Pimp My Preferences June 16, 2007 6:06 PM Subscribe
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is there a "metafilter skins" or "mefi css" customization repository where I can choose more interesting themes? Or some super-customization method? I'm really feeling the need to see some yellow and purple stripes with kitten wallpaper lately; feelin' weary with the same old blue, green, and grey after all these years.
Nope, there's no skins or themes at the present moment aside from default and plain. You can screw with user styelsheets in firefox and there are ways to limit that to just the .metafilter.com domain.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:21 PM on June 16, 2007
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:21 PM on June 16, 2007
No kitten wallpaper, but userstyles.org has a couple of metafilter styles.
posted by katieinshoes at 6:34 PM on June 16, 2007 [4 favorites]
posted by katieinshoes at 6:34 PM on June 16, 2007 [4 favorites]
Not to be snarky, but if you have to customize it, maybe you're spending too much time looking at it.
posted by Robert Angelo at 7:05 PM on June 16, 2007
posted by Robert Angelo at 7:05 PM on June 16, 2007
Not to be snarky, but *snark snark snark*
posted by brain_drain at 7:06 PM on June 16, 2007 [13 favorites]
posted by brain_drain at 7:06 PM on June 16, 2007 [13 favorites]
Not to be completely inane, but all of the comments so far begin with "no" "nope" or "not". I just thought that was cool.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 7:16 PM on June 16, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 7:16 PM on June 16, 2007 [1 favorite]
No kidding?
posted by Dave Faris at 7:27 PM on June 16, 2007
posted by Dave Faris at 7:27 PM on June 16, 2007
Not to be snarky, but if you have to customize it, maybe you're spending too much time looking at it.
Or maybe you want to change things so they better suit your tastes. Or maybe you're bored and want to spice things up a bit. There's a lot of better reasons to customize sites besides "you're spending too much time looking at it", which really doesn't even make sense.
posted by puke & cry at 8:01 PM on June 16, 2007
Or maybe you want to change things so they better suit your tastes. Or maybe you're bored and want to spice things up a bit. There's a lot of better reasons to customize sites besides "you're spending too much time looking at it", which really doesn't even make sense.
posted by puke & cry at 8:01 PM on June 16, 2007
What's this about a Metafilter suppository?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:22 PM on June 16, 2007
posted by mr_crash_davis at 8:22 PM on June 16, 2007
What's this about a Metafilter suppository?
It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't pony sized.
posted by dazed_one at 8:35 PM on June 16, 2007 [1 favorite]
It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't pony sized.
posted by dazed_one at 8:35 PM on June 16, 2007 [1 favorite]
Also, I've never heard of userstyles, that's freaking pretty cool.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:24 PM on June 16, 2007
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:24 PM on June 16, 2007
Ooh, I just loaded into the Stylish plugin the MetaFilter White userstyle. And, you know, I can't quite explain why, but it seems like MetaFilter looks more, um, professional and likely to create a good impression on friends and relatives to whom I might recommend the site.
Screw that, I'm changing it back.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:39 PM on June 16, 2007
Screw that, I'm changing it back.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:39 PM on June 16, 2007
You've never heard of Userstyles? WOW. I thought #1 knew everything!
posted by IndigoRain at 9:53 PM on June 16, 2007
posted by IndigoRain at 9:53 PM on June 16, 2007
blasphemy.
posted by exlotuseater at 12:12 AM on June 17, 2007
posted by exlotuseater at 12:12 AM on June 17, 2007
You wan the Stylish Firefox add-on and custom css from Userstyles. You can also make your own css.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 1:42 AM on June 17, 2007
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 1:42 AM on June 17, 2007
you guys have colors?
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 1:45 AM on June 17, 2007
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 1:45 AM on June 17, 2007
Not to be snarky, but if you have to customize it, maybe you're spending too much time looking at it.
It's a design thing, Angelo, you wouldn't understand.
posted by DenOfSizer at 3:59 AM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]
It's a design thing, Angelo, you wouldn't understand.
posted by DenOfSizer at 3:59 AM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]
mathowie: "Also, I've never heard of userstyles, that's freaking pretty cool."
It could be freaking pretty cooler if MetaFilter's HTML had more meaningful ids and classes. "copy" and "smallcopy" mean essentially everything. Think CSS Zen Garden-esque. I can imagine a world where improved markup plus Stylish plus userstyles equals awesomeness.
posted by Plutor at 8:14 AM on June 17, 2007
It could be freaking pretty cooler if MetaFilter's HTML had more meaningful ids and classes. "copy" and "smallcopy" mean essentially everything. Think CSS Zen Garden-esque. I can imagine a world where improved markup plus Stylish plus userstyles equals awesomeness.
posted by Plutor at 8:14 AM on June 17, 2007
“It could be freaking pretty cooler if MetaFilter's HTML had more meaningful ids and classes.”
Yeah. I don't want to whine about it, 'cause I think there are other things that are important, but I have been kind of baffled that Matt hasn't improved this. It's pretty bad—your examples of "copy" and "smallcopy" are well-chosen. Just looking at the markup makes me wince.
But then I've been accused more than once of over-engineering things and I can be pretty anal-retentive in this context.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:28 AM on June 17, 2007
Yeah. I don't want to whine about it, 'cause I think there are other things that are important, but I have been kind of baffled that Matt hasn't improved this. It's pretty bad—your examples of "copy" and "smallcopy" are well-chosen. Just looking at the markup makes me wince.
But then I've been accused more than once of over-engineering things and I can be pretty anal-retentive in this context.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:28 AM on June 17, 2007
Yeah, perhaps I didn't make that clear. I'd like to live in a world where MetaFilter has really fantastic Semantic HTML. But I'd also like to live in a world with free-as-in-speech racecars on every corner. Jump in, drive to wherever you're going, leave it on the corner with the keys in it! Everyone wins!
Matt's time is better off spent simplifying the code base (man, different code paths for every subsection?) and figuring out the mid-afternoon sorta-downtime. But, well, I'd be amiss if I didn't mention my "You're on a desert island and you can only have one MeFi bug fixed" wish.
posted by Plutor at 9:57 AM on June 17, 2007
Matt's time is better off spent simplifying the code base (man, different code paths for every subsection?) and figuring out the mid-afternoon sorta-downtime. But, well, I'd be amiss if I didn't mention my "You're on a desert island and you can only have one MeFi bug fixed" wish.
posted by Plutor at 9:57 AM on June 17, 2007
Or you could just get your kitten fix from Firefox itself. (Note: I know this is Firefox 1.5 compatible but not, I think, 2.0)
posted by misha at 11:34 AM on June 17, 2007
posted by misha at 11:34 AM on June 17, 2007
As long you don't start referring to MetaTalk as "The Plaid."
posted by The Deej at 1:55 PM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by The Deej at 1:55 PM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]
you guys have colors?
Yeah, green text on a black background. Jealous much?
posted by dg at 5:39 PM on June 17, 2007
Yeah, green text on a black background. Jealous much?
posted by dg at 5:39 PM on June 17, 2007
but I have been kind of baffled that Matt hasn't improved this. It's pretty bad—your examples of "copy" and "smallcopy" are well-chosen. Just looking at the markup makes me wince.
careful, you're starting to sound like quonsar.
posted by quonsar at 8:23 PM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]
careful, you're starting to sound like quonsar.
posted by quonsar at 8:23 PM on June 17, 2007 [1 favorite]
Plutor/EB,
If either of you guys wanted to re-markup a very simple page like this one, maybe even just the stuff between the header and footer, I'd be open to implementing, esp. if it meant easier restyling and greasemonkey scripting with meaningful IDs and such.
but I have been kind of baffled that Matt hasn't improved this
I haven't bothered rewriting all the CSS because I didn't want to break existing scripts and everyone's cached styles. I essentially wrote it in CSS in 1999 and kept all the major classes the same ever since (copy for body copy, smallcopy for the smaller fonts). I've never rewritten the CSS for a site and kept the layout the same so I'm kind of surprised that you're baffled by this. I don't know of any friends aside from one or two crazy CSS dudes on the W3C team that ever touch their CSS after they get things working on a new site. It's the old "if it ain't broke".
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:31 PM on June 17, 2007
If either of you guys wanted to re-markup a very simple page like this one, maybe even just the stuff between the header and footer, I'd be open to implementing, esp. if it meant easier restyling and greasemonkey scripting with meaningful IDs and such.
but I have been kind of baffled that Matt hasn't improved this
I haven't bothered rewriting all the CSS because I didn't want to break existing scripts and everyone's cached styles. I essentially wrote it in CSS in 1999 and kept all the major classes the same ever since (copy for body copy, smallcopy for the smaller fonts). I've never rewritten the CSS for a site and kept the layout the same so I'm kind of surprised that you're baffled by this. I don't know of any friends aside from one or two crazy CSS dudes on the W3C team that ever touch their CSS after they get things working on a new site. It's the old "if it ain't broke".
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:31 PM on June 17, 2007
damn
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:44 AM on June 18, 2007
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:44 AM on June 18, 2007
With MetaFilter shirts but no skins, dodgeball is out of the question.
posted by y2karl at 12:40 PM on June 18, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl at 12:40 PM on June 18, 2007 [1 favorite]
If either of you guys wanted to re-markup a very simple page like this one, maybe even just the stuff between the header and footer, I'd be open to implementing, esp. if it meant easier restyling and greasemonkey scripting with meaningful IDs and such.
Aw, man. That's going to break all the existing greasemonkey scripts/extensions, isn't it?
posted by juv3nal at 1:24 PM on June 18, 2007
Aw, man. That's going to break all the existing greasemonkey scripts/extensions, isn't it?
posted by juv3nal at 1:24 PM on June 18, 2007
Shit, he called us on it.
*starts working*
Don't worry, if he doesn't like it, he'll just ignore it, and when you bug him about it, say it was lame anyway. I have experience in these matters.
Me, bitter? Nah.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:23 PM on June 18, 2007
*starts working*
Don't worry, if he doesn't like it, he'll just ignore it, and when you bug him about it, say it was lame anyway. I have experience in these matters.
Me, bitter? Nah.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:23 PM on June 18, 2007
I would call it experienced in dealing with setbacks rather than bitter. Sounds much nicer on your resume.
posted by dg at 4:48 PM on June 18, 2007
posted by dg at 4:48 PM on June 18, 2007
If it's just reformatting the body copy CSS, it'd be easy to implement.
Sorry again stavros, but again I have to explain that I said I'd implement something because it sounded like a good idea and I pictured in my head how it might look but the final mockup you did just didn't offer much of an improvement.
This is just under-the-hood CSS changes to be "more semantic" and as long as the visuals don't change at all, should be simple to implement and not cause too many complications.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:03 PM on June 18, 2007
Sorry again stavros, but again I have to explain that I said I'd implement something because it sounded like a good idea and I pictured in my head how it might look but the final mockup you did just didn't offer much of an improvement.
This is just under-the-hood CSS changes to be "more semantic" and as long as the visuals don't change at all, should be simple to implement and not cause too many complications.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:03 PM on June 18, 2007
I WILL DESTROY YOU MATT HAUGHEY!
Nah, s'OK. If I'd known you'd wanted Huge Major Revampage, I'd have tried that. But knowing your predilection for incremental change, I figured that was the way to go. Miscommunication all round, I guess.
And thank you for saying sorry -- you didn't before, and I'm all sensitive that way, despite my gruff exterior.
This semantification of the CSS/XHTML/ZOMG is something that I can definitely get behind, though. The code is pretty thickety, as you've admitted, and for future socks-rocking (and things like user customization) it would be a very very good thing if it were rationalized, even if only in terms of fixing up the CSS ids/classes and getting rid of the inline styling.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:12 PM on June 18, 2007
Nah, s'OK. If I'd known you'd wanted Huge Major Revampage, I'd have tried that. But knowing your predilection for incremental change, I figured that was the way to go. Miscommunication all round, I guess.
And thank you for saying sorry -- you didn't before, and I'm all sensitive that way, despite my gruff exterior.
This semantification of the CSS/XHTML/ZOMG is something that I can definitely get behind, though. The code is pretty thickety, as you've admitted, and for future socks-rocking (and things like user customization) it would be a very very good thing if it were rationalized, even if only in terms of fixing up the CSS ids/classes and getting rid of the inline styling.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:12 PM on June 18, 2007
And thank you for saying sorry -- you didn't before
I thought I did -- I felt bad about it and tried to express that. No one wants to shut down volunteer work or take anything away from enthusiastic members.
So um, sorry I didn't say it before. :)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:18 PM on June 18, 2007
I thought I did -- I felt bad about it and tried to express that. No one wants to shut down volunteer work or take anything away from enthusiastic members.
So um, sorry I didn't say it before. :)
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:18 PM on June 18, 2007
Plutor, are you actually looking at this and working on it? I feel like I ought to put my money where my mouth is as I had the arrogance to complain about it, but I'm not a css whiz, this isn't trivial for me even if it is actually trivial. I am anal-retentive about this stuff, though, and back in the day when we were customizing our profiles here and I looked at the markup and css closely to hack some things, that was when I first got bothered that there weren't good semantics. Looking at again the other day, I was reminded of it. Thus my comment.
I don't have any actual responsibilities or a job or anything, so it's less trouble for me to do this and walk the walk, so to speak, than most anyone else. But I'm an awful procrastinator and tend to get things done in my own sweet time. :)
Matt, it might not be worth it to you to change it until you actually need to because of what juv3nal said. This user-side hack stuff isn't your responsibility, but you'll still hear about it when it all breaks.
However, you might have missed it when I asked you in another thread what you thought of me putting together a much bigger stats site than the currently broken dan hersam stuff. In the context of tackling that much bigger job (but it's the kind of stuff I really, really enjoy), me working on the semantics would fit naturally. Seeing as parsing all this stuff to gather data is a problem. (Unrealistic pony: public data offered as data for stats purposes. Or at least to me. :)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:46 PM on June 18, 2007
I don't have any actual responsibilities or a job or anything, so it's less trouble for me to do this and walk the walk, so to speak, than most anyone else. But I'm an awful procrastinator and tend to get things done in my own sweet time. :)
Matt, it might not be worth it to you to change it until you actually need to because of what juv3nal said. This user-side hack stuff isn't your responsibility, but you'll still hear about it when it all breaks.
However, you might have missed it when I asked you in another thread what you thought of me putting together a much bigger stats site than the currently broken dan hersam stuff. In the context of tackling that much bigger job (but it's the kind of stuff I really, really enjoy), me working on the semantics would fit naturally. Seeing as parsing all this stuff to gather data is a problem. (Unrealistic pony: public data offered as data for stats purposes. Or at least to me. :)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:46 PM on June 18, 2007
EB: Yeah, I worked on it for like 10 minutes yesterday. My work situation is patently different than yours, so you'd probably get farther faster, even with your (very familiar) procrastination predilection.
I wouldn't really call myself a CSS "whiz" either, it's more of a "I know it when I see it".
posted by Plutor at 6:40 AM on June 19, 2007
I wouldn't really call myself a CSS "whiz" either, it's more of a "I know it when I see it".
posted by Plutor at 6:40 AM on June 19, 2007
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posted by DenOfSizer at 6:07 PM on June 16, 2007