HCC Website Forum

Hey Greg!

 

Something about this new web site template, with the blue picture frame around everything, is also changing intended colors in other places.

 

For example, the activity calendar header is now in yellow instead of blue:

https://thcc.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=2&club_id=496051

 

And where I've used the html "hr" command to draw a blue horizontal line, it's now yellow also:

https://thcc.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=108701

 

No likeee yellow.  When I specify blue, I ought to get blue.

 

It also consumes more space horizontally on the page, leaving smaller areas for the text to occupy.  And that messes up spacing in previous articles, causing some lines to wrap-around, when they shouldn't.  It makes me look like a sloppy editor.

https://thcc.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=107140

 

I call this experiment a failure.  Request "undo". 

 

      - John Rich

The use of a theme will improve the overall appearance of the website, even if we choose a different on from this.

Some of the other color schemes available are much worse...to the point of making the main text unreadable. I agree that the yeIlow is not an ideal part of this color scheme.

I think any theme other than the original "Minimal" theme will use more margin space.. Is it possible to adjust the Newsletter HTML to fit this format?

Let us keep this around for a little longer and see what others think.

Re: "The use of a theme will improve the overall appearance of the website"

 

"Improving the appearance" is a highly subjective thing.  I had no problem with the former appearance.   And if changing the theme renders past newsletters with incorrect formatting, then that's a detriment to improved appearance. 

 

Re:  "I agree that the yeIlow is not an ideal part of this color scheme."

 

Find me a work-around.  When I specify [hr size="2" color="blue"] I ought to get a blue line, not a yellow one.  I don't like the idea of a theme overridiing normal html codes. 

 

Re: "I think any theme other than the original "Minimal" theme will use more margin space.. Is it possible to adjust the Newsletter HTML to fit this format?"

 

Html is independent of any fixed width, and adjusts itself to fill whatever space is available.  That's a beauty in most circumstances.  The problem is when you format for one width, and then try and fit it into a width that's shorter.  That causes things on the right end to wrap-around to the next line, and that may look bad depending upon where it happens.  Where that occurs, you could adjust the document, but that would require editting possibly hundreds of old newsletter stories, at great expenditure of time.  I don't have the inclination to retroactively re-edit everything ever written.  And I don't like having my name as editor associated with documents that contain poor editing, through no fault of my own.
 

I've said my piece.

I have received comments favouring the new look.
I want to understand how the theme is interacting with the content of our web site. It may take a few "trials" before we can get rid of all the "errors."

Please send me links to a few (3 or 4) newsletter pages where the new theme mangles the structure of the page. That we I can see and test what works and what does not work.

Greg

Quoted Text

And where I've used the html "hr" command to draw a blue horizontal line, it's now yellow also:

https://thcc.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=108701

No likeee yellow. When I specify blue, I ought to get blue.

The theme is implemented using a CSS (Cascade Style Sheet). The way to over-ride the theme is to put another style at the beginning of the page. Take a look at the HTML of that page to see how I made the lines blue again.

Re: The theme is implemented using a CSS (Cascade Style Sheet). The way to over-ride the theme is to put another style at the beginning of the page. Take a look at the HTML of that page to see how I made the lines blue again.

 

Okay, that's one fix.  But it requires an override from the new default.  On every page.  That's extra work on my part. 

 

Now, how about the "Newsletter" menu, which has the yellow lines in the "H2" titles?  I tried adding an H2 category to the style override to turn those title lines blue, and it didn't work.  Got a fix for that? 

 

See: https://thcc.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=78551

Re: Web site template

Quoted Text

Please send me links to a few (3 or 4) newsletter pages where the new theme mangles the structure of the page. That we I can see and test what works and what does not work.

I did a quick survey of the newsletter issues back through the 2011 issues, and here's the web pages that I saw with problems:

 
1) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=108703
    See "hats"
2) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=110040
    Photo captions
3) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=107140
    Holly images, "camp"
4) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=108518
    Photo captions
5) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=106051
    "New Braunfels"
6) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=102773
    3 wrap-arounds
7) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=496051&module_id=102778
    "Worcester", "Kingwood"
8) http://www.houstoncanoeclub.org/content.aspx?page_id=2&club_id=496051&vm=MonthView
    Link buttons are overlapping each other

 

        - John Rich

Thanks for the links, John. They helped me quickly check out various theme/appearance settings.

I finally gave up on tweaking the appearance of the "Chrome" theme that was messing up the text spacing. I tried various things but could never get it to work. I have selected a new "Regency" theme that has dark blue over blue colors. It does not trash the photo captions in the Newsletter and still has some more "pop" over the plain white "Minimal" theme.

I finally found the Control Panel settings that let us tweak the colors and/or appearance of individual items over the entire web site. Let us see how this theme works overall and then discuss where we might want to go with it.