I’m a PHP code jockey, not a CSS geek, so I’ve run into a couple of problems when changing WordPress themes I thought I’d share.
- If you care about 800×600 standards, check any theme you install. Many themes show horizontal scrollbars at 800×600. If you want to use that theme anyway, and fiddle with the CSS widths, be my guest. If you don’t, switch themes.
- Check that new theme in both Firefox and IE. A disturbingly large number of WordPress themes “throw” the sidebar under the content — and nobody is interested in telling me how to fix this (on any number of forums, of supposed CSS gurus).
- Letter spacing works in IE if you specify absolute widths (like “10px”), but not relative widths (like “2em”); both work in Firefox (as they’re supposed to).
- Sidebars are a pain, simply because everybody does his theme differently from everybody else.
- Many of the “best” themes (according to whoever rates them in the contests), at least in my humble opinion, are ugly and unreadable.
- WordPress theme authors for some reason are not interested in expandable width (not necessarily full width) themes.
One of these days, I’m going to get a CSS reference and learn all this DIV stuff so I can write my own.
Oh. And the WordPress forum sucks, period, the end. Don’t bother going there for information. Use google instead.
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Nice post. I’m a graphic designer who’s learning PHP. Sort of the reverse problem. Despite the fact my blog is currently fixed width, I find the current trend in making everything fixed width annoying. Most (maybe all?) of the sites I’m paid to work on are fluid. It takes more time to get them to work in CSS, but I think the impression is better.
What really floors me is that so many themes show horizontal scrollbars at 800×600. Unless somebody forgot to send me the memo, 800×600 is still supposed to be the standard resolution for web designers.
I’m floored by the amount of poor design I see. A lot of the designs are done by people who make their living at it too. You could argue that the standard is no longer 800×600, but even that is no excuse. Scroll bars are annoying, but some websites I see, the design breaks at those sizes. Sidebars drop out of place, pictures overlap text… That’s just idiotic. It’s nice that their design looks good on their 24 inch monitor, but that’s not who it’s designed for!
Yes, I’m well aware that most monitors won’t show columns A-N in Excel without scrolling (I have a widescreen HP notebook). And yes, the designs break. I’m a “table code layout” person. That I understand. I still don’t get this div layout stuff.
PHP, on the other hand, is logical and simple.
That’s hilarious. I’ll grant you that CSS layout can be a little… counter-intuitive? I find it a lot easier than PHP though. I think I’d do better with PHP if I did it more. Currently I just do a little, and that’s just nuts.
You apparently get a better class of spam than I do… or is that real? The spam I get is usually just gibberish with links.
It was spam. Better than most, but spam. That’s why I deleted it.