The Knitting Fiend

The new theme is up and running. I did a bit of fiddling since I last asked everyone’s opinion. Here are the features I think I’ve got working:

• Hopefully, the ads don’t flow over and block anything. This new theme has a hard coded width which should take care of that issue.
• Only content will show on printed pages. You won’t have to waste paper printing out the sidebars.
• The posts are 630 pixels wide; people with 640 pixel wide screens should be able to read without scrolling. I think people with 800 pixel wide screens will see the posts and then first column of the sidebar. People with wide screens (like mine) will see extra grey on either side of the blog. I can change these widths very easily, so let me know if this is what’s happening on your screen. (I’m particularly concerned that people with 640 pixel wide screens might have to scroll horizontally to read content.)
• Depending on your browser settings, the main text will display in either 12 pt or 14 pt. As requested, this is larger than the font in my first draft which was 10 pt /12 pt. (Tip: I know some people will want larger type. If 12 pt or 14 pt font isn’t large enough for your eyes, you are probably having difficulty reading other web pages too. You can fix this by learning and using your browser preference settings, and changing the font size. Each browser is organized differently. I mostly use Netscape; when I run across pages with tiny, tiny type, I find the “view” pulldown menu and pick “text zoom”. )
• The list of recent posts doesn’t overflow the box because I chop the number of letters. Hopefully, people don’t mind seeing words truncated.

I think this is an improvement over the previous look, so I wanted to get it up. There are things I don’t like and plan research a bit so I can figure out how to solve.

• It looks like pictures near the top or bottom of a page may get sliced in two when printed. If anyone knows how to fix this, tell me!
• I think I’m going to fiddle and chop the words in the recent comments string!
• I’m still a little frustrated with consistency issues related to font sizes in the sidebars. I think I’m going, remember the the 90/10 rule and be satisfied!¹ Since display can be browser dependent, do tell me if the fonts look widely inconsistent anywhere over there. I do want to fix really horrid things.

If you see other pesky things (which may only be pesky on a few screens) let me know. If I know how to cure it, I will!

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1. The 90/10 rule: You get the 90% of a job done with the first 10% of effort; the final 10% required to achieve prefection takes 90% of the effort.