Site Update » New formatting options · 6:02am Oct 16th, 2014
We've added some new formatting options to the chapter formatting dialog. People have asked for better dark schemes, and we now have a few that are tinted towards a color, as well as "Ultra Dark", which has a true black background. Alongside these new options, we've improved all dark schemes to fade out the overall site background when you're reading the chapter, which gets rid of those annoying light-colored bars on the sides of the page, which made those options significantly less useful.
In addition to color options, we've added font options too, including a few common serif/sans-serif fonts that we missed, as well as a bunch of "Cursive" fonts, which attempt to emulate handwriting in some way. Some people have a hard time reading "computer font" text, we hope that the handwriting-like options will at least help.
We've also added some accessibility features to both the color and font lists, there are two new high-contrast color schemes, and we've added support for common dyslexia fonts, if you have them installed on your computer.
Edit: Quote box formatting has been improved inside stories, especially for dark schemes.
OK but can you add a Button Mash tag?
Since this is a formatting post. I've gotten a comment on one of my stories which mentioned that italics do not show up on some mobile devices. Is this an issue that could easily be fixed?
Btw, loving that ultra dark option. Gonna use that for night reading from now on. Far easier on the eyes.
2536097
That's unfortunately an issue with some mobile browsers missing italic fonts and other fun bugs... it's hard for us to fix on our end. They can try setting the font to "Open Sans" in the dropdown, it's the one used by the rest of the site and should support italics on everything...
We still have the Applejack Orange text field when trying to edit chapters or blogs, though.
But where is the critical wingdings font?
2536101
Ah, excellent. I've pasted your response onto a reply to said comment. Hopefully said user will be able to enjoy beautiful italics from now on.
2536094
This, please
Why don't I have a purple name!?
2536102
Fixed.
(I actually noticed the issue when I wrote this post...)
2536114 Thank you!
No more eyestrain.
Thank you for these changes. As a person who has trouble reading black text on white backgrounds for long periods of time I have always used the dark themes. The fading out of the sides thing is very appreciated. The quote boxes were really awful before, I can't wait until I see the new ones.
Thank you, sweet merciless Admin. Thank you, praise you, give
2536094 his tag. Please.
Yeah, the darker themes will make reading in low- or no light even more pleasant, thanks!
2536114 Not sure if this is the right place to ask but since this is a 'site update' post... What happened to all the info in the 'personal info' section of the user page? It used to have last log in, joined date, and story views. I kinda liked those - they let you know if someone is active or not. It lets me know if there's any chance stories are going to updated.
Very nice!
Though I wish safari was more compatible with the new site format.
*Look at the new formatting options
*Try the "Princess Celestia" color scheme
3.bp.blogspot.com/-tl4N51R5ric/UD2WGGFR9PI/AAAAAAAAB70/CIn3p92XMm4/s1600/Princess-Trollestia-princess-trollestia-28518921-894-894.jpg
Dammit Celestia!
I actually preferred the lighter bars off to the sides when reading on the computer. (dont see them at all when reading from either mobile device)
One thing I would like to see would be to be able to use different fonts when writing certain sections... but I guess that would not work well with giving the reader the font choice.
I shall check out the new fonts. As for background, I will stay with the medium dark, which is easiest on my eyes.
Overall, the latest updates have proven to be very well done.
One thing I would like to see is the Top rated fics, Most followed users, and top commentors lists returned... A while back, I was told that you was working on fixing that part of the site stats... but now, I see it all gone. Thats a bummer.
I love this! Thanks dude!
A bug I've noticed since the library update that seems to be steadily growing more common is that using an offline dowloader, like pocket or instapaper, results in either no chapter or a chapter that is most definite NOT from the story link, usually previous blog posts for the story in question.
Not entirely sure how this happens or who would take care of it, but its a grating issue, as I prefer the interface of pocket or instapaper over a browser or my HTML reader (which is built for actual paper book emulation, creating quite the odd look)
Yessssss, quotes for us darklings. This makes me way happier than it should.
2536168
The problem with letting authors pick fonts is actually worse than this: there aren't any fonts we can guarantee the user has installed, especially on mobile devices. The font list automatically determines which fonts are supported by the user's browser. (For the privacy worried: we never transmit this data, it is only used locally.) On top of this, allowing authors to pick fonts means authors can pick hard to read fonts, and they might not even realize just how hard it is for some people to read certain fonts!
Consider a dyslexic user for example, it's often very hard for dyslexics to read serif fonts, so if the author were to pick one for a section...
It's just too likely to lead to unreadable text, and authors already have access to a lot of formatting options they can use. (You'll rarely see books change font, for example...)
2536200 lol I'm dyslexic, but I am one who has no issue with fonts... I guess I am lucky in that regard
Awesome! Every useful improvement to visibility and accessibility is highly appreciated.
Thank you very much for adding the auto dimmer to the background of the site. It's much nicer to read on my PC now.
Cool work. The "handwriting" fonts look a little weird, but I'm not gonna be using them anyway. What I would really appreciate seeing the default ordering for all bookshelves being set to "updated".
2536094 Button Mash? We still need a decent Power Ponies tag.
2536221
They're better at larger sizes or high-DPI screens, but they're mostly there for a fairly limited set of users that prefer them. The fonts and colors are intended as options, we expect most users will have fairly specific preferences and find most of the rest uninteresting.
2536224 And the bookshelves? As I recall, the "added" ordering was one of the big complaints early on. The red text to the right of each bookshelf title only helps a little bit.
Oh, one little suggestion: Can you adjust the font contrast on Author's Notes? They're still a tad off. Other than that, I love it!
2536233
Yeah, we know the author's notes sections are still a bit messy, we'll hopefully get those fixed tomorrow.
2536234 Sweet.
2536101
Curse you Droid Sans, CURSE YOU! I still don't know what they were thinking when they omitted italics from the default font for a whole set of devices...
As a point of pendantry, I would have called these display options. Formatting, in my mind, would refer to the actual semantic markup. Regardless, glad to see some attention being paid to it. Seems a bit weird having to scroll a whole inch or so of the text offscreen before the fading kicks in, but oh well.
Sadly, the new options still don't cover my preferred theme either (charcoal page background, medium-grey story background, black text), but that's easy enough to fix with userstyles, and I don't imagine I speak for anyone else in the desire for such a color scheme. Might as well mention it though.
Was comic sans in the list before? I don't feel like it was. No comment
2536256
If you do mess with userstyles, formatting #chapter_format will automatically change the page background, the background control logic is already aware of how to figure out what overall color to use. (assuming it picks reasonably accurately, but it should with the named scheme you mentioned...)
Thank you! The white bars at the side when you put the background in dark was bothering me too.
2536258
It's dynamic? That's neat, though it rules out background images. I'll fool around with it and see what I can get it to do, thanks.
2536260
If you set both an image and a color, images should work fine. (setting a fallback color when using an image is good practice anyway.)
2536261
Err, sorry, I meant for the body background. I wouldn't use a textured background behind text
(Edit: That is, in fact, totally a thing I have done
)
2536264
FYI, if you want to use a userscript to add a custom scheme, add entries to the dialog and define stuff for the content_format_valueofoptionyouadded CSS class. Although I will warn that this and the other info I just told you is not to be considered part of an API contract, if we change how schemes work, it might break. (the dialog control has the ID of format_colours and should be fine to inject into, although the timing of it setting the value for the dialog might cause issues...)
since i can actually expect a reply from you, how is that api thing coming along? i have seen some stuff from unofficial sources but none of that /api/v2/stuff seems to work right now
2536269
We'll hopefully be able to let a few developers onto the API platform soon.
2536270 sweet
prolly not me though
2536146 I tried it after your comment and I laughed so hard. Thanks.
2536265
I probably won't go as far as making a userscript for it, but it's good to know.
That's fine by me. I'm used to my userscripts and userstyles breaking
Just gave the Dark Purple view a test run, and I rather like the fadeout effect so I hate to be a noodge, but I'd like to suggest making all of the page elements darken -- specifically, the author's note box and the page selection/up-downvote bar came up rather glaring at the bottom of the read.
Incidentally, I really like the 'chapter length' bar across the top previously added. Differentiating between content and commentary is something I'd like to see a lot more websites do.
Given the effects of the Celestia theme (well-played you knobs), I am sorely disappointed that the Luna theme doesn't convert all story text to faux-Elizabethan and put random sentences in all caps.
2536135
Neither of these answers are really satisfactory, but they’re O.K. as a temporary workaround:
Go to their page and mouse over the icon to the left of their name and that info will come up in a tool tip. The icon itself will be green if they’re online.
Mouse over their name.
I just noticed something odd. I glanced through the other comments and didn't see anyone else point this out yet. That, or I missed it because I'm stupid.
fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/289/2/8/_viewingstory_by_8542madness-d830jtm.png
I took this screenshot while viewing my story. It says I have two stories, but I actually have three.
fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/289/b/7/_viewingprofile_by_8542madness-d830jtd.png
This screenshot from my user page correctly says that I have three stories.
Just wanted to make sure that staff were aware of the problem. It felt a bit strange to be reading a story written by someone that was displayed as not having any stories.
2536314
I've seen this problem too, and there is a chance it is intentional. It only happens when you are looking at one of the stories that would otherwise be included in the count.
I am getting a small amount of layout funniness with the Formatting button on the mobile layout:
i.imgur.com/tn7w70Z.jpg
i.imgur.com/6MCfxIz.jpg
(Screen captures from a few days ago, but still accurate for the bug I am reporting.)
Could probably be solved fairly easily by dropping the label and just displaying the stylized A, would give plenty of spare layout room in order to prevent the wrapping.
Incidentally, thank you so very much for the addition of the Post Comment button in the mobile layout. Bookshelves be dammed, I want to buy the entire staff a beer/beverage of choice for that change alone.
This is rather tangential, but I've asked before and didn't receive any answer.
Any chance of spoiler tags being added to the quick bar? Perhaps it's just me, but I use them nearly as much as the italics option.
On more related bits though, I love the new ultra dark. Really nicely crisp and readable.
Speaking of wrong counts, any idea why when you open an unread chapter, the "favourite" counter does not update?
If you change/refresh the page or open a new tab it shows the correct number but when you first open the chapter, the counter stays the same it was before.
It's not really too much of an issue it's just a bit misleading.