Comments on: our known unknowns

By: mike3550

mike3550 — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:24:14 +0000

Jeremy, I figured you had already tried what I suggested in the last post (as mbader…), I think that I found a solution:

Enter the following into your .css file:
div#container {
margin: 0 0 0 -300px;
}

div#content {
margin: 0 0 0 300px;
}

div.sidebar {
width: 299px;
}
I think that will work.

Also, on getting rid of the header space, I think that decreasing the padding-top of the #access element would work.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:11:10 +0000

Additional clues:

1. I can actually take the margin statements for the #container and #comment out completely and it doesn’t affect anything.

2. If I set width for #secondary to anything above *200* (not 240) the sidebar reverts to the bottom. If I set it to a low value, like 50, it does indeed squish.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:03:53 +0000

jay: I’m certainly glad you took the trouble. And now that you’ve taken the trouble, cognitive dissonance theory would predict that you should be *extra* motivated to comment. I hope it’s right!

mbader: Thanks. I’ve tried changing the 240s in #container and #content to a higher number, and the main text doesn’t move over. This is where I’m stuck. Note also that the sidebar being set to 240px is a red herring; that’s the primary sidebar, which is actually over on the right and hidden. The sidebar on the left that is visible is the secondary sidebar. If I insert a width for the secondary sidebar that is greater than 240–changing the container and content values to the same–the sidebar goes to the bottom.

I think you are exactly right why it does this, but I can’t figure out how to get the main text to move over.

By: mbader

mbader — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:32:49 +0000

Jeremy, I am sure that you already tried this - and not having a WordPress.com blog, I am not positive. However, it looks like in the css, the right margin on the #container div is set to -240px, the right margin on the #content div is set to 240px and the width of the sidebar is set to 240px — if you make the first two divs’ margins equal to the same width as you set the sidebar width, I would guess that it would work. I suspect that because the #content div is set to float left, when the sidebar is widened and the current margins are maintained, it is too wide to fit in the #content div side-by-side with the sidebars, therefore it will float all the way to its left margin and the sidebar will take the space below it.

But, I can never get these things to work out in what I think that they are supposed to and it usually takes me about three hours to figure these things out.

By: jaylivingston

jaylivingston — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:06:27 +0000

Noncontributors can comment, but it wasn’t easy. You have to establish a WordPress ID, and it took me several tries. First, WP didn’t like my password; then they didn’t like my user name, and it took me a few tries to figure out that it was because I had a space in it. Feh.