willneea

RANT!
https://www.dlaakso.com/blog/rant.html
willneea
https://www.dlaakso.com/blog/

“ok, yeah, it’s a bit plain. I wanted it that way – uncluttered.”
Oh, yeah– well how about we go really plain. Like minimal, maybe.
Tommorow, though. It’s very late here, and I can’t face all that clutter, or those obnoxious little animated things without sleep.
willneea
https://www.dlaakso.com/blog/

“The typography article seems to want to make posting poetry online way more of an issue than it needs to be.”
I’m sorry you feel that way.

Glad it’s working out for you.
“I am not sure what you mean about *long* URI breaking the container? “
Click your comment link, you’ll see the URI below extends outside the division that should contain it.
https://www.gettingskinny.net/blog/index.php/archives/2004/07/28/new-cheese/trackback/

Good grief man, you can talk about it forever. Let’s see it.

Cool.

It’s just, me again. Forgot: one of those Tidy warnings is that you forgot to close a division </div>. Tidy will fix that: however, in doing so, it may adversley affect your layout. Freak out not, should that happen. Post on this thread so I can find you.
willneea
https://www.dlaakso.com/blog/

It’s me again. I saved the fun part for last. Your HTML document does not validate (don’t panic). Let’s fix that first, then tackle the CSS validation.
You have 27 warnings/4 errors. Not bad.
Tidy on-line https://infohound.net/tidy/ corrected 23 of them for me, and will for you. Run your *source file* through Tidy, not your php file– Tidy turns php into scrambled eggs.
The document Tidy produces requires you to correct the 4 remaining errors. Namely, the *table attribute summary*. Google until you find a source that shows what that means, correct the file, run Tidy again, then run the (X)HTML) validation.

Nice job.
Your probably using Internet Explorer, because on it the calendar looks okay– IE gets it wrong, though! That’s important to remember.
Firefox and Opera render the calendar overlapping the the container above it– they render your CSS correctly. Rule of thumb: style for the Gecko browsers (Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox). Hack to IE!
Changing:
#menu
top: to 125px corrected it for me. However, to be sure add 1px dashed fuschia borders around the containers. That will make it easier to de-bug. Then check cross-browser, all screen resolutions, try text-zoom on Firefox and Opera.
The “Body for Life” ad, overlaps the right column. I didn’t really check carefully, but setting the table to align-left, rather than center, may(?) help this.
The font-size on the right column is kind of tiny at 800 x 600. I would think at higher screen resolutons it will verge on unreadable.
On index.php/archives/ the *long* URI “new cheese” breaks the container. A fast & dirty fix may be to use a URL cut service (Google for a free one) to shorten the URI. If that doesn’t work you’ll need to do some style work…
Once you’re really, really comfortable with styling you may want to accomadate IE for text zooming. Your fonts are set in pixels, and IE can’t zoom pixels– only the Gecko’s and Opera can do that. You would have to use % or a combination of %/em’s– these make all browsers happy. But that can wait…

The offer stands, should you decide to walk before you run.
Best,
willneea
https://www.dlaakso.com/blog

Here’s a link to ROOT’s template:
https://www.atthe404.com/wordpress/
I’ll be with you. We’re gonna make it happen. Post on the the samethread so that I’ll be able to find you.
https://www.dlaakso.com/blog/

“So, can anyone help me with my header?
Yes.
“It displays OK in Firefox, ***but in IE the x-repeating background doesn’t extend all the way.”***
Consider yourself lucky.
“I’m pretty much making things up as I go along.”
Stop.
“Any assistance is appreciated!”
Use ROOT’s 2col layout.
No images– none, background or other wise.
Keep it simple.
Very, very simple.
No more than one font: Times New Roman or Arial.
No more than 3 colors: #000000 (black) #c0c0c0 (silver) and one other.
We’ll get it going. Slowly. Very, very slowly. Gradually, it will become more, and more complex. So complex that it will blow your mind.

It occurs to me that an easy and effective means toward resolving much of this would simply be to use the 3col template that ROOT has. It would organize your information and provide structure for use at any widow width.
Setting font-size 100.01% (the .01 is for an Opera rounding problem) on the body, and using % or em’s throughout on font-sizes, will take care of the IE zoom problem. And increasing the font-size on the sidebars (from what your are using now) will help. Additionally, greatly reducing the size of the images will effectively reduce the load time– you can alway link those thumbnail images to a larger image…
This will require a minimum amount of effort on your part; and , I believe, will dramatically improve the usabilty, and organizaton of your site.

You may find this article of value. It deals specifically with typography for poetry:
https://www.piggin.net/poetry1.htm
With regard to copyright, that’s not going to buy you anything nowadays. Investigate a Creative Commons License.
https://creativecommons.org/

Okay. Regarding the font- sizes. The setting are below– this is not a definitive list. You’ll need tweak– lots, and lots of tweaking. They cascade so it’s not easy. This is just to get you started:
meta .9em
meta li, ul.post-meta li 1.0em
a font-size 1.25em line-height 1.5em
news 100%
#menu ul ul 80% line-height 100%
#menu ul li 85%
#menu ul ul li 100%
Consider trashing GooGle & their tag soup– after all, you want to keep people on your site, not necessarily send them somewhere else, unless there are places that *you* would like them to go…
If nothing else, can that god awful email thing.
Bye