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Hey! nice to meet you, EN friends!
I hope this will help you make your SCPs, goi-formats or anything else!
All images are my own.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-shadow
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/box-shadow
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/border
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSV%E8%89%B2%E7%A9%BA%E9%96%93
(EDIT)
Note: If you have question about this tool, feel free to tell me. I will deal with it.
Erm… DrMagnus isn't on the list of credits here. Did you get the page cleared with him like I mentioned in your draft thread?
I was consulted, and in fact said I didn't see why this needed to be posted on the main wiki, if it's already on a sandbox. I thought I was pretty clear that I didn't approve/consider this tool a good idea to post.
I'm not really sure if this constitutes an "essay" but that decision is above my head.
in fact said I didn't see why this needed to be posted on the main wiki, if it's already on a sandbox
Maybe you have misunderstood. I didn't hear it. You said only
I have no problem with this tool existing in the abstract (and it's not my place to tell you what can or can't exist on INT), but other than it being referenced on the forums, I don't see much of a reason to post it on the EN wiki, as you're already hosting it on the INT wiki.
and I responded "I don't host it on INT-wiki, it is only in my sandbox-page".
Anyway If you not misunderstanding, why if it's already on a sandbox-page, then it is not needed to be posted on the main wiki? I think, we can put drafts on sandbox-pages for requesting critiques, and I only did so.
>Zyn
He said "I have no problem with this tool existing in the abstract" like above, so I posted it some days after I send PM again.
"In the abstract" meaning it exists somewhere.
I'm not happy with it being here.
Eh, I thought you said "There is no problem without it is already hosted on INT".
I'm not happy with it being here.
I read CSS Policy (based on GreenWolf's pointing out) and fixed the tool to comply with the policy (like prohibited "hotlinking" and "using Gogle Fonts"). The tool is not what it used to be. Can I ask you tell me why you said so?
I don't agree with making css themes easier to create.
Frankly, I find the focus on presentation over writing quality to be a negative direction.
I'm not happy that it's posted here, because I thought I'd made it clear I didn't want it posted on the EN wiki. Hosting it in the sandbox was fine.
As I said, I can't summary delete this page or anything, so what's done is done.
Hello, for any mod to see. I accidentally added on three files because I misunderstood how this worked and was having a really hard time trying to work it. They’re lesflag, and the two jgt ones. Please delete them, thank you.
This is a bad idea. By lowering the barrier to entry for making CSS themes this far, this tool is going to lead to a deluge of low effort themes by people who do not have the knowledge or inclination to maintain them, and will exhaust the resources of tech team — as it is, most of the themes on site are in violation of the current CSS policy, specifically the prohibition on hotlinking assets, and I can't imagine that this will improve that situation.
To be completely and frankly honest, the last thing this site needs is more CSS themes — and speaking as the maintainer of several major themes, and one of the people indirectly responsible for the current prevalence of themes, I would even go so far as to advocate the complete removal of CSS themes from the site. (Although I will leave that debate for a different thread.)
To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum, you spent too much time wondering whether you could, and not enough wondering whether you should.
While I agree that having everyone and their grandmom produce their own CSS theme is not an ideal situation (and I weep for the site's tech team in having to deal with the possibility of every author page having its own CSS theme, nevermind the inevitable CSS theme for CSS theme pages), I cannot find it in me to oppose the notion of providing access to resources that help people better understand how theming (and CSS) works.
Yes, I get it; a little information is a dangerous thing. But if CSS themes really do run the risk of breaking the site (literally or just aesthetically), they should be something that requires administrator approval anyway. Trying to be cagey about how much information we provide authors with runs against the spirit of collaborative work: we should strive to help authors achieve the most autonomy possible. That means trusting them with every tool we can that helps them achieve their vision and add it to the site (so long as it doesn't break the site).
Agreed. We shouldn't be restricting knowledge of stuff at all, especially if other authors were able to make CSS themes without this.
violation of the current CSS policy specifically the prohibition on hotlinking assets
I know what you mean, so I prohibit inserting absolute path into some forms(possible to insert url) by code. Hotlinking issue will not occur by this tool1.
This tool explicitly uses hotlinking to Google Fonts for its font replacement, which is neither necessary (fonts can be packaged and included as an attached file) nor allowed under the CSS Policy (and is, in fact, specifically called out as an example of unacceptable hotlinking). So it absolutely is an issue that this tool will only further exacerbate.
Honestly, the amount of CSS knowledge you need to make a theme is extremely minimal. I barely knew anything beyond making a div before I edited the MC&D theme and have since gone on to create/revise multiple themes. The Wilson's theme is hopefully commented well enough that you should just be able to read it with a basic understanding of CSS terms are and figure out what things do.
While I think there is probably some kind of problem with themes, the solution to that problem is in no way being elitist gatekeepers and restricting basic information that is already publically accessible and easy to find. Do you also think CSS themes should be bloated and uncommented messes? Or we should actively hide the code of themes on site, to prevent them from being modified?
can I get some nice "no signatures on my forum"
sigma-9 css machine broke
understandable have a nice day
Do you also think CSS themes should be bloated and uncommented messes? Or we should actively hide the code of themes on site, to prevent them from being modified?
While I disagree with GW's sentiment, I think this is an unfair dig: He's not saying we should make this harder. He's just opposed to making it easier.
To go one step further, I'll even argue that case a little: You don't install a toddler chair in a driver's seat, because you don't want to make cars easier for toddlers to drive. That doesn't mean you want to make cars harder for everyone else; you just don't want people driving cars unless they can learn to do so safely. You don't trust toddlers with this.
Where I disagree is that I do trust authors to create their own themes — even newer authors with little to no CSS experience.
(I also acknowledge that the tech team may have some serious concerns about this on the technical end, though.)
The problem with your argument is that this is not an educational resource, it is a tool for creating CSS themes, which lowers the amount of knowledge you need from "minimal" to "zero". I don't think it's particularly elitist to say that the barrier for entry to creating a CSS theme should be demonstrating, by seeking out and using aforementioned publicly accessible information, the competence and initiative necessary to maintain said theme in the long-term. It's no different than requiring site applicants to read the guides before joining the site — basic quality control is not gatekeeping.
There's actually a really good analog here in a recent program I've encountered: Grammarly.
I fucking hate Grammarly. It allows writers with a poor understanding of grammar to approximate a better understanding of grammar without obtaining that understanding through actual understanding. The amount of times I've found a piece correct grammatically — but wrong structurally and compositionally — only to discover Grammarly was the culprit? Well, it's currently more than five.
But the thing is — as much as I hate Grammarly, it leads to more writers producing more content that is grammatically sound. This produces weird gaps of competence, but it also means more people writing. And while I'll continue to argue that mastery over grammar is superior to reliance on a program, I think having more people willing to try things in the first place (because now it's more accessible) is, ultimately, a good thing for any artistic medium. Be it writing or CSS theming.
The difference between increasing the number of people writing and the number of people making CSS themes is that this is a writing site and not a CSS site - it has established systems in place to filter out badly written articles, official channels and resources to help writers improve, a culture of some reasonable expectations around writing quality, and a large proportion of the active userbase has some knowledge of how to write, even the non-writers, and provides feedback on occasion.
None of these apply for CSS themes. In theory, you can quality control CSS by downvoting articles with bad CSS and leaving feedback on article pages, but the expectations around this are murky, and I'm not comfortable downvoting good articles with bad CSS anyway. In this situation, frankly, I'm not going to feel particularly bad about gatekeeping the number of people producing CSS themes.
However, I think implying this tool will lead to a million people making low effort CSS themes is unfair; considering people don't read the guides, and this still takes some effort to use, the people who will find and use this are going to have an interest in creating CSS themes already.
Absolutely. Really, much like how joining this site doesn't enable literally anyone to be a writer, this tool doesn't automatically enable literally anyone to make a theme. There's more to it than just "look at the tool and you'll come out with a good theme", and anyone needing this page will not only be interested in creating themes, but I suspect they'll also be more likely to make good ones too. You can't just have the tools; you need to know how to use them and what you're using them for, and what they'll look like in the end. So like anything else.
This literally does allow anyone to make a theme though. You don't even need to know the hex values for the colors you want to use, because it provides a built-in color picker that will populate the fields for you. This tool allows literally anyone to simply press a few buttons and it will generate all the CSS code for a theme.
Getting into subjective territory here, but most of the themes on-site are already not good. I can't imagine reducing the work needed to create a theme to "press five buttons and upload" will somehow lead to people making good themes now. The result is almost certainly going to be a geocities-esque Web 1.0 design disaster, wherein anyone who ever thought of a color combination can make a theme without any understanding of basic design principles or accessibility concerns.
And we haven't even discussed the maintenance issues this will inevitably lead to. Every minor change to the site's structure or theme will have to be re-implemented across dozens or even hundreds of CSS themes which were made in five minutes. Do you really think that someone who just pressed a few buttons and uploaded the code that this tool spat out is going to have the knowledge, much less the inclination, to maintain their theme for what could be years? I don't! And when it breaks, it will inevitably fall to tech team to deal with the problem, and while I cannot speak for them, I highly doubt they have the manpower to maintain what could potentially be dozens of abandoned themes.
Again, this isn't a tool that just makes it easier to make themes, or helps people learn how to makes themes, this is a tool that literally makes CSS themes. I don't think y'all quite grasp the significance of what that means.
To cite an age old cliche — I think we'll just have to politely agree to disagree. Restricting access to a tool because you think it will lead to a glut of fugly art is, to me, the very antithesis of collaborative artistic expression.
If this puts an undue burden on staff (because they have to run around and take down five billion themes that break on mobile), that's one thing. I can understand how that's an issue. But permitting more people to express themselves with greater ease? That's, in my mind, entirely a good thing.
Alright, I'll rephrase what I said to actually cover what I mean and avoid using the wrong semantics: literally anyone who is able to access this page and operate its utilities and functions can make a theme, much in the same way that literally anyone can use one of the SCP sandboxes provided they are able to access those and use its utilities and functions, or that literally anyone can read the writing guides. That doesn't mean that literally anyone is capable of making a theme, or writing something for the site, it just means that the tool is there.
I've read the instructions on this page about four different times today, consulting with Wikidot's syntax pages as well, and I'm still unable to use this tool for jackshit because I'm not capable of making a theme right now. Maybe that just means I'm not smart enough to use the page, or the page instructions are a bunch of nonsense1, but not literally anyone can make a theme with this. I can't.
If people are unavailable to use the tools you give them, either literally or properly, then that doesn't mean giving them the tools was a bad idea; it just means they can't use it. We have a bunch of writing guides and essays on the site, especially ones people are told that they are actually literally required to read in order to join the site.2 The inevitability of it is that some people don't, and they either interpret said information wrong when they write or just aren't able to write something that meets the quality standards of the site. That doesn't mean the tools are at fault, even though anyone can write a thing, much like anyone can click buttons and type in values in the tool.
Getting into subjective territory here
Aside from preemptively and massively devaluing any themes people make because of this tool, good or bad, the only point in this paragraph that seems relevant is that a probable result coming from this tool would be "a geocities-esque Web 1.0 design disaster". A fair viewpoint, but if a theme complies with the CSS Policy and still seems bad, downvoting and (optionally) leaving your thoughts on it still seems like the way to go. Hopefully, the Deletions Policy will cover CSS themes that reach -10, and if they don't already, staff should seriously consider having themes fall under said policy. At that point, I don't see the issue with the subjective side of CSS themes (again, so long as they fall under the policy).
And we haven't even discussed the maintenance issues this will inevitably lead to.
I agree with a lot of this paragraph! However, it reads to me like it assumes that anyone who makes a theme, whether on their own or with this tool, would not ask a more experienced user to help them fix any issues or implement any changes, and instead will just knowingly leave their theme to rot. That seems like a really uncharitable view to default to for creators on this site.
Long post collapsed. ~Zyn
EDIT: Also, tangentially, to cover a broad point you make in this thread, so as to not reply to you countlessly in order to make a response to said point: making CSS themes easier and more accessible to make isn't a bad thing, and taking the default position of assuming that it'll lead to nothing but bad or broken themes is very pessimistic of both the userbase and their potential to create.
You don't even need to know the hex values for the colors you want to use, because it provides a built-in color picker that will populate the fields for you. This tool allows literally anyone to simply press a few buttons and it will generate all the CSS code for a theme.
Do you have issue with paint tubes that come premixed with color for painters? Do you have issue with photoshop having color wheels to pick color?
This is such a bizarre thing to argue. Tools are tools. They do not automatically allow everyone to create quality products or come up with a good idea.
Again, this isn't a tool that just makes it easier to make themes, or helps people learn how to makes themes, this is a tool that literally makes CSS themes. I don't think y'all quite grasp the significance of what that means.
Might start questioning if the sky is falling or something. I haven't seen this kind of hyperbole since my five year old nephew tripped on a toy.
7Happy7 put a lot of work in to making this tool. Clearly something he was passionate about. Instead of treating it like the CSS antichrist why not congratulate him his hard work and hope that this allows people to make quality themes in the future.
Honestly, this whole thread has me ashamed of the design community. We should be welcoming others to create more rather than shouting at the sky because it's becoming "too easy."
this isn't a tool that just makes it easier to make themes, or helps people learn how to makes themes, this is a tool that literally makes CSS themes.
This tool is for making "simple" CSS Theme.
If anyone insert values into forms without thinking, generated CSS won't break/remove some elements of site-structure, it won't change the position of the elements, it won't animate the elements, it won't change the size of characters, and it won't make some link unclickable. Because I created it as so.
Of course you can do that by this tool, but if you can do that, you are the knowledgeable about CSS.
Doesn't Grammarly have an abysmal copyright policy though?
I have absolutely no idea (but now that you've mentioned it, it's something I'll look into!).
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough when I said "extremely minimal". What I meant by that was knowing the following CSS terms: color, border, background, box-shadow, filter, !important. The only one of those terms that this tool doesn't rely on an understanding of is !important. An author who wants to make a theme can easily copy the code and simply change those terms as appropriate. This is only automating a process.
The reason I said "extremely minimal" rather than "basically none" was a realization that users had to know that color referred to text-color, rather than anything else.
can I get some nice "no signatures on my forum"
sigma-9 css machine broke
understandable have a nice day
The fact that a tool can be used wrong does not mean that said tool ought to be banned.
See: dynamite
Isn't dynamite decently hard to get and/or create, though?
Not really opposed to the driving force behind your sentiment, just the specifics of it.
Given that we’ve got an official CSS policy that requires things like this not break functionality and be accessible for everyone, having tools to make simple ones on-site is at least something we’re nominally ready for policy-wise. I’m not happy our tech team’s will was unintentionally subverted but I hope this doesn’t lead to any knee-jerk reactions against CSS themes(not singling out tech team, whom I can’t recall being guilty of this anytime recently, I’ve just been on staff long enough to know how these things shake out a lot of the time both in terms of staff and users being reactionary) and acting in the heat of the moment.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
(account deleted)
