Hey, layout help?

[luciazephyr]

Okay, so I gave matterofchicago a new layout using Alex's amazing art. Only problem I have is that all the text has serifs, and I am very much an Arial fan. But the custom CSS says Arial 9px. Anyone know why it's showing me ugly serifs? Is it coming up serif-ified for anyone else?

ETA: Okay, I managed to fix that problem. Now I want to make the layout wider. I don't need that annoying calendar hanging onto the side. Anyone know how I can get rid of it and make the entry and comments wider?

Comments

[samjohnsson]

It's serified, yes.

The only place I see Arial 9 in there is for the comment input box. There's nothing that actually places or inherits Arial 9 into the entrytext class. So either whoever made the base has another custom.css, or the code's being screwy. And the way it's coded, I can believe either option.

[luciazephyr]

Gah, and I really like this CSS. The comment area needs to be much bigger, but half that's the stupid serif text issue. I'll see if i can find another CSS to go off so I can fix it. Thanks.

[samjohnsson]

or just find, in whichever css it's in
.entrytext > p { padding: 0 15px 0 15px;}

and change it to
.entrytext > p { font-family: "Arial",Sans-serif; font-size: 9px; padding: 0 15px; }

Though if I could convince you to put it at 12px or more, so I don't have to load an override css to be able to read it, I'd love you for a long time.

[luciazephyr]

Oh, I just figured it out myself (LOOK HOW CLEVER I AM) and I think I put it on 11px. How does that look?

Now it's size 12px. I can go with that.


Now I really wanna fix the fucking comments. Only part of the layout I don't like. aaaaargh.

[samjohnsson]

Wow. Those commentbox tables are all sorts of fail, aren't they?

Yes, 12px is good enough. (If it were still W>B, I'd drive to Missouri to show you my glasses.) But people are used to reading B>W, so it's what they expect. Never mind that most paper isn't #FFF, let alone backlit. Yeah, I understand not caring for it, and for your personal journal, make it whatever you want it to be. But for a common community, it kinda should be easily readable.



...waitaminute. I haven't read that chapter yet! What am I doing, fiddling with code!?

[luciazephyr]

Yeah, completely. I'll ahve to fix them. Uh. Somehow. I'll likely just consult other CSS sheets and adapt them? 8|

On my LJ and DW, it's light on dark because B>W hurts my eyes to read. Even my GD for writing MoC is W>B. But yeah, I wanted to help usability for the fic comm.


Heh, enjoy it!

[samjohnsson]

mine's light-on-dark, too, so I understand, fully.

[samjohnsson]

I'll look at it later tonight - got a few things to do atm

[luciazephyr]

I got it mooooostly fixed by expanding the width of everything instead. I still hate the calendar taking up screen real estate (I have a netbook, I don't have much to spare), but it's functional atm. 8|

[samjohnsson]

does the community have a
http://www.livejournal.com/customize/options.bml?group=sidebars
area? Can you just shut off the calendar?

[luciazephyr]

I don't think so. It's the weird new Opal theme, which may be part of the issue.

If I can't get rid of the calendar, I may try to move the sidebar with the userpic to the left above or below the calendar...

[samjohnsson]

I'll look at the css later tonight - should be able to slap display: none on the right element.

[samjohnsson]

Find
.sidetd {width: 20% !important; border-right: 1px solid #dddddd; }

change it to
.sidetd {display: none; }

See if that works. (Part of the havoc is that damn !important in the call. That sort of coding hacks me off.)

[luciazephyr]

oh my god

I need a device that lets me make out with people over the internet. You are amazing, that is exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much! ♥


ETA: Out of curiosity, did you learn coding online or taught yourself or learned offline? I figure I should learn basic CSS but am unsure where to start.

[samjohnsson]

I taught myself HTML 14 years ago, and have just been picking up pieces as we go. DW is running a style tutorial on one of their comms (I linked it earlier) - this is the reference post they posted, with lots of links.
http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/CSS_Primer
Best "wtf is that" is
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_reference.asp