Yippie! I did another theme revision and this time I used ‘DayDream’! I think this is what I want my beautiful blogs to be presented. First it’s a one column monster. Unlike the ‘ChaosTheory’ theme, the ‘posting information’ is not hanging out to the left of each ‘content’ or post entry. I am still able to get the date and time stamp, only by zooming to each post and not on the main pages.
With the ‘DayDream’ theme, the post entries are now stretched out horizontally at around 675px. For us more myopic readers, my favorite ‘font style’ of ‘Georgia’ is already defaulted and large enough that I didn’t have to adjust the ‘font size’ in my paid CSS stylesheet. The pain locating which of the ‘elements’ needed editing was hardest.
Second, my modified clipart image of a heart from Microsoft is once again nicely located at the upper left hand corner of the ‘header’ with the ‘sitename’ and ‘description’ of my early epitaph aligned to the right. Unfortunately, the color cannot be changed from white (#FFF) to my preferred choice of ‘Dark Weak Blue (#333366). ‘Light Hard Violet (#9933FF) is for the ‘text’ found under ‘body’.
Third, the pink and purple colors are still retained. ‘Medium Weak Blue’ (#666699) is still for the ‘body’ and the ‘hover’ for the ‘menu’; ‘Light Weak Blue’ (#9999CC) is for the ‘footer’ and ‘menu’ and ‘Pale Weak Blue (#CCCCFF) is for the ‘wrap’ or sometimes labeled ‘container’ such as the ‘Andreas09’ theme. I didn’t bother touching some of the soft blue colors for the text and headers.
Fourth, I liked the eye popping presentation of the ‘widgets’ located at the bottom of each page. The CSS editing was done for three to five sections labeled ‘sidebar’. I had to carefully play around with the ‘width’ to figure out which ones affected the layout of this mess. I found out that making the ‘width’ larger to 300px reduced the cloud-like mess into two columns. Another two ‘width’ adjustments of 150px stretched out the narrow ‘lists’ to its full text for ease of reading.
The ‘margin’ html code is useful but annoying. I had to visually map out in my mind (starting from the ‘top’ and going in a clockwise direction) how editing the pixels (or ‘px’) would affect the top, right, bottom and left placements of these ‘objects’. I found a minimum ‘margin’ of 5px is good for the left with 15px being the maximum elsewhere or 10px all around for an even layout.
The ‘padding’ html code, however, is another challenge. I learned how ‘auto’ works: It wraps the text to next line if the word ‘auto’ is placed in between the two pixel (or ‘px’) number. ‘Padding’ means an object is moved around inside the ‘margin’ as if using a scouring pad inside a dirty pot of burned beans.
From the ‘ChaoTheory’ theme and it annoying ‘post information’ to the ‘Andreas09’ theme and its distracting sidebars (found in most WordPress themes), this third theme, ‘DayDream’ is hopefully a keeper. I’ve been working on this one for about four hours and I’m not sleepy because of the caffeine from the many cups of tea I drank earlier this evening. And now it’s almost time for short sleep.
Copyright © 2008 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.
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