many changes would work if applied on top of any style, since the things they were changing would be core2 things that the style didn't override...

But, there is certainly potential for things to not work. I think a system like this might have to be curated, with a table of "This snippet works in the following official styles:". Which is, yes, work for somebody :-/

[marahmarie]

The biggest problem I envision, even with the Cookbook mod of this idea, is that the names of CSS selectors for the same page elements often change from style to style. So while the same s2 can technically change any specifically targeted element (like the header, for example) in any official style in whatever way you desire, many snippets that by their very nature must include style-specific CSS selectors in order to work would have to be adapted to reflect the correct CSS selector for, say, "header", from style to style. And DW has _a_lot_ of styles.

That was why on LJ, at least, I chose not adapt a lot of my s2 to work in both the Bloggish and Expressive styles (those were my two favorite styles to obsess over) - the CSS selectors were entirely different for every page element both styles shared (and page elements that one style had, sometimes the other one lacked, which would've meant creating new s2 just to introduce the missing feature to be modified!), which would have meant writing CSS-selector specific s2 code for each style, which honestly I didn't have the time or know-how to pull off.

Hope that makes sense...it's not always an applicable issue, either...a lot of user-added s2 can (and by its nature should) be added without targeting any style-specific CSS at all. It's kind of a mixed bag with that on both LJ and DW. :)

[zvi]

I don't think it should be implemented because the sorts of changes referenced are ones better implemented at the core level and referenced in a layout layer than something people should add at the theme or wizard level, conceptually.

[swaldman]

Is there any reason that somebody should only ever have one layout layer at a time, though, rather than overlaying them?

I'm not being contrary; this may be a really stupid idea[1], but I'd like to know that people are against it because it's a stupid idea rather than because it's Not How LJ Has Always Done Things, if you see what I mean :-)



[1] Actually, my gut feeling from reading the discussion is that this is an idea that needs a much larger style-writing community than DW's to work

[montuos]

Speaking as someone missing far too many of the necessary skills to achieve desired outcomes, I salivate at the thought of such a gallery. But having read the comments before voting, I must reluctantly concur that there is too much work involved to make this suggestion practicable. :-/