Help me read your posts

[cos]

I haven't been reading dreamwidth nearly as much as I used to read livejournal, because I find the default reading page really hard to read, and it kind of repels me. Due to the unpleasant experience, I just don't visit as often. But I haven't had time to try to figure out how to fix it, and the few FAQs and settings I found were either confusing or just didn't seem to address the issue.

On LiveJournal, I had a "friends page" setup that worked really well for me, for many years. What I liked about it that I wish I could have here includes:

• Clear separation between different entries, in the form of a wide colored divider bar across the page. On LJ that bar was also where the title of the next post would be, but I don't need that specifically; just a clear visual separation between posts.


• Userpics did not take up their own vertical space. Instead they appeared on the left sidebar, next to the post. [Edit: This is especially bad on comments; I want userpics not to take up vertical space in the comment section either.]


• I could pick a unique combination of foreground and background color for each person. The post itself didn't appear in that combo, but the post was outlined by the background color, and the post title and person's username would appear in the foreground color I chose. This let me easily "recognize" whose post I was looking at by color.

Is there any way to make my reading page on dreamwidth like that? What do I need to do?

Comments

[antimony]

Edit, also, this is Line Up, with the Chrome color scheme -- if you like what I have except for the color scheme, pick a different Line Up layout/color scheme combo from here:
http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/?layoutid=385312&show=0
and walking you through the changes I made should be fairly simple.