Emulating Journalist in Sandbox: reorganizing element flow

  • areyoutargeted · Member ·

    I’m trying Sandbox 1.6.1 to get more control over how my page is laid out. I’m having a few problems.

    Let’s start with something simple. I’d like to copy the look of Journalist 1.9.1 blog posts on the front page. In Journalist, the element flow is like this:

    1. title
    2. link to comments
    3. post
    4. author
    5. edit link
    6. date of entry
    7. categories

    In Sandbox, the element flow is like this:

    1. title
    2. date of entry (div.entry-date)
    3. post
    4. author (div.entry-meta span.author)
    5. categories (div.entry-meta span.cat-links)
    6. edit link
    7. comments link

    How would I go about reorganizing the element flow? Is this possible?

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • devblog · Member ·

    yes, it’s possible… in my solution the edit link would go at the end, and sicne only you can see it, it shouldn’t be relevant if it goes between “author” and “date of entry”. Also, my solution is based on what I see on your blog.

    .hentry{
position: relative;
}

.entry-date {
bottom: 67px;
left: 10px;
position: absolute;
}

.entry-content {
overflow: hidden;
}

.entry-meta{
background: #efefef;
padding: 5px 10px;
}

.entry-meta .meta-sep {
display: none;
}

.entry-meta .author, .entry-meta .cat-links, .entry-meta .tag-links, .entry-meta .edit-link{
display: block;
}

.entry-meta .author {
margin: 0 0 25px;
}

.comments-link {
left: 0;
position: absolute;
top: 35px;
}

    You can take it from there.

  • areyoutargeted · Member ·

    Hmmm… I had figured a solution looking like this might pop up, but was hoping for something better. Exact pixel positioning turns out not to work, because the size of the element containing the blog posting is unknown.

    Journalist is a really good theme for me, it’s just that there’s a couple things I need to tweak that I can’t do without either more semantic information in the factory-issued widgets, or more information in the page itself.

    Unless there’s some amazingly cool capability in CSS3 I don’t know about, I’ll have to consider this case ‘resolved’ – against Sandbox.

    Thanks anyway.

  • devblog · Member ·

    Exact pixel positioning turns out not to work, because the size of the element containing the blog posting is unknown.

    that shouldn’t have mattered because you’re positioning the elements in relation to the bottom of the container. It worked just fine on my test blog… in long and short posts… everything looked the same as I expected them to behave; that’s another reason I said “you can take it from there” so you’d adjust the values to your needs.

    I really don’t know what you look or expect from any these themes, but in my experience tweaking their CSS, I get what I want and I’m pleased with the results even though what I can do with them is limited since we only have access to their CSS.

    Unless you move to a self-hosted blog where you can tweak the core of the blog, and not just CSS, you’ll have to “sacrifice” somethings to “get” others”…

    Happy blogging.

  • devblog · Member ·

    I had figured a solution looking like this might pop up, but was hoping for something better.

    Another thing, you said something better?

    Dealing with the limited things wp.com offer when tweaking themes, I think that solutions was damn good. After all it’s a solution.

    Excuse me if I’m getting this a bit personal, but when you say something better, is like the solution I gave you was a crappy one. Given the environment and circumstances, I think is not.

    Again, you might’ve not meant it the way I took it, and my exhaustion is making me interpret your words way wrong, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit I felt frustrated after reading your reply.

    I’m off.

  • areyoutargeted · Member ·

    I tried out your solution and actually the elements you suggested positioning came out near the top of the blog post container.

    I didn’t mean to offend. I think you did (and have been doing) a very good job. When I said “something better”, I meant I was hoping something better was possible. I’m sure that if something better was possible, you would have posted it because your solutions have been excellent and timely.

  • devblog · Member ·

    I understand. Thank you.

    I didn’t mean to misunderstand your words. Exhausting is not pretty.

    I tried out your solution and actually the elements you suggested positioning came out near the top of the blog post container.

    That’s strange because the following code should prevent that from happening.

    .hentry{
position: relative;
}

    check my old sandbox skins blog out, I applied the above code (I added one more property to the entry-meta selector also) and I believe it does look like what you want

    http://sandboxskins.wordpress.com/

    I do think that it would be really nice if we could do more here… but alas, that’s just not possible.

  • devblog · Member ·

    Exhausting is not pretty.

    *sigh*

    That should read “exhaustion”…

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