Regarding My Last Post

After some reflection there’s something that I wanted to clarify with regards to my last post. In it I said that I found sites that had codes that I liked and that I stole them to improve my website. I realise that that sounded pretty bad and that it might get a few people angry.

What I really meant to say was that I searched the web for features that I liked and read the source code of that page. I look up codes to see where the codes go and understand how I can use the concept to better my site. I do not grab the codes and paste them as such in my template. I see what I can do and modify them to fit what I want. Really, I’m reading codes to learn codes, and better understand CSS.

As you can see I did find how to change the width of my columns. Unfortunately this took a lot of research, as well as plenty of trial and error. I read a few CSS guides and they didn’t help… I searched for sites but found nothing. Finally I found my answer under an unrelated post in the Blogger Forum. It was really satisfying to have done all of that work and have it work in the end. I was really proud that I managed to figure it out, even though it was really easy and probably didn’t warrant all of the effort that went into it. But now I can post larger images without messing up the right column!

In case this interests somebody, here's where you edit the column and page size:

/* Content----------------------------------------------- */
#content { width:860px; margin:0 auto; padding:0; text-align:left; }
#main { width:610px; float:left; }
#sidebar { width:220px; float:right; }

In the process of figuring out margins and such, I also learned more about blockquotes and had some fun changing mine. There’s still one or two things that I’d like to do to improve them but I’m quite happy with the result. You can view my new blockquote in action in my Vegas post. To do it I combined codes I learned from this CSS tutorial and from Francey's website. She has amazing templates for Blogger - or any other blog site for that matter - and I strongly recommend that you visit her site if you’re interested in making your blog beautiful and unique.

Last night through all of my searching I also discovered Mandarin Design, a site that specializes in both HTML and CSS codes to beautify your website or blog. It’s an incredible resource centre for anyone who wants cool effects without putting up the effort. It really makes you understand just how simple CSS can be, and what wonderful effects you can get from it.

I still have a few things that I'd like to do to my site to make it more unique. That's why I’m happy that I’m getting better with CSS. I’m happy that I’m learning to play with it. Maybe one day I’ll be just as good as the people on Zen Garden! I doubt it, but it’s nice to dream…