# Quick Start Guide

Quick Start Guide to using S2 on LiveJournal

Widely considered a myth by many users of LiveJournal.com, S2 is the long-awaited new style system for LiveJournal. In four years of use, the original LiveJournal style system has allowed LiveJournal users to create truly unique layouts for their journals, but shown many limitations due to things not considered during its initial design. Some functionality has been cobbled on as an afterthought, and this has left the style system clunky and restrictive, with some ugly kludges which noone really likes.

S2 was conceived to remove all limitations and make LiveJournal truly customizable in almost any conceivable way. Redesigned from the ground up, S2 is completely different from the old style system, but introduces new functionality and makes it easier to create a complimentary set of journal views. It also adds new views, including customized comment views and, in the future, photo gallery, memory, and user information views.

## Getting to know S2

### Common Terms

#### General Terms

Journal View

  A journal view is the name for the different parts of a LiveJournal account which a user can create or customize a layout for. Someone's journal itself is called the Recent view, meaning that it shows all of that user's recent entries. The most popular view is the Friends view, with which a user can read all of their friends' updates.

Layers

  S2 uses the concept of layers to provide different levels of customization - each layer in a style deals with a different aspect of the style, ranging from color to translation to HTML options and settings. A complete style is the result of putting its different layers together for use.

#### Style Layers

Core

  The core layer is the foundation of all styles. The core layer defines all of the functions and classes available to the lower layers. The core layer itself is fully functional as well; someone could use just the core definitions for each journal view to create a working (yet rather bland) style. The core layer is mostly just a base to work from, a guide to help form a complete style that helps by patching holes where necessary.

Core - Internationalization

  The core internationalization layer provides all of the text information to help display someone's journal in a different language. This layer, like the core layer, is only really a base or a guide to create new internationalization layers from.

Layout

  A layout layer is where the real customization starts. To draw a loose comparison to the old style system, a layout layer can be regarded as an S1 style except that the S2 layout covers each journal view, unlike the s1 style that only dealt with a single view. A layout layer, much like the core layer, defines its own set of properties that change the appearance and behavior of the layout.

Internationalization

  An internationalization layer provides all of the text information that pertains to a specific layout layer, so that users can select which language their journal should display in. A complete style uses text from both an internationalization layer and the core internationalization layer.

Theme

  A theme layer uses the color properties available in a layout layer to create a unique look for the style. To draw another loose comparison to the old style system, a theme layer is much like a color theme, except that a theme is only unique to one layout, unlike its S1 counterpart, which only worked for all styles.

User

  A user layer is the final layer where most people's options will be set. Few people will create a user layer by hand, because a user layer is mostly handled by the customization wizards. To draw a final comparison to the old style system, you can think of a user layer as the equivalent to the Overrides box for S1, except there is a lot less headache involved in creating a user layer.

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## Configuring your account to use S2

To start using S2, you'll need to turn S2 on for your account. Go to , make sure the appropriate account is selected (if you control more than one account from the one you're logged into), and choose New System (S2) from the drop-down menu. Now save your changes (click Change).

You can always switch back to S1; all of your S1 styles and overrides are kept intact.

In this section, we'll go through the use of wizards. They are relatively self-explanitory by design, so this will only breifly take you through the steps.

### Selecting a Style

1. The first step is to choose a layout. You'll notice most of the S1 system styles have been ported to S2. For example purposes we'll use the default style, Generator. This should already be selected, if you haven't done any tweaking prior to reading this guide. Next to the Change button there is a link for layout previews. If you wish to see examples of other styles you may use, open this page in a new window and peruse.

2. Again, for example purposes, and because we're assuming that english is your primary language, select English in the language section.

3. Next you can choose a theme for your layout. Themes are basically just default sets of colors that we've chosen to help you start customizing your journal. You can preview each theme by selecting the (previews) link, located next to the Change button. If no color themes are to your liking, you can override any color by creating a new user layer, which we'll explain how to do next.

4. Now that you've chosen a style, a language, and a color theme, you can begin creating a custom user layer by clicking the Customize… button at the bottom of the page.

### Creating a user layer

1. On the Customize page, the first set of options is devoted to tweaking all of the available colors from the style you've chosen. For brevity purposes we'll only change two colors (feel free to change more as you see fit).

   Assuming you've chosen the Generator style, scroll down to the Page background color (and around userpics) option and select the Override button; from here you can press Choose for a pop-up color selector, or you can simply enter the hexadecimal color code if you know it. For demonstration purposes you can simply type `#cef5c1` in the given box. Scroll down to the Background color for the bar below entries option, select Override, and enter the following hex code: `#f1fded`. If you have JavaScript enabled in your browser, you'll see the color previews dynamically change when you click outside of the option box.

2. Now that a couple of colors have changed, scroll down to the Box width (pixels) option. Select Override and enter the value `400`.

3. Move to the next section labelled Link text to leave a comment, select Override, and enter `Post a new comment`. For the next option, Link text to read comment, select Override and enter `A single, lonely comment // Its a party in here with # people!`. Enter these same values for the friends view entry comment links.

4. Click on the Save button when you've completed the steps above. Now, view your journal. Notice th colors, the width, and the comment links.

## Where to go from here

  We've made a manual available that covers every topic related to using S2 on LiveJournal. As a matter of fact you're currently reading a chapter from the manual. To start from the beginning, navigate to .

LJ Style Discussion

  LJ Style Discussion is a community on LiveJournal.com that covers most S1 and S2 discussions. This community has been sanctioned by administrators of LiveJournal as an official community.

S2 Practice Discussion

  S2 Practice Discussion is a community on LiveJournal.com that deals with introducing S2 to members of LiveJournal's support team. The introductory text available in the community was actually used to write portions of this chapter.