7 color variations [Transmogrified]

[kaigou]

Theme name/layout: Skittlish Dreams (a port of the Wordpress theme, Skittlish)
Author: Kaigou
Layout info: Bundled css + images are at http://www.karinoyo.com/media/skittlish.zip
Image info: Images are edited/slightly adapted from original version to work with DW's layout reqs.
Screenshot: http://i385.photobucket.com/albums/oo292/solnull/other/skittlishdreams.png

The default color scheme is orange; additional options are for blue, cyan, green, violet, red, and pink. All schemes use the following images: left_bg.gif, header_bg.gif, footer_bg.gif, and bg.gif. Each scheme also gets a color-dependent version of three more images, which are named as [color]_edge.gif, [color]_circle.gif, [color]_box.gif. To make it easier on color-switching, the CSS-as-bundled doesn't contain a default color, but uses XXXXXX. That gets search/replaced to whichever of the following is being used:

blue => #0870C9
cyan => #1088F7
green => #61AC00
orange => #F79910
pink => #F122BE
red => #C90808
violet => #AE3BD4

Comments

[kaigou]

If those links get too much smaller, then it becomes an issue of readability -- it's already somewhat low-contrast, so it needs to stay kinda big to make up for that. What I couldn't seem to get to work when doing the layout was just more space between the links-line and the mass-action line. I seem to recall I tried doing a clear in there as one way to push the mass-action down a bit more, but it kept breaking the box instead.

From a purely design perspective, if the management links are left-aligned, then they're going to (or should) display that way on all pages, which reduces the scannability on the main page. That is, the links are right-aligned to sort of keep them out of the way of the body of each post, so the eye can run down the left and not be distracted by details unless needed. (I had actually tried to get the tags & filters to move right, but that also sent everything into a wonky madness, so I compromised with tag/filter on left and links on right.)

If there's a way to just get more space/padding between the management links and the mass action, and then add more padding to the mass-action so it sits within the green, that would at least keep it from splitting the line like what you're seeing. I know I fiddled with the padding around the mass-action, but IIRC I cut back on that because Firefox would show one way and Safari a completely different way, and it was too radically opposite for comfort. I mean, there's variation and then there's "are you sure this is the same layout!?" variation. *heddesk*

Them's my thoughts & what I'd been aiming for, if that helps, and if you've got any ideas, color me really really appreciative. Someday I'll be a CSS guru -- probably about the time it get completely superseded by some new tech and joins my Pascal skills in the pit of uselessness. Sigh.