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Customising The Look

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Customising The Look
Howdy,

I downloaded one of the templates from the resource section, and its now working fine, but there is one problem. I've altered the colours to my liking, and 99.9% is exactly what I want, except one thing. The main category area is white. I've manually changed this to black, and it worked, but whenever someone adds a new link, it goes back to its original colour (white). So I had a poke around in the links.css thinking it might be something in there, I changed ALOT of things, and still nothing.

It can be found at:

http://www.e-cauldron.com/pages

Its the main white area.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers,

Spock


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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
The way the category listings look is controled by site_html_print_cat in site_html_templates.pl or site_html.pl.

--Drew
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Hi Junko,

I had a look around in those files, and under that section, I cant see any reference to colour. The actual look of the category is fine, its just the Background colour. Any ideas?

Cheers,

Spock

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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
So in links.css, did you change, the background atribute for TD and TD.CATLIST to black? If that doesn't work, remove the "class=" atribute in the table and see if that makes any difference. Stylesheets are a pain to work with and there are lots of compatiblity issues and many users have removed them from their sites.

--Drew
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Hi Junko,

I did what you said, and still nothing :¬(
I've considered removing the CSS from the site, but if I do, does this mean that any of the automatic areas (such as the numer that states how many adds there are in that category on the front page etc.) change?

I guess that it only means the design of the site changes? If so, how can I remove the CSS? I read about about removing the reference to the CSS at the top of each page, i've checked that out though, and there are no references to CSS's on the tops of any of the .html pages.
Hope you can help.

Cheers,

Spock

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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
You need to change the following code in your HTML:

<table border=0 width=95% bgcolor=#000000><tr><td>
<table border=0 width=100% bgcolor=#FFFFFF cellspacing=1 cellpadding=4>
<tr bgcolor="#006600">

To:

<table border=0 width=95% bgcolor=#000000><tr><td>
<table border=0 width=100% bgcolor=#000000 cellspacing=1 cellpadding=4>
<tr bgcolor="#006600">

I guess this means changing your template home.html. BTW, using cascading style sheets actually makes life a whole lot easier in the long run. Everything is contained within one document.

Martin Webster
--
Cebidae's UK Internet Resource
http://www.cebidae.co.uk/
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Hi Cebidae,

Thanks for the reply. It seems to have worked!
Thanks a million for your help. I do have another question however. Now that the Categories background colour has been fixed, how can I fix the 'Categories In..' Background? By this I mean if I were to have Sub-Categories inside a Category it creates the same box as before, and it has a white background.
Be grateful if you could help again :¬)

Thanks Again,

Cheers,

Spock
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
You don't appear to have an example of this on your site, so I can't have a look at the code. Can you add a sub category to demonstrate this. I expect you need to change a tag somewhere. I'll pick up this thread again after work; lunch is over!

Martin Webster
--
Cebidae's UK Internet Resource
http://www.cebidae.co.uk/
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Hey Cebidae,

It looks like I figured out how to do it, it was the same as editing the home.html, just using a diff .html. I do, however have another question (sorry, i'm a pain hehe) Its another layout one. On the main links page of my site (www.e-cauldron.com/pages), you would have seen there are 3 categories. There set vertically. I was wondering, How can I get them so they travel across hortizontaly, e.g.:

CAT1 CAT2 CAT3
Description Description Description

I thought it did it by default, but it doesn't appear so. I had a look at your site, and you've been able to do it.
Thanks For Your Help.

Kind Regards,

Spock

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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Try using the SUBCATEGORIES LIKE YAHOO MOD by Widgetz, which gives Yahoo style subcategory listings: http://gossamer-threads.com/...ttach/1072-MyMod.txt (please note that this link has markup from this forum included; just ignore the contents in "[]" brackets). If enough people are interested, I may upload the MOD on my site since I already use it successfully.

BTW, your page titles still say "Gossamer Threads Links".

Martin Webster
--
Cebidae's UK Internet Resource
http://www.cebidae.co.uk/
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Hey Cebidae,

Thanks for that link, i've tried it out and it seems to be a little off. The layout has changed but not the way that I wanted (www.e-cauldron.com/pages). I think it could be something to do with the field id. What is it? It is set as a default to 8, and I haven't changed it yet.

Cheers,

Spock

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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
IMHO: I find it a waste of time to have huge CSS files controling the look of everything just to find out Netscape <4.x can't render squat the same as Explorer. I cut out a lot of classes and left about a 14 line stylesheet in my templates (controling only default font, and three different link styles). When Netscape 6.0 has enough users (a year from now) I'll reconsider my opinion.

--Drew
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
It's entirely up to you whether you use CSS. It is my preferred option because:

1. They're simple to use;
2. They are supported by the latest browsers (IE5, Opera 4, and eventually Netscape 6, which add up to 85% or so of the browsers used today);
3. My site aims to use strict HTML 4 and CSS.
4. My site will meet the needs of visually impared surfers too!
5. And, last but by no means least I can change the look and feel of my whole site by editing just one file.

But, as I said earlier it's entirely up to the individual; just think who will visit your site first. Smile



Martin Webster
--
Cebidae's UK Internet Resource
http://www.cebidae.co.uk/
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
You've been busy!

Your categories are still showing in one column. The default is two columns, and this is set up in sub site_html_print_cat (that's in site_html_templates.pl). It should create a table with two columns, printing half in the first and the remainder in the second.

One thing I have noticed is that your categories are contained within nested tables. Is this something you've changed? Not like that on my site.

Also, having looked at the code mentioned above, I note "my ($half) = int (($#subcat+2) / 2);". I guess that you will not see two columns until you have at least four categories. Try adding another to see if I'm right.

I'm afraid I can only give you some pointers here because I'm new to Perl and hadn't even touched HTML until April this year.

Something to go on with I hope. Anyway, I'm happy to help where I can.

Martin Webster
--
Cebidae's UK Internet Resource
http://www.cebidae.co.uk/
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Your missing the point, which is "supporting" and "rendering the same" are two different things.

Anyway... Smile

--Drew
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
No, I hear what you say. To be more precise, CSS can render the same in IE 5, Opera 4 and Netscape 6 (and 4), if you take a little time to ensure that your styles work perfectly on every browser. See http://www.richinstyle.com/ if you're not convinced.

But lets not fall out over this, there's been enough of that lately! Smile

Martin Webster
--
Cebidae's UK Internet Resource
http://www.cebidae.co.uk/
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
IE 4 >, Opera 4 , and Netscape 6 are fine. I've never been able to get older versions of Netscape to ever doing anything right.

Ack! I loaded up that link and watched as Netscape 4.5 puked all over the place.

--Drew
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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Hey Cebidae,

I tried adding another category, and nothing, no change. Any other ideas?

Cheers for all your help,

Spock

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Re: Customising The Look In reply to
Are you using site_html_templates.pl or site_html.pl? Can you upload the one you're using somewhere on your site or e-mail it to me so I can have a look.

Martin Webster
--
Cebidae's UK Internet Resource
http://www.cebidae.co.uk/