3 things: BLTs, writing, and LJ woes

[edenfalling]

What I did tonight:

1. Ate a BLT sandwich for dinner. This is something I only do now and then on account of my food allergies -- I can get away with eating a couple slices of raw tomato very occasionally, provided I take a Benadryl first. Which also means I never do that for lunch, since then I'd be going back to work while fighting what might as well be a sleeping pill. But oh man, BLTs are delicious.

2. Wrote 300 words of the Hinata fic, which seems to be set when the gang are in their mid-thirties. So that will make three fics in the summer camp and politics AU, each spaced about 12-13 years apart.

3. Changed my LJ style over to S2 and kicked at it a little until it kinda sorta maybe-if-you-squint resembles a stripped bare shadow of my DW style (which is itself pretty damn minimalist). I would like, if possible, to kick LJ further until I can get my comments page to look the way it used to instead of the ugly and less functional version they rolled out in December, but I have a terrible suspicion that would require paying the site money, which, ugh, no. I bought paid time on DW because this site actually cares about user opinions, but I don't want to invest in a site that seems to take pleasure in kicking users around.

(It is possible that someone with more computer programming knowledge than I possess (i.e., any at all) might be able to produce a workaround without throwing money at LJ -- apparently I have an option to add customized CSS to my style sheet or something? -- but I would not have the faintest idea where to start on that project. *sadface* I really ought to look into learning CSS one of these days...)

Comments

[autumnia]

One of the reasons I like DW is that the layout customization is so much easier to do here than on LJ. Even with free accounts on both sites, I managed to create my own custom style on DW and it was such a pain to get LJ to match as closely to it as possible.

But to answer your question, you need to go here to add your custom CSS. Essentially, any styling you put here will overwrite whatever your current default styling looks like. If you don't want to figure out the complexities of CSS, I can try to help you figure out what you need to add to get the look and feel you want (I build websites for a living, so I'm very familiar with this type of stuff).

The one problem I find with LJ is that their code is a lot more messy than DW's which is why it's a bit harder to style.

[edenfalling]

What I WANT is a comment page that looks like the old comments page before LJ destroyed it. I want subject lines, I want to see the text I type in a comment box appear as I type it instead of with a full second or more of lag, and for other people's sake, I would like a usable drop-down icon menu instead of the pictorial menu LJ somehow decided was "better." (This is irrelevant for me since I only have six icons, but I hear it is nearly impossible to manage for people with dozens of icons.) Also I want the painful light blue shading between the end of an entry and the start of the comments to die in a fire, because it is headache-inducing.

Failing that, I would settle for a comments page that looks like the style I have now set my journal to, instead of the ugly, user-abusing default site style that I am trying to get rid of.

My LJ is at edenfalling and it is currently wearing a version of Flexible Squares.

An example of a journal that has forced LJ into mimicking its old comment pages is homesmut -- and here is a post with some good examples of how the comments look. (That post is about fill threading rules, so it is... mmm... 95% work-safe? There are a couple potentially inappropriate icons, and two people at the end who got confused and posted prompts to the wrong post, but that's all.)

[autumnia]

Ah. Comment pages... unfortunately, I can't help you with that because Basic-level LJ accounts (like yours and mine) mean no customization. If the default comment layout annoys you that much, then you could always upgrade to the Plus level which I think is still free but is ad-supported.

I think a lot of people are using the Plus accounts anyway, just so they can have more userpics.

[edenfalling]

Nrgh. I was beginning to suspect it was a "pay us in some form or your account will suck forever!!!" sort of deal. The thing is, once you upgrade to Plus, I don't think it's possible to undo that change. Ever. And I do not want to deal with ads popping up all over my journal -- it's annoying enough to run into them on other people's journals now and then.

...

I dunno, probably I should look into finding and installing an adblocker program of some sort for my browser, but even so, bleh. I hate ads. I would rather pay up front for a decent service, but I don't want to pay LJ upfront because they don't provide one of the key components necessary for a decent service -- they do not listen to their users. :-(

[autumnia]

You should see all the crazy add-ons I have for my Firefox. At any rate, a lot of (smart) people use AdBlock Plus, which eliminates about 95% of ads. And for added bonus, if loading Flash annoys you as much as it does me, I recommend Flashblock as well (you can have the Flash run by clicking "play" but it won't auto-run when you first get to the page).

[edenfalling]

I use Internet Explorer rather than Firefox -- habit, mostly; once you get used to a program it's easier to stick with it, plus sometimes Firefox interacts oddly with Hotmail and since Hotmail is my only email program... meh. Do you have any recommendations on ad-blocker programs for IE? I have found a number of them and have no way to tell which works best.

I have never had any issues with Flash, at least not that I've noticed. What does it do to your computer?

[autumnia]

I didn't know there were any types of those programs for IE out there.

As for Flash, mainly I dislike how long they take to load especially when I'm at work (sometimes, I laugh at the irony that we have to build all these crazy websites that must load fast, but we have to use such old and slow computers), so it's easier to just disable all Flash-related items (including ads) and then enable the ones I actually want to see.

[askerian]

Or you can just go here: http://www.livejournal.com/customize/options.bml
and on Disable customized comment pages for your journal set it to "no", and the comment page will be in the same style as your journal. It's a workaround they might eventually disable though. :/

Might I add I'd be really happy if you did that because the new LJ page makes everything I type in the boxes appear at the rate of one letter per second or sometimes more, which makes long replies really frustrating. D: *kicks stupid lj*

[edenfalling]

Alas, I already have it set to "no," so either the style I picked does not have a customized comments page to start with, or LJ has started disabling that workaround. :-(

[askerian]

D:

Okay, that's weird! It's working fine for me. o_o; I'm sorry then, no ideas.

[edenfalling]

I am going to try a few other styles and see if I can find one that comes with a built-in not horrifying comments page. Because the whole reason I finally swapped over to S2 styles (which, what does that even mean, anyway?) was to get rid of the mess LJ made of the default comments page. Gnrgh.

[edenfalling]

...I am beginning to suspect that automatically customized comments pages are an option reserved for people who pay LJ money either via paid accounts or ad-supported accounts. Since I still have the old "no ads, ever!" type of account (...at least, I think I do), I am probably barred from perks like usable comment pages. :-(

[askerian]

D: Oh right, yeah, it seems very likely it'd be a feature reserved for paid journals. In that case... argh. Sorry. This new comment page REALLY SUCKS. DX