@mdo

Daring Fireball user style

January 1, 2011

My eyes don’t handle light text on dark backgrounds very well—it physically hurts to even try. I love reading Daring Fireball, but if the name sounds familiar, then you know of the small text, dark background, and low contrast.

Although I read a lot of his posts in Reeder for Mac, I do find myself visiting the full site often. Instead of just whining about it, I figure I’ll whine about it and do something about it. In comes my Daring Fireball user style.

Daring Fireball custom CSS by @mdo

What’s changed

Here’s the rundown on what it does:

  • white background with dark gray text
  • bumped up the font-size
  • eliminated the sidebar’s nav
  • fixed the ads to the bottom left (no need to hide them, they’re good quality)
  • resized the main column to 550px
  • changed out link colors to blue for more contrast
  • and lastly, miscellaneous spacing changes

Grab a copy

Go ahead and snag a copy for yourself—just copy and paste the CSS below.

/*
  Daring Fireball
  Author: @mdo
  Description: Improves contrast and readability of DF without removing the ads.
*/

* {
  font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif !important;
}

/* Background change and font-size bump */
body {
  background: #fff !important;
  margin-top: 40px;
  color: #333 !important;
  font-size: 13px !important;
  line-height: 18px !important;
}

/* Links to blue! */
a {
  color: #2276BB !important;
  font-weight: bold;
  border-color: rgba(0,0,0,.2) !important;
}
a:hover {
  background: #eee !important;
}

/* Clean up the text colors and headings */
h1, h2, h3, h4,
.linkedlist p,
.article p,
.article li {
  color: #333 !important;
}
.linkedlist blockquote,
.article blockquote {
  border-left-color: #ccc;
}
.linkedlist blockquote p,
.article blockquote p {
  color: #777 !important;
}
/* Remove top margin from all img elements */
img {
  margin-top: 0;
}
/* Remove left margin on dd */
dl.linkedlist dd {
  margin-left: 0;
}

/* Site Container */
div#Box {
  width: 550px !important;
}

  /* Masthead */
  div#Banner {
    margin: 0 !important;
  }
    /* Modify the logo */
    div#Banner a img {
      background: #333 !important;
      padding-top: 3px;
      padding-right: 5px;
      -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
    }
    /* Hide shirts promo */
    div#BannerPromo {
      display: none;
    }

  /* Nix the sidebar and widen the main column */
  div#Sidebar {
  }
    /* Hide everything in the sidebar but the ads */
    div#Sidebar p,
    div#Sidebar ul {
      display: none;
    }
    div#SidebarTheDeck * {
      border: 0 !important;
      padding: 0;
    }
    /* Move the ads, because ads are revenue and revenue is nice */
    div#SidebarTheDeck {
      position: fixed;
      bottom: 15px;
      left: 20px;
      width: 160px;
      margin: 0;
    }
      div#SidebarTheDeck a {
        border: 0;
      }
      div#SidebarTheDeck img {
        display: block;
        margin-bottom: 5px;
      }
      div#SidebarTheDeck p.ads {
        display: block;
        margin: 0;
        color: #333;
        text-align: left;
      }
      div#SidebarTheDeck img.the_deck_promo {
        margin-top: 0;
      }

  /* Reposition the main column */
  div#Main {
    margin: 50px 0 0 !important;
    width: auto !important;
  }

Not sure how to use it? Check out these extensions for your favorite browsers:

Enjoy!