Sliding-Panda on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/sliding-panda/art/Lily-Journal-Template-123656221Sliding-Panda

Deviation Actions

Sliding-Panda's avatar

Lily Journal Template

By
Sliding-Panda
Published:
60.5K Views

Description

:B Hi there!
This is my first ever journal release, so I would be so glad and flattered If you liked it and found it useful. Please take a look at a live version.

:heart: LIVE VERSION :heart:

:B Some things that need to be mentioned
  • At the beginning I'd like to stress the fact that when I wrote this journal a few months ago I didn't realise I'll be sharing it now. So please bear in mind that it is not the easiest structure ever. It would be nice If you had some knowledge of html. If you haven't acquired it yet, there shouldn't be a problem, though. Just take a look at the bottom of the artist comments. There's a link to pre-made journal structure. Just copy it and paste to your journal.

  • The width of the journal, width of the menu and size of the first box is fixed. They cannot stretch.

  • Don't forget to put your own links and stamps in the menu (Options -> Skin Header -> Change 'Username' into your own name)

  • This template works best for Mozilla Firefox. As far as I know, it is also compatible with Opera and Internet Explorer although some effects will not appear.


:B List of features and fancy effects
( + browsers which support it)
  • Left side menu
    ( FF, Opera, IE )

  • Custom boxes and headlines with backgrounds
    ( FF, Opera, IE )

  • Custom cursors and hover effects *Courtesy of cursors-4u.com*
    ( FF, IE )

  • Feature table *inspired by `thespook's tutorial*
    (FF, Opera, IE [almost like a table XD] )

  • Feature hover effects
    ( FF, Opera)

  • Rounded corners
    ( FF )

:B Journal Structure and Tips
I have no idea how to make a code visible here, so I guess I'll just share .txt files with you.
:iconteamoplz: !! IMPORTANT !!
This journal is free to use under the condition that the proper footer will remain. Please do not delete the credits!


:iconjournalskins: has my permission to upload this to their gallery



© 2009 - 2024 Sliding-Panda
Comments613
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
journalskins's avatar
journalskins
:star::star::star::star-empty: Overall
:star::star::star::star-half::star-empty: Vision
:star::star::star::star::star-empty: Originality
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Technique
:star::star::star::star-empty::star-empty: Impact

First impressions
<img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/b/b…" width="10" height="10" alt=":bulletyellow:" title="Bullet; Yellow" /> Live view looks more promising then the preview image
<img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/b/b…" width="10" height="10" alt=":bulletyellow:" title="Bullet; Yellow" /> Ouch, fixed width...

Visual aspects
Visuals are actually not bad at all. From the preview image I wasn't expecting that much to be honest, but I was proven a bit prejudgemental there. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/e/e…" width="15" height="15" alt=":blush:" title="Blush" />
The design is actually quite ok when viewed live. The thumb effects ballance out well and the layout is really comprehensive. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt=":)" title=":) (Smile)" />
A couple of things I want to point out about it though.
The main thing would be that the colour scheme is strongly biased towards brown, I think it could use more variation. Perhaps put in more pink or whites, it is after all a lily journal. This would probably give more spunk to the overall look and feel of the design.
Also, I personally am not a big fan of fixed width journals. It doesn't function as flexible and leads to lengthy journals. People with higher resolution monitors such as myself will have a lot of unused space on either side of the journal. (For me it uses about one third of the available space)
Besides that there are a few minor flaws I spotted. The stamps in the menu are set off to far to the right, not a big deal but you might want to center them a bit more. And lastly I find it strange that the feature of the week block does not have a 1px border, where the other blocks have.

User experience
The journal is quite easy making use of the new options available for Journal Skins.
Using it straight after installing and being an 'unexpecting user' just pasting a bucket of text from lipsum.com it works nicely.
Yeah there won't be fany boxes but it is ledgable and it doesn't screw up the page.
Then when looking around in the artist comments there is a link to a text file called Journal Skeleton. Not the most common name for it but ok.
Copy pasting it around is not that hard and will give satisfying results quickly without having to read to much.
Most of the class names are straight forward, such as headline is for... you guessed it. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/let…" width="15" height="15" alt=":P" title=":P (Lick)" />
Although I do have a different idea about what a tab is. For me that is [link] and I would name that class something with 'block'.
And the other thing I found was headline1 and tab1. The name of the class doesn't make it obvious that the 1 refers to the smaller block that should go first. Something along the lines of headline_small would have been more self explaining. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt=":)" title=":) (Smile)" />

Technical aspects
Technically this journal is decent.
It works well in Firefox and isn't bad in Internet Explorer. Merely the effects of the bottom feature table doesn't work correctly in IE. It might be possible to fix this by using the element of the thumb for the effects rather then the div.shadow-holder. (IE doesn't support :hover on div's).
The efficiency of the coding has room for improvement. A lot of widths are specified where it could be done with padding and margins and a lot of !important tags, are not that important at all. But lucky for us, we don't have to read and understand the code, the browser does and seems to understand it <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/w/w…" width="15" height="15" alt=";)" title=";) (Wink)" />
I would however suggest that you don't use 'USERNAME' for the links in the install file. You might not have know this but for the header you can use the username of the person uploading and it will be replaced upon installing.

Conclusion
Overall your Journal Skin works well and is easy to use.
It's a bit brown and doesn't remind me of lily's that much for a lily journal, but it looks ok.

Liked this critique?
<img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/p/p…" width="11" height="10" alt=":pointr:" title="Point Right" /> Click here to find more or request your own