Expressive for Scrapbook

[tinyjo]

OK, the Expressive for Scrapbook layer is now in a state where is is useable, I believe. Under the cut is instructions on how to use it. Any and all comments, requests for features, bug reports or, well, anything related to the style, comment here. If LJ wants to nick this for the site, feel free :) You can find the layer code at http://pics.livejournal.com/manage/styles/advanced/layerbrowse?id=66432. S2 people, do you think this would be suitable for general S2 communities as there don't seem to be any Scrapbook specific ones?

1. Go to http://pics.livejournal.com/manage/styles/advanced/ and, in the Create Style text box, enter a name and click Create
2. On the resulting page, ignore the box for Language. In the box for Layout, select [other]. In the text box which should now appear, enter 66432. Click save changes.
3. Now go to http://pics.livejournal.com/manage/styles/. You should see your newly created style. Click on the Edit link
4. On this page, DO NOT touch anything in the style settings bit, even though you'll see the wrong layer name here. It's a bug. As long as you don't save style settings you'll be fine. Instead, click the Customize (or Edit if you already have customizations) button in the Customize section
5. You're now in the customization wizard. Customize to your hearts content, including choosing your theme (much easier for me to do that this way rather than in theme layers).
6. To actually use the thing on your Scrapbook, go to http://pics.livejournal.com/manage/styles/ and click the radio button next to the name of the style you created

Using this method, you should get any updates I make to the layer automatically, which'll be nice :)

Comments

[diziara.livejournal.com]

I just decided to give this a try, and I have one thing that irritates. Well, two but I fixed one with the links list. Otherwise it's awesome, and I love that my picture galleries can now match my journal. :)

The thing I don't know how to fix is the sidebars. I use two sidebars on either side of the content, but for whatever reason, no matter to how I order the boxes, I end up with three items on the left. I want two and two, so I put the one sidebar's items as first and second, and put the stuff for the other sidebar as fourth and fifth, putting none as the third item, and still items 1, 2, and 4 end up on the left, and 5 on the right. Is there any way to get better control on what ends up where in the two column layouts, and even better, the ability to move the powered by sidebar item?

The other thing that bothered me, but I fixed with the links in the sidebar, is there isn't any upward navigation from within the first level galleries, I don't see anything that'll bring me back to the top, so I just added that to the sidebar links list in addition to a listing of all my galleries (will be annoying for people who can't see some of the galleries due to protection, but oh well). Is there any way to get something like that into the style so that it can only show the galleries that a person is authorized to view, and even better, maybe list sub-galleries when viewing a particular gallery?

PS, your journal style looks cool, only one thing, you didn't set a page background color. Given the graphics, it looks like it's intended to be white, but leaving it to browser default makes it light purple for me. Should be a quick fix if you care to make it. :)

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

With the sidebars, that's a problem that I've carried over from Expressive on LJ, I'm afraid - if you leave any of the sidebar selections blank that just gets ignored. I can look at ways to make it more flexible in SB though. The powered by is the same - there's no way of moving it on LJ so I haven't yet added one. I'll have a look and see what I can do.

For navigating back to the top level, the title of your Scrapbook will always work but you should also see that your top level galleries have a tag of diziara which takes you to the top level too.

Thanks for the heads up on the background - I always forget things like that!

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

OK, try this. On the sidebars page you now have the option to move the powered by box (although you still have to include it - if you don't select it anywhere, it will go in last). You can also set Balance sidebars evenly to Yes to get 2 modules per bar.

[diziara.livejournal.com]

Either one fixes the sidebar problem by itself, so it's awesome you included both so that people can choose what they want to do. :) Thanks for that.

The tags thing for upward navigation within the galleries seems counter intuitive to me, so I'll just continue to make use of the links list for that, and just accept that some people will be confused by links going to galleries they're not authorized to see. Besides, using the links list for navigation is better than having to remember to update it in scrapbook also when I update it within the main site also if I want it all to look the same. *shrugs*

Thanks for providing the style to scrapbook, and thanks for the quick response to the feedback. ^_^

[diziara.livejournal.com]

Another thing occurred to me. The descriptions I've assigned to my pictures don't display now. Would it be easy to add that feature, it was very handy.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Hi! Finally figured this out - there are 2 ways to get this on the Picture page but it turns out only one of them works and the other one is always blank, which was what was confusing me! You should now see picture descriptions on the individual picture pages. I haven't added them to the gallery page because I thought that would take up a lot of room but if you've any ideas of where to add them there, give me a shout :)

[diziara.livejournal.com]

Awesome, thanks. :) I'm not sure where descriptions would work given the way you laid out the galleries. I'll think on it and let you know if I come up with any ideas. ^_^