Most important thing first: tell us a bit about yourself and what you are doing here at dA, especially for those who might not know you yet.

My name is Jon Spence, and I mostly tool around with Stylish (extension to allow custom CSS on any website) various places to change how things look, or mostly just hide random crap.

Hi there! Long time deviant here (read: old fart). I discovered deviantART many years ago while searching for applications skins (for programs like Winamp), but ultimately joined because of its users' awesome drawings. I've been a pencil artist all my life, but what i saw on dA blew me away – and inspired me to push my own artistic talent. I eventually ended up working for deviantART's Creative Staff on a freelance basis for a couple years, where i mostly coded News articles and Journal skins. These days i'm still on a "soul search", i guess, when it comes to my art.

Hi, I'm Trezoid, and I make pixels dance and perform other shenanigans in the pursuit of my evil plans making things easier to use.

How did you get into styling websites, so that they please your sense of style? Was it just curiosity or the urge to make things better? And is it more a passion or a hobby for you? Like you do it, because you love it so much or you do it, because it is fun to modify other websites and you like to see how much can be altered.

And honestly, I learned CSS basically through trying to style my journal, ever since they let us CSS them So I have dA to thank for that. From then on out, it's been using Stylish and learning what all it can do (basically any CSS) that's made me learn what I know. And I basically just style sites when I know that I'll be returning to them, and something about the current style is just stupid

Why am i writing User styles? Good question. First and foremost, because i can. But let me elaborate a bit…

I first came across website styling when `thespook started writing snippets of CSS for dA many years ago, in a time before Stylish. (Back then it was rather cumbersome to apply a style to a site: You basically had to manually add all the code to one central file in Firefox. Stylish made things a lot easier, as you can imagine.) I guess you could say it was curiosity when i picked it up myself. The possibility to change any website to your own whims was truly fascinating. And i guess i am rather whimsical when it comes to my own tastes.

These days i primarily modify websites that are too bright for me. I sit in front of the PC all day, and my eyes are rather sensitive, so any shade of grey is preferred over plain white.

And yes, i like doing this. A lot!

I got into userstyles originally as an offshoot of writing stylesheets for dAmn chats through the original dAmn styler plugin. I started making a lot of little styles for things that bothered me or ideas other had, mostly that I never released, and eventually started releasing some really big styles that overhauled the entirety of dA (and a few other websites).

While working on User Styles, do you have a special routine or do you just randomly add bits here and there? Maybe you even work on exact plans/ideas before you get started?

I typically just add bits and pieces here and there when something I notice stands out enough. I don't go into a Stylish with a "OK, time to totally redo this" aspect. More of a "Huh, I should probably change this one thing" sort of thing.

I usually start with adjusting the main background colour. After that, i just keep going – or not, depending on how badly i feel a site needs to be changed. But no, i have no routine. It's different of course when i want to change specific parts of a site – but i don't have a routine for that either. And since changing and applying CSS is so fast, i feel there is no need to create mockups beforehand, either.

I usually have an idea of what I want to achieve before I start, and usually some idea of how to go about it, but then I open up firebug and stylish and start throwing CSS at the problems until they go away. If I'm doing a bigger overhaul I might change a few specific base elements like the generic selector or specific boxes.

Do you prefer to modify smaller bits or do you search for challenges and customize bigger parts more often? How do you decide where to stop and how far you want to modify elements?

I'd say I do small things. Most of my mods are only hiding annoying or stupid bits, like obvious credits or ads or whatnot. So I'm not drastically changing the site, more just cleaning things up.

As i said above, i usually make sites more accessible to my own tastes. Things like darkening it; or blocking huge chunks, like the entire right column of many news sites (which i find extremely annoying). Every once in a while i go way overboard and try to alter specific parts of a site, down to the pixel-level, which takes a whole lot longer. I'm not doing this for the challenge though, or to see how far i can go, i guess i'm doing this to have something nicer to look at. So this is purely self-serving. Of course, i'm only doing that with sites that i visit a lot. My skins for IMDb and last.fm are probably the most complex i've ever written – by a huge margin. You can check these out here, if you're interested: [link]

I usually start relatively small and break things and then work up until things stop looking horribly broken...

With User Styles you can change the complete appearance of a website. Is it for you more important that your Styles match the website or that the changes are functional even if that means it wouldn't really fit the layout.

Heh, well it can't be a bright pink background on a dark site But yes, most of my edits are functional over "must match the site". Make it work/look right, before worrying about the exact color and things.

I don't care if my style matches the website, i care for a better experience.

Toning down the background almost never fits to the original design of a website. But i do care for a pleasing and cohesive look, so i'm either compromising and only tone it down a little, or go "all in" and adapt the rest of the site as well. But it depends on the site and on how often i visit them.

Most of my userstyles very deliberately completely change the look of the site, though I may use existing color schemes. I'm writing the style because I don't like how the site looks

Even though we have a lot of CSS coders on dA who spent much time for journal and gallery skin, there aren't many people who do User Styles. Why do you think it is like that? Too difficult?

In terms of user styles, I would say it's easier, if anything. The CSS you are allowed to use is completely open to that of your browser. The only thing you have to know is the exact syntax for how to apply it to only certain sites. But with the freedom of your browser's CSS, you can do just about anything you want. So it's rather open ended.

User styles are a niche, for 2 reasons: For one, i think Stylish is still largely unknown, and also it is rather technical. Even style authors can struggle with this: A website may change overnight and break your style without warning. Sometimes these changes make your style obsolete, or you might need to modify it. Also, some sites (like dA) are pretty complex, and you're often forced to bug-test your style for quite a while before it's ready for release.  

A lack of tutorials is something of a problem, and the fact that the scope of what you can do is huge by comparison.

That and the userstyles gallery is such a mess that most people don't even know they exist outside the rare ones that get DD's.

Keeping the question above in mind, do you style just your own ideas or do you take suggestions for future styles as well? If so, do you accept any suggestion or are you picky about what you do?

I don't really do CSS for others. I just don't get asked But I don't have all the time in the world, so I don't even think I'd have the time even if I wanted to accept things like that. I mostly just CSS sites I visit often with Stylish, and then my own electricjonny.com site, when needed (mostly for personal use). Although I did CSS a wiki for the #h3lp group, once upon a time.

I usually go with my own ideas, but i always have an open ear for suggestions.

I pretty much exclusively write userstyles from my own ideas, though I have taken inspiration from other userstyles in the past.

From your own User Styles, what is your personal favorite?

I think my favorite, of all that I've done, is this [link] which changes the help & FAQ page to match (what was then) the latest dA theme. I pretty much went over the whole page and changed things, to get it to match. No clue if that is relevant today, but I quite like that one.

Probably this one:

From my published ones, cleanDA is my favorite, and the only one I consistently leave on, though I have another which I never released called "really f***ing big report button" which makes me laugh when I see the name...

And do you have a fav Style from any other deviant?

I don't have any particular favorites, although I'll say that the CSS done on the journals that $techgnotic writes is usually pretty fricken spectacular. Just the overall appearance, and then the hover/active effects just make them really stand out.

I have to admit, there's only one style currently active for dA that i didn't write myself…

`Norke's dAmn theme is (was? I don't know if it still works) pretty fantastic.

Any final and wise words you want to share with the audience? General or related to User Styles, all is welcome!

As a final word of advice, I would say, just play around. CSS is rather easy, once you get the basics down. If you don't know how to do something, most often you can, but it takes a bit of fiddling to get it where you want it.

Wise words? No, not really. But if you, dear readers, like what we're doing, spread the word!

The first rule of userstyles club is talk all the damn time about userstyles club, because how else is it going to get any publicity...