Kluged! Custom AO3 Skin

[jesse_the_k]

I’ve tried to follow the Archive of Our Own's instructions to modify the ones on offer and achieved zilch.

What I want when I view the archive: [ETA, kluged something workable]

• Display the work text in the same font as my browser default
• Provide visual clue that when I've already given kudos to a work I believe that if this is implemented through a site skin, I will have the same experience on laptop as on tablet.

Can you do this? Happy to discuss payment.

If you can't do this, feel free to point me to a better place to ask.

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ETA: 25 March. Thank heavens kate_nepveu told me about the helpful tool at greasyfork.org/scripts/5835-ao3-kudosed-and-seen-history. I plugged that userscript into Tampermonkey and it solves my #2 issue.

AO3 screenshot of fic where I left kudos. A gray box with AO3 logo encloses the meta info at top. New "Seen" button between the "Bookmark" and "Mark for later" buttons. When I click the "Seen" button it becomes "Unseen." Min, the script's author, helpfully warns me that this action won't unsee the fic itself.

ETA2 27 March. Turns out AO3 has a wizard which helped me create a very basic serif-only skin. I visited: https://archiveofourown.org/skins/new?wizard=true

Specified the font as "Isidore, Alegreya, Georgia, serif" (no quotes), upped the margins to 10%, and picked colors more-or-less at random. Even though Isidore & Alegreya are installed, I see Georgia. But Georgia is better than sans-serif.

AO3 Screenshot with cool grey background and very dark blue type, as well as the "already kudos" banner and "seen" button offered by the script in previous screenshot

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

...and melannen's post on Advanced AO3 Search operators is amazing and you should read it.

[greywash]

I thiiiiiink you're going to have a hard time doing this consistently as a site skin, because I'm pretty sure "have I left kudos on this story" isn't available as something that you detect in a way that CSS styling (alone) can respond to. I just went and checked the source on two separate stories (one I have left kudos on, and one I haven't) to see if I could identify a flag to use, but it looks like the thing that tells the browser whether or not you've left kudos is a token sent to "/kudos"—i.e., it needs to make another request to grab that info.

Even if it didn't need that additional request, since AFAIK skins are CSS only (no JavaScript allowed), it'd need to be indicated somewhere in the hierarchy for displaying the page background to be able to style it via a skin. If you could do something with JS, you could in *theory* try to pick up your name in the kudos section—but that'd still cause problems, because if a story picks up enough kudos, you start running into the "and 62 other users left kudos on this work" problem.

IDK though, maybe someone with more experience specifically with the AO3 system knows a way around this...

[jesse_the_k]

kate_nepveu linked me to a userscript which displays the kudos beautifully--edited a screenshot into my post.

[kate_nepveu]

this will mark fics that you've seen and that you've kudosed: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/5835-ao3-kudosed-and-seen-history

which may make me move to Firefox for mobile browsing since Tampermonkey works much better there!

Bless you with a thousand finished WIPs all on the same day

[jesse_the_k]

That script works a treat.

(Tragically Firefox on iOS doesn't offer Tampermonkey--no iOS browsers have this capacity AFAIC search.)

Re: Bless you with a thousand finished WIPs all on the same day

[kate_nepveu]

bummer about iOS, but yay that it works otherwise!

[jeshyr]

OK I tried googling and it seems the magic keyword "initial” works in some browser but not others.

I tried going into AO3 site skin wizard and putting the word "initial” (lowercase, no quotes) into where it wants a font name and changing nothing else.

In Safari at least, it seems to work! Have not tested anywhere else.

[jeshyr]

In case anybody else wants to research further, I got that from here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20590107/css-for-browser-default-font

[jesse_the_k]

Your searching skills are awesome!

As it happens, I found a nifty userscript on Userstyles.org call AO3 Plain which has a "customize" function.

It works when installed with Tampermonkey. I'm now poking it to turn it into a site skin.

[jeshyr]

Whatever works is good!