IE7 frustrations
What is it with Internet Explorer 7?
One thing I hear again and again from WordPress theme developers is about the extra steps they have to take in designing a theme to add tweaks and workarounds so that things look as they should do in IE.
Take a look at this graphic. Then look at the ‘Recent Posts’ list you see in the sidebar on the right.
If you’re seeing this page in Internet Explorer 7, it should look the same.
But that’s not how it should look.
If you’re viewing this page in Firefox or Safari, you won’t see the little arrows at the beginning of every heading and every line in the sidebar.
That’s how it should look.
Gotta figure this one out. This is so frustrating.
Banner image and fluid width
Thinking about the banner. This theme is fluid width. That shouldn’t really matter with a banner that’s a solid colour.
What I’d need to do is use the banner at a fixed pixel width and then ensure the page background where the banner would appear is the same colour.
The banner I want to use, though, isn’t a solid colour, as this image shows.
That’s a screenshot of my main blog as it currently looks which I intend to upgrade to WordPress 2.2.1 and then replace the K2 theme it uses with something else.
This SpotLight theme is the most promising candidate right now.
On with the testing.
Ordered and unordered
I’m writing these test posts with the version 1.0 beta of Windows Live Writer. Works perfectly with WordPress 2.2.1.
How does a numbered list look?
- Here’s the first one
- Another one
- And let’s do one more
What about a bulleted list?
- Well, here’s one bullet
- Followed by another
- And this is the final one
Now publish…
[Edit] Not sure I like the appearance of the bullets. The arrows are graphics so not too difficult to change. Too much space between the paragraph before the first bullet and the one after the last bullet. I’m sure I can change that in the style sheet.
SpotLight theme looks promising
The first of a couple of test posts with this theme, SpotLight 1.3.
I like the overall look of this one. A pleasing design, nice layout, good use of white space. It doesn’t look too difficult to customize a little, eg, change the colour for links, add a banner image, etc.
Looks are good but does the theme provide the functionality I want?
Let’s find out.