LJ stuff

[amalthia]

Lately, I've been kind of complaining to friends about how often I have to use ?style=mine to read fics because most journal layouts are not reader friendly. And it hit me that maybe most LJ users don't realize that there is way to post stories so they are more reader friendly.

anyway, if you want to make your fics more reader friendly you go to this link

http://www.livejournal.com/customize/options.bml

and find "Disable customized comment pages for your journal" and select Yes.

For most LJ layouts this will make it so that if someone hits the cut tag on a fic it'll open and people can read the story on a white background with black text, which is easier on the eyes. I think some layouts don't require this.

Comments

[kres.livejournal.com]

Yep, good point. Did this a while ago in my journal. An yep, many times I add ?style=mine to unreadable fics out there, and I suppose there's a bunch of people who do that. So, good point.

[amalthia]

I've started putting ?style=mine on all my rec links because I don't want people to turn away from good stories because the original lj style is completely unreadable.

[purelyironic.livejournal.com]

I have to use ?style=mine

I'm sure you know this already, but there's a bookmarklet (here (http://www.jwz.org/hacks/bookmarklets.html)) that makes adding ?style=mine easier. I like reading black on white much more and I depend on my perfect text width for faster reading, so I use style=mine often.

[amalthia]

does this work with IE7?

[purelyironic.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I don't have Windows installed, so I can't test it. But there are other bookmarklets for IE7, so I don't see why it shouldn't.

You could drag the style=mine bookmarklet to your bookmark bar and test it. Deleting it if it doesn't work should be just like deleting any other bookmark.

[amalthia]

it worked for IE 7 after all. :)

[aerynvala.livejournal.com]

Obviously I'm in agreement with you here.

I think it was about a year ago that someone else on my flist posted about this issue and I went and looked at my journal and realized that it really was hard to read. Not as bad as some, the contrast wasn't as bad as say grey text on a black background, but it was bad enough that it would make reading more than a paragraph or two somewhat annoying.

And it's not that I don't understand wanting to decorate your online 'home' in the style you like, but not everyone can read itty-bitty type, or poorly contrasted text. And then there's the issue of large images in a narrow layout - some layouts the large image bleeds outside of the borders, but in many of them the images just 'disappear' under the border and you can't see them. And then there's background images that are visible in the post area making it next to impossible to read anything at all.

tsk

[amalthia]

I agree with what you wrote here 100% :)

[smittywing.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I did this - I know a couple of people have said that my journal style actually comes up yellow-on-yellow for them and I have no idea why, but maybe this will help.

[amalthia]

I hope it helps. :)

[entangled-now.livejournal.com]

I'd like to say thank you very much for pointing this out. I'd been wondering how to do this/if I could do this for a while now.

[amalthia]

you're welcome! :)

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Oh, THANK you! I actually use "?format=light" most of the time to do (basically) the same thing, but I've pretty much had it with trying to read stories in 6 point white letters on a black background. *g* I know that people like to make their journals look the way that appeals to their personal aesthetic, and they certainly have every right to do that, but people also need to know that they run the risk of having their readers not see their formatting AT ALL if they get too fancy with it.

Although I sometimes forget to turn custom comment pages off when I switch LJ styles, and often don't realize it for awhile because of the "format=light" option. Durrrrrrr.

[amalthia]

I used format=light for a while but for some reason when I saved files in that format the text turned to gibberish.

I have to keep this in mine if i switch LJ layouts.

[aurora]

Format=light is my dearest friend, seriously.

[kellifer-fic.livejournal.com]

Mine's already a white background with black text because anything else drives me barmy... heh.

I found a cheat-y way to do this if it's a cut tag of a friend's journal (doesn't work if you're clicking a link that goes to another journal). You just click the 'link' button on the bottom of the entry rather than the cut text tag and it opens in the friendly comment-page format...

I usually do this for longer stories because then not everything is smooshed aswell.