Front Page Redesign Released · 5:01pm Apr 20th, 2013
For those that were interested, I've released the custom front page layout I mentioned previously. The timing may seem odd, but I've actually been sitting on the mostly-complete version for a few days now to make sure nothing breaks it. It's hard to be sure, but it seems to be working well enough to release.
No Title Image is a separate style.
Get the script for Greasemonkey (Firefox) or Tampermonkey (Chrome)
Get the style for Stylish (Firefox) or Stylish (Chrome)
Note #1: To make full use of this style, the companion user script is required.
Note #2: This style overrides the background color to #03081a, but leaves the background pattern and image alone. Visit this page to change them if you desire. I recommend the "plaster" or "waves" patterns, with no image. Sadly the stars do not work well with the transparency. Hindsight is 20/20.
Features:
* Super-snazzy color scheme vaguely resembling the princess of the night (Ie. It's blue.)
* Displays the featured stories all at once, and makes them the focus of the front page.
* Layout dynamically shifts to accommodate various resolutions (not tested on mobile yet, sorry. Let me know if you do try it.)
* Appends the remaining "popular stories" to the same list, in a more compact format. (Script required)
* Allows expanding featured stories to view their non-truncated descriptions. (Script required)
* Moves the latest stories and new stories lists to their own tabs and allows each to be refreshed individually. (Script required)
* Loads higher resolution covers for sections that weren't using them. Loads are deferred until needed. (Script required)Un-Features:
* This style includes the recent news box if used with the user script, but does not show the Twitter box. Subscribe to Knighty on Twitter if that's your thing. This may change in an update, in which case it will share space with the recent news box and allow toggling between the two.
* This style ONLY changes the front page. As such, the appearance of the user toolbar will not be consistent with the rest of the site. Sorry. I started to make the theme work with the rest of the site, but quickly realized that doing so would be a whole project on its own.
I, um, I may have gotten a little carried away with the whole javascript thing. And the transparency thing. They might not go together too well on some systems 
. Separating each section into its own separate refreshable "front page" seemed like it was worth it, though. The transparency, on the other hand, is kind of just me being lazy.
I was going to have multiple themes and everything, but things don't always go as planned. I've marked the style and script as public domain, so if anyone wants to base things on it, feel free. All of the styles for colors are at the bottom of the stylesheet, so it should be pretty easy.
I'm not completely happy with it from an aesthetic standpoint, but you do what you can with what you have. Overwriting styles and working in the framework of existing HTML is far from an ideal development environment. 
Anyway, I hope it's useful to someone.
Is there any chance you'll release the 'day' version of this script as well? I love the layout, but find the light blue text on the dark blue background somewhat difficult to read.
Also, is there some way to expand the panels for the popular stories past the first twelve, so their descriptions can be read as well?
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I'll see what I can do about some extra color combinations with less pointless transparency, but no promises until things settle down here.
As for the popular stories that don't have descriptions, sadly, I'm somewhat limited to what's already on the front page. Technically, I could load a story's page in the background and fetch the description, but that would be non-trivial to actually code and then design around, and I really should be spending time on more important things, sorry.
Maybe some time down the line, assuming Knighty doesn't break the whole thing before I can get some time to spend on it.
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Also, as a point of curiosity, what fimfiction pattern/background are you using with the theme? I wonder if I shouldn't have overridden that too...
Sweet, I'm going to give this a shot. I only wish I could offer useful feedback if it was needed, but my knowledge of scripting is limited.
Also, sorry for the late comment.
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I use the 'plaster' background pattern, the 'trees' background image, and leave the background color section blank. I hope that helps.
Edit:
Also, if you refresh the front page a few times without the scripts, the popular stories that have descriptions shown change each time. Could you use that somehow?