Hacking Dreamwidth for Mobile

[auronlu]

Hey! I think this is gonnna work!

There's two reasons why I'm terrible about keeping up with Dreamwidth. The first is that I'm spread too thin across too many different platforms and interests. The second is that I've moved almost entirely to mobile, and DW sucks on mobile.

I can't do much about the first, but I've developed some hacks to help with the second. I'd already tweaked DW so it was easier to read. Now I've found a tool to make writing easier, either using iPad splitscreen mode or iPhone app switcher. (Sorry, I am only an iOS person, but so are a lot of you.)

(View full-sized screenshot)

Find a mobile-friendly journal style

My journal style is Purple Haze. There are ways to tweak it in journal customization > "Presentation" so that it displays the blog in a single column (posts above, sidebar content below) on mobile devices with small screens. To do that, I have the sidebar set to 15em, and the width at which it switches to two column set at 45em.

Nested comments on mobile

Still in journal customization > "Presentation" I set Indentation to "Responsive," which is supposed to adjust according to screen size, and nested comment depth to 8. I'm still experimenting to see what works best.

Back on main account settings I also checked "Display Explicit Comment Hierarchy Indicators" which I'm hoping will make the comment sequence clear if I choose "flat view" for comments while viewing individual posts.

Making text bigger

I haven't needed to tweak font sizes much, because I think my devices are using the larger font size I've chosen in iOS accessibility settings. But if you need to, you can customize fonts for your journal style. Change the size of the "base font" using percentage (larger or smaller than the default) or ems.

Force DW to display content to you in your custom style

In Account Settings > Display I've overridden other people's journal styles in the "Shown to you" section: I set "my own style" for entry pages, icon pages, other people's journals.

Wait, the account settings pages aren't using my theme

I guess with all of those text fields, menus, and checkboxes they had to exert more control over layout to make sure all of the options are visible. So there are only a limited number of "skins." I find the "celerity" skin to be the most readable (Account settings > display). YMMV.

OK, that's all well and good, but it doesn't solve the problem that post entry boxes and comment entry boxes are a pain in the neck to use.

Compose post in text app

For composing posts, I've now got the Drafts app which I'm using with Dreamwidth on splitscreen. I put !markdown on its own line at the top of the post, then use markdown code to compose most of the post. For cut text, use

<cut text="blah">blah blah</cut>

Then I copy and paste the draft over to the DW post entry box - html tab, and turn off auto formating - and only have to fuss with a few pulldown menus and buttons that are very small on the phone.

Posting via email

DW also works pretty well if I write the draft as above and post via email. In this case, I write the post headers using this template, then !markdown on its own line, then body text.

The advantage to posting via email is that I can set post tags, icons, etc simply by writing text, without fussing with DW's tiny buttons and text boxes. The disadvantage is that gmail sometimes screws up links by putting line breaks in long URLs.

I've tried sending email posts in html format, but then it skips extra lines between paragraphs. [EDIT: AHA! enclose the post in <raw-code>blah blah</raw-code> to disable auto-formatting, i.e. those annoying extra line breaks.]

Posting comments

Comment fields on DW only understand html and plain text, not rich text or markdown. No problem! The drafts app "Markdown" toolbar has a "copy as HTML" button.

I think, with these hacks, I'm going to stop wishing for a Dreamwidth app.

I hope this helps somebody. It helps me, because I figure things out by explaining them. And I need to figure out how to do this before December, because I always visit my parents for two weeks over the holidays, and I want to be able to post/edit chapters while I am gone.

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Markdown Cheat Sheet

Comments

[sarasa_cat]

All of this post interests me. Will give it a serious read very very soon. (Lol, when not on my phone which is sort of ironic given the subject).