<thespook>This skin wouldn't have been made if =frozenpandaman hadn't had provided me the inspiration, so go thank him for the brilliant idea. I just coded it

<thespook> (updated to reflect the slight changes we made from his initial screenshot)

<thespook>There is a bit of work to be done still, mainly in the privclass... err, I mean sidebar area. If I can find a way to block people from sticking stamps in it I'll be happy

While I expect it will look like ass in just about anything that isn't Firefox, feel free to let me know all the same. I have a laptop running windows with IE7, Opera, and Safari installed, so I'll be testing it in them - if you want to go through the trouble of sending screenshots of how broken it is, don't bother if it's in one of those browsers

It'll be going public soon, so if you have any suggestions, leave a comment! I don't use dAmn as much as you crazy people do, so if there's some feature of dAmn you want me to work in I'd love to hear it!

I am planning to write a script that people can use to convert raw chat logs into the HTML structure required for this journal skin, but if you're a dapper coder then I wouldn't object to letting you save me the effort

So. enough yammering, enjoy my little play below, and have fun exploring the skin

(ps. `wroth, ^bleedsopretty and myself never had this conversation, the following is total fiction created to illustrate one way this skin can be used)

<thespook> hey guys!

<thespook>

<bleedsopretty> thespook: you scared him away!

<wroth> damned dialup!

<thespook> I don't know how you maintain =resurgere on dialup mate. That's some love right there!

<wroth> lol. don't get me started! you try uploading a 10mb file on dialup, only to have it timeout at 95%... you get zen Buddhist real quick, let me tell you, or otherwise you go buffalo tipping to vent the anger. weee!

<thespook> buffalo tipping? ...anyhow, I had something to tell you guys! today while browsing around, I was at your page wroth, when I noticed in your userpage comments that =frozenpandaman had left a comment. He'd left me a comment earlier, and I hadn't yet visited his userpage. So I did. And while I was admiring his splendor, I noticed he had a journal css design in his gallery - and it looked like one modeled after dAmn. I LOLed and clicked through to see if he had coded it. HE HAD NOT!

so for great justice (err. not for *forgreatjustice, but err, y'know. for the greater good) I thought I'd have a good time and code it up for him.

faaark. it was fun, but like, fun like trying to solve a Rubik's cube when you're not very good at them (I'm not very good at them, but I got close once!). Okay, that's not fun, but coding this journal still was. err. okay, forget the damned analogy - I hit a few bumps while working on it. One of them being the DA WENT INTO THE READONLY MODE!.

all was not lost, however! I could shoot over to `xork's MOST AWESOME JOURNLA CSS EDITOR

<wroth> thespook: broken link?

<thespook> err. woops, JOURNAL CSS EDITOR

<thespook> ...err. so. after copying the code across to his MOST AWESOME JOURNAL CSS EDITRO I noticed a few minor differences. I wasn't sure if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me (no, not ~eyes, y'know... but my evolutionarily impossible looking devices) BUT I COULD't check could I? DA WAS THE READ ONLY!

<thespook> err. wait, I need to poop. brb!

<wroth> oh man, does he always talk that much?

<bleedsopretty> everyday. every goddamned day.

<wroth>

<wroth> here's something to cheer you up, worked for $Moonbeam13 when *Mollinda sent them to her

• *genosfear


• Michael Gee


• Deviant of Many Talents

<bleedsopretty> does that work in all the chat rooms? I've never seen it before.

<wroth> naw, it only works in #journal. is he back yet?

<bleedsopretty> no... but I can hear some very strange sounds coming from the bathroom. I hope he's alright

<bleedsopretty> I can has scullplz! -

<bleedsopretty> there he goes again. and right as thespook comes back

thespook I think this time you scared him away

<bleedsopretty> either that or your smell scared him away.

thespook

thespook anyway. like I was saying. I worked on the skin in `xork's journal editor, and kept checking back to see if deviantart had come out of read only mode. then, when it did, and I plugged my code back into it, everything was all messed up. It didn't take long to fix, but it turned out that my use of the paragraph tag was the problem.

<bleedsopretty> the paragraph tag?

<thespook> yeah, hardly anyone uses it because deviantart basically 'generates' the paragraphs by inserting break tags, but we can still use them, and I used them in the skin to create each person's post to the chat. Since deviantart doesn't actually tell us anywhere that the paragraph tag is able to be used, it's fair that `xork didn't catch it.

<thespook> ...and regardless, I don't think he expected anyone to try build anything as complicated as this skin using his editor

<thespook> well, had a short talk with `xork in the comments... and it would seem there isn't a problem with paragraphs after all. Not sure what it was, because it was something, but it's definitely not paragraph tags....

<wroth> weee! you should have seen those buffalo!

<wroth> uh... guys?