Theme playground

If your website is looking tired, it is quite fashionable to go mad with your background. Clever stuff can be done if you can work out the exact size and let parts of the image creep out from behind. But ever noticed how sometimes that image takes a while to load, especially if it has not been optimised? If you have already enabled the css editor (Settings > Slim Jetpack > Css Editor) then why not try some CSS3 tricks instead?

e.g. to create the orange checkerboard use:

body {
background-color: #eee;
background-image: linear-gradient(45deg, orange 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, orange 75%, orange),
linear-gradient(45deg, orange 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, orange 75%, orange);
background-size:60px 60px;
background-position:0 0, 30px 30px
}

Lea Verou has an editable css3 pattern maker that opens up all sorts of creative possibilities!

Not all browsers support css3, and certainly older versions don’t.  Time to upgrade your browser and also increase online browsing experience and security.

Testing the XML-RPC facility

If you have just discovered that by making your post sticky you can make it float to the top of your list of posts, you may not like the black border or the default blue in the basic theme.

You can change the background by uploading your own pretty pattern, or if that sounds like hard work chose a colour using a color picker program like colorpic from iconico or simply use css names described here: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_colornames.asp.

Now you will need to add this to the safecss editor (enable it via Settings > Slim Jetpack): Continue reading →

Well this is easier than you would think, when you know how (or as in my case lazy, I found one answer here):

NB: You’ll need the Safe css plugin to apply these changes.

Move the primary and secondary widget areas over as follows:

#primary, #secondary {
float: left;
overflow: hidden;
width: 220px;
margin-left: 10px;
}

#secondary {
clear: left;
}

Now attend to the content area:

#container {
float: right;
margin: 0 -250px 0 0;
width: 940px;
}

#content {
overflow:hidden;
}

And that is it!

Should css be made compulsory at school?