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©2009 =moonfreak
:iconmoonfreak:

Artist's Comments

Xinch CSS by =moonfreak

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LIVE PREVIEW
(see the hover effects on the links, thumbs, and paragraphs)

Difficulty Level: :bulletblue::bulletblue::bulletblack::bulletblack::bulletblack:

Instructions:

:bulletblue: Click "Install to Journal" and accept the agreement. Click on the skin button on your journal page and choose the Xinch CSS.

:bulletblue: Edit the links in the header with your URLs and titles. You can add more links simply by adding another <a href="URL HERE">TITLE HERE</a>

Adding the content:

:bulletblue: You must use <div class="content">ENTIRE JOURNAL HERE</div> and place anything else (you don't actually need anything else) inside it.

:bulletblue: <div class="title">TITLE HERE</div> creates an underlined title.

:bulletblue: <div class="paragraph">PARAGRAPH HERE</div> creates a paragraph that when hovered over turns light blue.

:bulletblue: <div class="feature">:thumb#:s HERE</div> creates the center-aligned feature section.

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


Free CSS Request Information: [link]

Critiques


:iconjournalskins:
First impressions
:bulletyellow: Clean design
:bulletyellow: Comprehensive layout when reading

Visual aspects
The simple design you used here is being really effective. :)
Its straightforwardness makes it easy for the reader to find their points of interest in your well structured journal.
When taking another close look it shows that you took the time to make this a carefully balanced design. The colour scheme is subtle and nicely evened out. A good sense of symetry also shows a lot of care went into the design.
The only thing I have to say about this is the feature block. The large borders around the thumbs draw lots of attention to themselves. I would suggest to give them more subtle borders so the entire journal has a consistent style.

User experience
The way you set this journal skin up requires a small bit of setting up before it is completely ready to use.
One would be adding the .content classed div and replacing some links. For me not an issue, it took me just a minute to make a nice looking journal.
However, this could be avoided by making use of the features of the new Journal Skin system on dA.
For example, you can automatically add the div I just mentioned by putting the opening tag in the header and the closing tag in the footer.
And adding working links by default such as 'My Gallery' and 'Note me' and linking them to your personal account. Once installed the url locations of these links are then automatically changed by dA to the users page instead of yours.

There is also some room in optimising the use of HTML. At the moment you have <div class="paragraph"> for a paragraph.
However you can easily shorten this using an HTML tag made specificly for this. The p tag which, you guessed it, stands for paragraph.
This will make creating a new journal that much easier for your users and would also enable the hover effects in IE since IE doesn't support hover on divs where it does on p. :)
In the same manner you could concider replacing <div class="title"> with strong. Since there are two element for making something bold, strong and b.
Overwriting the strong style would then leave b for your users to normaly make something bold without creating titles.

Technical aspects
Technically your code is quite solid. After taking a look at the CSS I was not surprised to see that it does very well in both Internet Explorer as well as Firefox.
There are however some things that can be improved to get it to work prefectly for everyone.
One thing is that you are required to set your moods to the bottom of the journal. When set at the top a lot of elements disappear.
Using absolute positioning can fix this problem.
Another thing that is not so hard to fix would be the size of the footer.
If you use less then three lines for your moods (for instance, just Mood: Eager and Reading: Words) the credits for your skin will overlap the comments and prevlinks.
The simple solution to this would be to use a min-height or even better a fixed height for the footer.
This will make sure the text does not overlap at any time :D

Conclusion
The clear and straightforward design has been translated well to tidy and highly compatable code.
A great option for everyone that loves a no-nonsense look while still keeping a high standard of elegance.
Keep up the great work =moonfreak! :)

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Comments


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:iconpica-ae:
wow, that's really nice

wonderful colors and it looks just cool :)

--
:star:Open for Journal Comissions! :star:
*CSS-Babes | *typoholics | *pica-stock | =VirtualMoleskine
:iconmoonfreak:
Thanks! :)

--
...on the ceiling.
:iconcruffins:
gorgeous shade of blue hon.

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save yourself some time: shit happens.
:iconmoonfreak:
Thanks! :)

--
...on the ceiling.
:iconharleshinn:
Hey! congratulations, you have made a beautiful journal design :D

I like very much the soft colors, it's relaxing to the eye.

Nice and clean, I love this design :D

--
:bulletpurple: Commissions Info :bulletpurple:
~ To follow the path: Look to the master, Follow the master, Walk with the master, See through the master, Become the master ~
:iconmoonfreak:
Thanks!

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...on the ceiling.
:iconharleshinn:
You're welcome :D

--
:bulletpurple: Commissions Info :bulletpurple:
~ To follow the path: Look to the master, Follow the master, Walk with the master, See through the master, Become the master ~
:iconhaikman:
thanks for the skin [link]

--
Helen Aikman [link]

Details

May 28
2.1 KB
214 KB
763×1006

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