Customize your journal layout

Narro FAQ

This is the FAQ for Narro.

General questions

What is Narro?

Narro is a journal skin for dA which aims to be simple, stylish, easy to use & configure and fully customizable.

How can I get Narro?

You can configure and download Narro code using our online customizer which also includes screenshot previews.

What are the special themes?

The special themes in the color drop down menu are themes that are not just colours, but are themed furthermore. E.g. this can be a summer theme with a big, bright sun on it, etc. New themes will be added now and then.

I type a smiley/avatar/html tag/username link in the sidebar content, but it won’t display. Why?

This is because it is impossible for our webserver to display this in one way or another, either because we can't download the smilies from dA's site since we do not own them, or for security reasons. But, don’t worry! While the smilies, avatars, etc might not display in the preview, they will be displayed correctly in your journal once you actually post it.

How do I add subheaders in my journal content?

When writing your journal, write this anywhere inside the content to get a subheader: 
<div class="subheader"><div>Subheader text here</div></div>
Of course, remember to change the text inside the subheader (highlighted in color above). The color of the subheaders are the same as the color of your journal title bubble, so if you chose blue as color theme, the subheader is also blue!

How do I add blockquotes to my journal content

The code for this is a bit more complicated. If you want to quote something a deviant has said, you can use a blockquote with a dA avatar included in it. The code for this looks like this: 
<div class="bq"><div class="bqavatar">:iconusername:</div><blockquote>&#8220;Type the actual quote here&#8221;<div class="by">In here, you can type the name of who said this and when they said it (and perhaps was it was about, if that's unclear)</div></blockquote></div>
Warning: You may have to scroll to see all the code!
Replace the part that says username with the username of whoever said the content of the blockquote. Not your own username (unless you were the one who said it, of course). This particular kind of blockquote does not look optimal in Internet Explorer 6 and below. If you do not want to quote a person from dA, but rather any other kind of person that might not have a dA account, you can also create a blockquote without a dA avatar in it: 
<div class="bq noavatar"><blockquote>&#8220;Type the actual quote here&#8221;<div class="by">In here, you can type the name of who said this and when they said it (and perhaps was it was about, if that's unclear)</div></blockquote></div>
Warning: You may have to scroll to see all the code!

Help! The end of the header speech bubble is all pixelated! Why is this?

That is because you're using Internet Explorer version 6 or lower. The type of image that removes the pixelation is not supported by this browser, and it's therefore replaced with a more “primitive” image in this browser. We suggest you update to Internet Explorer 7, or use another browser, Mozilla Firefox for instance.

Technical questions

In which way is it possible to customize Narro further?

I’m glad you ask! Everyone can select their own colours using the online customizer, but if you are code savvy, you can even choose your very own background image. Find .journaltop h2 in your CSS code, and change the highlighted part in the code below: 
.journaltop h2 {
	background: #009 url(http://example.com/path/to/image.jpg) repeat-x center center;
	padding: 10px 142px 10px 20px;
	color: #fff;
For this to work, the image has to be on the internet. You can use tools like TinyPic to upload images to the web. If you want the image to repeat (tile) itself, then replace the part that says repeat-x with simply repeat. If you don't want the image to repeat at all, simply type no-repeat instead. Furthermore, you can also change the text color, simply change the color code in the color: #fff part. You can also change the color of the subheader (highlighted below): 
.subheader {
	font: 175% "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Tahoma, sans-serif;
	font-weight: bold;
	color: #009;
If you end up making an awesome theme all by yourself and you want to share it, feel free to send electricnet a note on dA, and it may get added to the Narro site for everyone to try out!

How do I add more sections in the sidebar?

We didn’t think most people would need more than 10 sections, so to increase the performance of our interactive web application, we created a limit there. But, if you want to add more sections, this is possible, but you'd have to add more text at the end of the sidebar. In the footer code, the sidebar starts with the text <div class="sidebar"> and ends with the first following </div>. Simply add text at the end of this, and to make a headline more, type this: <strong>Headline text</strong>, in which of course you have to change the actual headline text.

Which browsers do Narro work with?

Narro has been tested to work with Mozilla Firefox 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Safari 3 and Opera 9. There might been other browsers it works with, too, that we can’t currently access. You are welcome to contact us if you can test in other browsers.