[thesite] alternate color schemes

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Sun Jan 21 23:00:31 CST 2001


> From: "jeff" <jeff at lists.evolt.org>
> 
> it came from an interpretation of what others saw as functionality.  taking
> another's work, even if you alter it to some degree, is still taking
> another's work.  i'd rather not be one to facilitate that.

i don't consider a stylesheet to be intellectual property... maybe it's 
just me, but it's just a *stylesheet*... applying some preferences to 
a pre-existing design... kinda like the windows 'appearance' 
controls, which don't seem to be intellectual property to me...

> besides, making just the ones a user owns editable is infinitely easier than
> allowing them to edit someone else's that they happen to be using to view
> the site and then know that it needs to be saved as a new one if they go to
> save it.

that i would agree with... a user should be able to view any 
stylesheet, but as soon as a change is made (and that user isn't 
the same as the stylesheet's creator), it's saved as a new 
stylesheet and associated with the user who just edited it...

> sorta.  i see it more as intellectual property.  it's the same as articles
> really.  you wouldn't want me to build a tool that would give another user
> the ability to change a couple of words in an article you'd written and save
> it as if they'd written it would you?  nothing different here at all.

an article is a collection of research, opinions, assertions, and all 
sorts of intellectual investment... a stylesheet is what you do to 
make something easier to see/use... some people may go to town 
on it and upload their own images as bgs, for instance, but they 
should be warned up-front that others can access those images...

> think of the stylesheets as skins for evolt like you can get skins for
> winamp, icq, etc.  there are people that put alot of hours into these
> creations.  we shouldn't make it so easy for others to steal their work.

maybe i'm the only one who thinks this, but i don't see people 
making as many and as granular changes as we're discussing... of 
course, i'm biased, my original coding of the CSS had all sorts of 
interlinked styles, but now *everything* will be customizable... as 
such, that's too much for me to mess around with... too many 
options to make it worth my time, so i'm just going to tweak font 
sizes and maybe content area colors... or choose a pre-defined 
theme...

if anybody puts that much time into creating a CSS doc, then they 
should be told up-front what others can do with it...

perhaps we might want to consider allowing people to link to local 
stylesheets?  off their own hard drive?  where no one can steal 
those nekkid images of their girl/boy?

> that's not what i'm talking about at all.  i'm simply referring to user x
> coming up with a great scheme and user y coming along, editing a couple of
> small things and saving a copy of it as their own.  not likely that user x
> will get credit for the original work.
> 
> :~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> : I guess you want credit for good color
> : schemes, is that what this is driving at?
> :~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> correct - credit where credit is due.

then some schemes get a special place on the site?  in the pre-
defined area?  or most popular?  that way credit can be assigned 
for those who really feel they need it...

> so, using my article analogy, would you mind if i copied your article and
> saved that copy as my own creation so long as it identifies you as the
> original author and me as the "tweaker"?  personally, i'd rather that wasn't
> possible.  it dilutes the pool of good data (articles, schemes, whatever).

that's a hella difference and you know it... the two are not equal...
 
> this has nothing to do with sharing.  you share your scheme by
> making it's priv level low enough that everyone can see it and/or
> use it.  whether or not people choose to surf the site using that
> scheme is what constitutes sharing.  however, making it easy for
> others to edit the author's original work goes way beyond sharing.

then don't share it... if you want to keep it, set your priv on it higher 
so no one else can see it... in our world, sharing code is pretty well 
understood, why not styles?  they're just more code applied to a 
pre-existing design, aren't they?

> another idea this brings up is using these static .css files on the rest of
> thesite as well.  that would make for a much faster response from the
> server.  when you log in and select a new scheme, it'd simply load up the
> scheme and dump it in your css file.  then, the <link> tag to the external
> stylesheet would point at this file.  now, there's only one query to the
> database for your scheme, and then, it's only when you change something.

i thought that was the plan for pre-selected schemes and such, 
right?  so, instead apply it to every scheme?

as for the rest of this, does anyone think we're over-engineering the 
styles?  am i the only one who thinks that they'll be woefully 
underutilized by our users?

as for the granularity of the control, i've mentioned it before, so this 
will be the last time, but i just want re-state that i think we're 
offering way too much granularity in what can be tweaked... so 
much so that it's daunting... and i'm most interested to see how 
the hell we're gonna build a UI that makes sense... but that's a 
dead issue, it seems, so i'll drop it here...





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