Any Interest in a DU Skin?

[RoyGBiv]

Is there any interest in something like this?





Recently we had a discussion about "web nazis," which included some comments on the standard black on white text in many websites. The default has its place, and I said then, sometimes it's really what you need to do.

However, I stare at a computer monitor hours upon hours each day, and it hurts my eyes. I come from a background of using WordPerfect and the standard color scheme of white on blue and prior to that various other editors with typically a darker color scheme. DOS, as we may recall, was either white on black or green/amber on black if you didn't have a color monitor. All that was much more comfortable for my eyes.

So, anyway, I got to playing around the other day with skinning Gmail and realized (a real "duh" moment) that this could be done for pretty much any website. I'm on DU a lot, and the standard color scheme also hurts my eyes. Searching a little more for some assistance (I'm not good with CSS) I came across an extension for Firefox called "Styler" that makes changing styles globally or for individual websites much easier. At length, that's where this came from.

I imported this color scheme from somewhere else, and when I have some time I'll be changing it once I play some more with various color combinations. (I don't like the greenish color. Makes me feel somewhat nauseous.)

Any thoughts or suggestions? Anyone want this?

[lpbk2713]

1. Looks good.

But I prefer a light colored background. I do most of my internet time at night. I always have the room lights out and use the monitor screen to illuminate my keyboard. But that's just me.

[trotsky]

2. Great idea.

I don't care for the dark gray/black, but I'd love to see something tone down the pure white just a bit. A lighter gray would be fine.

[MyNameGoesHere]

3. Wow that's a busy

browser. But i like playing with those themes to0 and the black is my favorite. hey and BTW launch bars,<or whatever you want to call it> go ON THE BOTTOM!. :)

[RoyGBiv]

4. I could really be irritating ...

... and put it on the side. :-)

And of course I had to put my start button on the right and make it look like anything but a start button.

The browser is a bit busy. I need to get rid of the Stumble bar. Spawn of satan, that thing is. Great way to avoid work, though.

[DaveJ]

5. I don't care what anyone says.

I've read that a bright background uses no more power than a dark background on flat panel monitors. But I find that hard to believe. If the monitor is creating more light, I think it's using up more power, no matter what power detection devices say.

A dark background is more eco-friendly, IMHO.

It also looks great. As you said it's much easier on the eyes, and more importantly it just looks cool! A win win situation. Or, win win win if you include eco-friendliness.

Edit: I can't find that extension. You said it's named 'styler'?

[RoyGBiv]

6. Stylish ...

Sorry. It's called Stylish

[DaveJ]

7. Great, thanks. Are you going to publish it?

Now that I know how it works, I definitely think you should. I'd use it for sure.

The only suggestion I have is that perhaps the green text should be another shade or another color altogether. Other than that it looks perfect.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Not "publish" per se ...

Like I said, I'm not good with CSS ... coding or markup in general.

I am for some reason pretty good at taking what other people have done and playing with it to make it do other things. I understand the code and can modify it, but I have trouble with the "from scratch" thing. This is why I didn't go into programming like all my friends from high school. I didn't envision open source.

Anyway ... I took something I found and modified it to work with DU. I'm still playing with colors and fully agree on the green. I'll probably upload the code to userstyles.org, but with a notation it is a variation on a theme already there.

[DaveJ]

9. That's what I meant, upload it along with all the other styles

Democraticunderground might as well be on the list along with all the others. With all the thousands listed, I'm sure lots of the styles look the same. By the time your done I'm sure the similarity will be negligible anyway. I'll check back in a few days to see if it's there!

[Syrinx]

10. that's pretty cool

I'm going to look up that Firefox add-on, for sure.

Awhile back I had an idea for a DU "skin" that would make this website look exactly like FreeRepublic, as a joke, but I never could figure out how to over-ride stylesheets on a per-site basis.

Thanks for this!

[sam sarrha]

11. it's great... i like the more pastel colors.. but you have a major improvement there,, white is too

stressful all the time