Ok. I have worked and worked this weekend to come up with a way to "skin" the new version of DailyKos to address some of the major issues I've seen folks having. For me, the wide, empty left and right margins were the driver behind figuring out how to do this.
With lots of help and collaboration from folks like Omir The Storyteller, Brady47, NeutralObserver and atomicbirdsong, I humbly submit this for you to try.
Update [2005-6-26 17:44:33 by RenaRF]: Retired was kind enough to suggest a fix to the comment width issue - she said it was suggested by
Brady47. I have made the suggested change to both the ads and no ads versions of the CSS "skinning" file (found below) and they both WORK!! You can re-follow the whole process if you want to implement it. Thanks retired!!
First, please be aware of a few things. I am not a developer. I monkeyed with this and magically it worked. I used the fact that my screen resolution is 1268 x 768 as a starting point and the solution is geared towards users who have the same resolution settings. Further, there are likely buggy things and implications to other web pages that I have yet to discover, so keep that in mind.
A few things you will HAVE to have to skin it:
1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Firefox URIid extension
3. Firefox ChromEdit extension
4. IF you subscribe and have ads turned OFF click here.
5. IF you do NOT subscribe and have to view ads click here.
It addresses the following issues:
With NO ads:
1. Widens the main DailyKos container to 1220 pixels
2. Widens the main DailyKos body (where front page diaries live) to 950 pixels.
3. Moves the right sidebar navigation menu all the way over and moves it up so that it's only 10 pixels below the top of the page.
4. Gets rid of the dotted horizontal lines.
5. Takes the majority of the pages to a light gray background.
With ads:
1. Widens the main DailyKos container to 1220 pixels
2. Widens the main DailyKos body (where front page diaries live) to 840 pixels.
3. Moves ads over to the far right and closer to the top of the page.
4. Moves the sidebar navigation menu to the LEFT of the ads and moves them closer to the top of the page.
5. Gets rid of the dotted horizontal lines.
6. Takes the majority of the pages to a light gray background.
Want to know what to do?? Here you go.
1. Download and install the Firefox URIid extension. NOTE: ensure firefox doesn't block the download - if it does, you'll see an indicator at the top of the browser and you have to 'edit options' and 'allow' downloads. You should be able to click 'Install' - that's how you'll know it worked.
2. Download and install the Firefox ChromEdit extension - NOTE: same install considerations as above.
3. Shut down Firefox and restart it.
4. Go to 'Tools' and select 'Edit User Options'. This will open a new window with tabs at the top. Select the 'userContent.css' tab and delete anything already in the window.
5. Select either of the two links I provided in numbers 4 and 5 above, depending on your ad status. Copy EVERYTHING after the goofy 'About Me...' at the top of the page and copy it.
6. Go back to your ChromEdit userContent.css tab and copy everything into the window.
7. Click 'Save' (bottom left) of the ChromEdit window and completely close ChromeEdit and Firefox.
8. Re-open FireFox and go to DailyKos.
If you can't live with what you wind up with, you can always go back to ChromEdit and delete everything in the userContent.css tab and re-save to revert.
Cheers!!