Solving a Text Size Problem
I need to see what template modifications on my Blogger sites will allow browser View | Text Size alterations to work. As I finally noticed (after almost 5 years of blogging), my blog posts do not have text that is resizable. I want that.
Before I can Start
Although the Muddleware Lab is reserved for experimental verification of blog modifications before I make them to my "production" blogs, I don't seem to have ever saved the current Blogger template.
My first step is to log into Blogger, open the template for this blog, and save a copy next to the default page as default.asp.template.txt. I have those for my production blogs. Here's the current master for the template that currently applies to Orcmid's Lair. (This may render as a web page even though it is delivered as a text file. If necessary, use View | Source to see the text of the template.)
Now That's Interesting
The template that I've always used on Muddleware Lab is Douglas Bowman's Rounders 3. I see some very useful characteristics:
- It's texts can be fully resized larger or smaller in a browser.
It appears that the use of %-values in font-size styles is the trick. It also appears that the effect of <small> is also undesirable. It looks like LiveWriter has some part in this particular outcome, but it may be following something in the Rounders 3 styling.
- The template is completely self-contained: There are no links to style-sheets elsewhere, an improvement over the older template that is customized on Orcmid's Lair and elsewhere.
Some Challenges
Along with the appealing bits, there are also some serious challenges:
- This template declares my blog pages to be strict XHTML 1.0. I know that is not true. Blogger does not filter nor transform the posts to ensure conformance with that DTD. Furthermore, unclosed <p> and <br> tags show up everywhere. I suspect <img> is unclosed also.
- I don't really like this template, and I need to make one that is more aligned with the style I use for the public blogs. That would make this a more-realistic laboratory and the results would be more applicable to the other blogs. I can work on that a little at a time, once I solve the problem that has me be working over here today.
- When I make template changes, some of the examples and remarks on earlier posts won't make sense if they are reposted under a modified template. I like the idea of having them stay the way they started out. This may be possible with the archive pages, although the current main page will have wacky versions. I need to mull this over.
Mulling Things Over
While I ponder how I can overcome the challenges, I am going to see what happens when I change the template DTD to my favorite: HTML 4.01 Transitional.
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