A short time ago I posted about the problems I had with the Ryan Brill Negative Margin Layout from A List Apart, which is a great layout, and easy to implement. The theme I constructed using that layout worked perfectly on my WP 1.5.x testbed but when put on the WP 2.0 testbed the sidebar stuff was flying all over the place. It was really bizarre.

Well, right before that I had done the Political Vine site using Jello Piefecta from Position is Everything. Though I did eventually succeed in the use of that layout for the Political Vine site, from day one it was a struggle. If I put the javascript for the font size change on the top of the rightside column nothing underneath it would go where it was supposed to. Same with the Amazon code in the left column. Also, unless I created the side column ad boxes as list items they wouldn’t position where they belonged, they’d overlap other stuff in ways that just didn’t make sense, and no amount of clearing, easy or otherwise, was gonna fix ‘em. Same with the calendar. Same with trying to center stuff in the side columns. Every damn thing I did was a fight to make those sidebars work, which was bizarre since I’d used that layout extensively for 1.5.x themes and never had this sort of problem.

Well, it’s happened again, this time with Jello Piefecta, to the point where I could not use it at all for a theme which is to be featured on a WordPress 2.0.x blog. This time I constructed the theme without a header and just three columns. The left column was to hold the logo image near the top and clickable to “home” with a short linklist below it. No matter what I did the image went UP and off the screen so you could only see the bottom third of it. And this time I didn’t have any javascript, or ad code, or google code, or any other sort of “potential problem producing” sidebar stuff. It just WANKED all by itself.

Now, the single thing these two layouts have in common is that they are negative margin floated and source ordered xhtml/css layouts. In other words, they’re very sophisticated codewise, and very very good to use for both google and for accessibility, since the content comes before either side column in the code. That’s the reason I love to use them- they’re reliable and user/SE friendly AND I get to give my clients a leg up, that little extra edge. Until WordPress 2.0, that is. WP 2.0 hates Negative Margin Layouts.

I’m reduced to using simple layouts just to get stuff to WORK. I always try a “good” layout first, but in the reality I’m stuck with, if the neg margin source ordered layout can’t be made to work on the first try, I’ve got to go to “plan B”. Luckily xhtml/css layouts in general are already accessible for the most part and much more SE friendly than any table layout, but I really wish the WordPress devs would take a look at this issue (after they’re done fixing everything else wrong with 2.0 . . . huh?) There is NOTHING in these layouts that should be causing the sidebar code to bork. These are very clean and validating layouts. And here I am having WORDPRESS CORE CODE dictate to me the layout I’m allowed to use. Geez, that’s almost as NASTY as Joomla and Mambo and Zencart and OSCommerce and the core generated table code for their sideboxes!

This also means extra dev time on each job, which I’m TRYING not to pass on to my clients. Yet. *sigh*

I think I’ve got to port some of my free themes to other blog platforms. Unless and until these things get fixed in WordPress 2.0 none of us can call it “the best” blog platform anymore, can we?

Technorati Tags: Jello Piefecta, WordPress 2.0.x, WP 2.0 hates Negative Margin Layouts.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 5:16 pmunder WP Stuff and . Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.