According to a couple of emails I’ve been receiving lately, this site still doesn’t quite look right on many peoples’ computers. In fact, some folks find that column on the right wandering into the middle of their screen, when in fact it ought to be invisible if the window’s not wide enough.
In short, even on my blog, the right has seized the middle ground and refuses to be marginalized.
Can anyone out there help me? I’m not at all competent in manipulating MovableType templates, but I suspect that it’s a fairly simple adjustment.
All I can offer in return is a cabinet post in the Felber administration. Like Secretary of Housing and Urban Development or something. Your pick.
Fanny Roborat
11 comments
Linkmeister
July 27, 2003 at 3:03 pm
1I too suspect that it’s simple; I also suspect it’s addressed on the MT forums somewhere. I’d go to the MT site and click the forum link, then do a search for sidetitle styles or something of that sort. That’s if nobody volunteers help here first.
Steve
July 27, 2003 at 3:11 pm
2Did they report which browser (and version) it looked messed up in? For instance, Internet Explorer 5.0/5.5/6.0? Mac Safari 1.0?
I looks good on recent versions of Mozilla on Linux and Windows.
Superskepticalman
July 27, 2003 at 4:24 pm
3It’s zombieQusay’s fault. It always was.
It’s just like his diabolical mind to work that way. Plus he didn’t give the memo questioning the alleged non-zombie possibilities to Condi when he was supposed to.
Does this mean I can be your NSA in your regime…, oops, “administration”?
Rook
July 27, 2003 at 5:17 pm
4Is this a default design of Movable Type, or did you create this look yourself (sexy daaaarl’n, very very sexy)? I’ve been working on a new look for my site and have run into the same problem as well. I see that you are using a CSS file (I peeked at your source HTML code), so any ajustments would probable have to be done there. Since older versions of most browser were not fully supportive of CSS, that’s more then likely the problem anyway. I also noticed you have an older version of Movable Type, any chance you might try updating to 2.64? That might also be the problem.
I want to be the opposition party to your regim……errrrr, administration. But please, no messy tortures, I have a weak constitution, especially towards blood and pain.
adam
July 27, 2003 at 6:03 pm
5Answers-
Rook - the CSS is indeed a custom design, put together by a friend of the site several months back.
Steve - I’ve actually heard the complaint, in various forms, from people with all types of systems and configurations. Most recently (and alarmingly) from someone using Windows XP and IE 6. So obviously it needs addressing.
Linkmeister - Haven’t found the cure at the forums yet, though I have posted my particular complaint.
In general, it seems that the right column is too dominant - ideally, the page should clip or even wholly eliminate the right column depending on window width. Instead, the nefarious column is drawn OVER the blog text when the width is an issue. The bones of this problem can be seen on just about any browser when you narrow the window enogh.
http://www.boingboing.net/ is an example of a site that behaves correctly - the important column scales to fir the window, but when the window narrows to a certain width, the right column just gives up the ghost. Same with Eschaton. That’s what I’d like to see.
ralph
July 27, 2003 at 9:04 pm
6The problem with the right column overwriting the important stuff happens when the z-index of the box containing the right column is higher than the z-index of the box containing the content. Looking at your CSS file, the z-index isn’t set for either of these, so browsers are automatically setting the z-index based on the order in which the boxes appear in your code. (The z-index, if you remember your Cartesian mathematics, refers to the stacking order above and below the plain of the x- and y-axes. Damned geek speak….)
You can fix this problem by explicitly setting the z-index for the two boxes in question. In your CSS file, these appear to be #content and #side for the left and right sides respectively. I added the following declaration to the definition of #content:
z-index: 20;
and the next declaration to the definition of #side:
z-index:10;
to a local copy of your front page that I downloaded to my computer. Then I resized the browser window to duplicate the conditions your users were complaining about. The right side box now falls behind your main content rather than obscuring it.
I’ll take Michael Powell’s job, please.
Ralph
July 27, 2003 at 9:42 pm
7Oh, I suppose I should make clear that the above is just a quick-and-dirty fix to the immediate problem. It’s possible to create the kind of layout that BoingBoing and Eschaton have with CSS (although they both use tables rather than CSS), but it would require some serious CSS hackery and experimentation and the addition of another CSS file thanks to errors in the implementation of CSS in browsers like Netscape 4.x and IE 5 and 5.5 for Windows. It’s a well-trodden path, but more than I would want to explain in a comments section.
adam
July 27, 2003 at 11:30 pm
8Thanks so much, Ralph. I’d rather that ornery right column would just stop moving after a while, but at least it no longer covers up the left column, and that’s a HUGE improvement.
Thanks! Your FCC chairmanship is assured.
Don
July 28, 2003 at 12:29 am
9Actually, the easiest answer is to follow the lead of the Adminustrashun:
Tell anyone who claims it’s happening that it really isn’t.
After several weeks you can announce that, when it did happen it was because you were only setting up the site according to the advice of others who had all signed off on it.
Two weeks later, of course, someone would admit that now they remember that they had read about it in a memo a few months earlier, but - goldarn it all - they just forgot. So they never stopped you from doing it wrong.
John Isbell
July 28, 2003 at 12:30 pm
10Don makes an excellent suggestion.
I sometimes get the green overlaid on stuff, like the dialog photospread. Whenever I come here, the layout starts normal, then after about 30 seconds the left text column turns about an inch wide, and I fix it by drifting over a comments link, which resizes the display (I bet all these words are wrong, but you get my meaning). Then, I scroll back up and start reading. But it’s worth it!
mbare
July 30, 2003 at 1:59 pm
11I noticed this problem happening on my site when I hadn’t updated for a while. I decided not to fix it. It is good incentinve to keep updating.