Fighting the Mysterious Margin

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I’m not an expert when it comes to HTML and CSS. Most of us aren’t, I suspect, but I wanted to put it out there up front.

Since switching to this new theme which I like not quite as much as I liked my previous, argumentative theme, I’ve managed to make a few tweaks to the layout.

Most notably, I’ve increased the body text to 14 point from 11 or 12 point. I suppose I’m reaching an age where I really notice tiny text, and far worse, I’m reaching an age where 12 point is starting to look a bit on the tiny size. I have no plans to start sliding to the “large print books” section, yet, but particularly for those of us who spent most of the workday in front of one computer screen or another — and in my case, two big ones at once — my eyes will take all the help they can get by the end of the day.

I’ve also made a few other modest adjustments, most so minor that trying to list them (or reading the resulting list) would be about as exciting as watching a grandfather clock whose pendulum no longer swings.

I’m not an expert at coding, but I’m pretty good at figuring it out when I have to. At least, within reason.

There were three primary issues remaining on my initial punch list for getting this new theme where I wanted it.

The first of which is that I want the text in the front page slider to slide to the left, so that there isn’t that big gap between the thumbnail and the text. This theme, like almost every other theme I considered as a possible replacement to the last one, assumes thumbnails you’ll upload are wider than the standard size I already use. I have such a large library of thumbnails at this point that the thought of redoing all of them to fit some predetermined size might just be enough to send me running through the streets screaming.

So, the theme will have to adjust to my graphics, rather than the other way around.

The second involves the “highlight” color that appears when you select a section of text: I’m still looking for any mention of the horrendous pink that appears. So far, I’ve been through almost all of it, and there’s no reference to that color anywhere. I’m determined to find it: nearly anything would be better than that. (Update: Done!)

The third involves the configuration of the “Related Posts” that appear between the post and the comments. Ideally, I’d like related posts to appear below the comments, where I feel they belong to begin with. Short of that, I’d like there to be fewer of them so that one has a better chance of seeing the comments before wondering if they missed something.

But then I learned of a new problem: there appears to be a discrepancy in how much margin exists between the text of a post and the left border of the post window. When I load a post, here’s what I see:

When some others load a post, however, here’s what they see:

So far, I can’t pinpoint a platform or a browser that’s causing the issue. Both images are taken from different Macs running Chrome. I’m looking into this one as well, because the top image is how the blog is supposed to look. As I try to nail down this problem, this is where your assistance would be appreciated!

Your Turn:
What do you see in terms of the left margin of the post? Is there padding (white space) between the left margin and the orange background, or is the text right up against the orange? What browser are you running?

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