RichM wrote:

I am trying to fix a few things on the ality skin

I fixed the lowercase/uppercase thing in the title, and the double-date thing with the post dates.

"Fix" or change? The lower/upper case thing is what the skin is supposed to do, and the double date thing is actually showing a date if the post date is different from the previous post date. It only shows up twice one per day.

RichM wrote:

Now I am working on the width of the comment input area problem, and have run into a snag.

What browser are you using? I use Firefox and don't see that issue. Okay it's an IE thing. Basically it's got nothing to do with your textarea size: it's the length of the trackback url taking up more room than the center column allows.

Try a tweak to your css file. Find and add:

html>body #centercontent {
margin-left: 150px;
margin-right: 206px;
}

#centercontent {
overflow: hidden;
}

Thank you so much for your support. I just made a paypal contribution to support this project.

You are correct that this problem is only with IE. The fix you suggested, however, does not fix the size of the center box in IE.

For clarification, I have done a couple of screen grabs, viewing a comment on your skins site with both Firefox and with IE.
- Internet Explorer: http://www.chefsblogs.com/docs/ality-ie.jpg
- Firefox: http://www.chefsblogs.com/docs/ality-firefox.jpg

To describe the problem more clearly, when using IE, the right border of the center box is drawn well into the right-hand column whenever the content form is called. This appears to be caused by the placement of the the content text box too far to the right. There are other less serious formatting problems too, such as the extra line between all field labels and their associated fields (in IE only).

Any ideas on how I can fix the width or left margin of the textarea box?

Trust me: it's not the comment box causing the problem. Notice how in IE the only thing that is as wide as the too-wide center column is the trackback URL? IE is making the box wide enough to fit the widest part. IE also decided the trackback URL is a one word question. It won't split the word in half, but it doesn't mind assuming the ? is the end of a question. That's why the parameter name and value are on a second line. Firefox is making the box the size it's supposed to be, then letting the too-wide part bleed out the edge. Firefox decided it doesn't know anything about one word questions and just puts all the characters together like it was told to. That's why the entire trackback URL is on one line in Firefox, just way outside the box it's supposed to be in.

I think you can test it by disabling trackbacks then going to the page again. I'm pretty sure disabling trackbacks will cause the trackback URL to not be displayed, which should fix the box width issue.

I thought the overflow hidden thing would have worked because I've used that many times to stop divs from stretching. It's possible I didn't recommend the right place, but I'm kinda guessing. I don't have that skin available to play with - just took a quick peek at the css and page source.

Lemme get a coffee going and see about grabbing the skin and maybe finding a solution that works.

Thanks, I trust your much greater knowledge of these things.

I commented out the trackback, and it did not fix the problem, but I commented out the form_textarea line and the borders lined up correctly. If these things are affecting each other, I really don't understand how, so I hope that you will share the details if you can find a fix.

Thanks!

I'll do what I can, but no promises! I've made too many promises I can't deliver on.

So this is really weird to me. I was basing my statements on past experiences, but this woudn't be the first time a new flavor of problem showed up. In fact your statement about making it be a regular text box should have been a good clue...

I remember almost giving up on this skin because of how deeply weird it was compared to most other skins. What I'll be doing is looking at the style sheet rules for the comment textarea and seeing if I can see how it is different from other skins that don't have the problem.

I also like the idea of a new way to show trackback urls too, even if it doesn't fix your issue. Trackback urls need to be copied from your web then pasted into someone else's, which means if we had text that said "trackback to this url" and linked it to the url it would actually be easier for the trackbacker. People would click on it, like they click on rss links, but so what! It would stop the long urls from blowing out the side of their alloted space.

Anyway I spent most of the day playing in a different sandbox and decided I better come back to this before it gets way old and I forget. Thanks for letting me know my idea was wrong because now I know to go in a different direction. I really don't like to use IE, but skin work involves multiple browsers, so...