The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Dave Pentecost:

Sorry, Patrick, If you took my "what's the point of voting" comment the wrong way. I agree with you. You say red herring, I say old news.

I'm sorry, but this is such old news. The paradox of democracy and all that. Your one vote can't win the election so what's the point of voting.

I think Clay is right that it is about changing minds. That is apparently what all the social software failed to do. That, and a few misatakes, and a misapprehension that most people agree that it's time to change the whole system. The network has got to recruit, not just communicate among the believers.

An electable revolutionary? Have we had any since the days of the founding fathers? See Gore Vidal's 'Inventing a Nation' for an interesting tale of their maneuvers and rivalries.

Still, Dean's the only one who's made an effort to change the health system, at least in one state. Should have stuck with that instead of the anti-war horse that died on him. As Bill Maher said on Larry King, he (Maher) is against Bush because he's bad for his health. Corporate pollution, environmental record, health care, jobs - let's make it personal and national instead of "shouldn't have taken out that bad man Saddam."

Since we're doing a little quibbling over words, here goes:

I was thrown by Patrick's use of "stemwinder" which I always thought meant a speech so long and boring that you were winding the stem of your watch in impatience. Turns out we're both right! It's one of those words with 2 opposite meanings.

(see Wordcraft Archive, May 2003 down the page in "Oration: types of speeches")

stemwinder - a rousing political speech

After all the calls to unity, a stemwinder in the old tradition from Hubert Humphrey, appearances by Muskie and Kennedy, Sargent Shriver was formally nominated for Vice-President.

- Theodore White, The Making of the President

[snip]

But occasionally: stemwinder - a speech so long and boring that it feels as though one needs to wind one’s watch before it ends

the Bill Clinton of 1988, who gave a tedious stemwinder in 1988 that has gone down in the books as the worst nominating speech in recent memory

- Bill Schneider and Keating Hollan, What to look for Thursday at the Democratic National Convention, reporting on CNN's Website, August 17, 2000

That is the sexiest picture I've seen in a long time. Something about the promise of life and fertility in that bare planetary face that gives the primal urge a surge. Or is it an Oedipal memory of Mama Mars?

Take a look at the scriptygoddess
site for a roundup of anti comment spam tips.

My last comment, I promise. Yes, both sites work in IE 5.2 but Electrolite still loses the right column at narrower screen widths in Mozilla and Safari, and Making Light loses everything in the left column from the photo down. Who knows?

Hello? Maybe the reason mine works is that it doesn't use "float" and still gets the same results. With no bugs. Even IE 5.2 is happy.

In Seth's words, "Yowza. That's some code."

Not that I can claim any credit for it. Just found it. And webgraphics.com doesn't seem to be be online anymore. Just a splash page. Hmmm...

Anyway, I just found (again) the best tutorial for this technique. http://www.glish.com/css/7.asp

They call this 3-column layout the Holy Grail. Has anybody read "The Da Vinci Code"? Will anybody admit they've read it?

Thanks Eddie, good tip. Now I gotta get a handheld!

For what it's worth, the solution I gave you works in Mozilla, Safari, and IE with very minor differences in look. And the columns don't disappear when you resize it. I'm holding off on sending revised divs until everyone weighs in.

If you are concerned about handhelds, give the content section its own middle.html and use a PHP include (as I mentioned some folks would do) in the template. Then a link to that, near the top of the left column, would let Charlie and others bypass the left column and go straight to the posts.

That'd be an easy change to Making Light also.

BTW, Charlie, "Lobsters" was a kick!

Okay, I've got it.

Here's the first missing example, about PHP includes:

<! -- left column -->
<div id="left">

<? include('/home/www/gomaya/glyph/leftcol.html'); ?>

</div>

And here's the second, about the new div containers for the middle content and right column:

<div id="middle">
9.
9.
9.
</div>

and

<div id="right">
9.
9.
9.
</div>

In case you need to know, the easy way is to run the html through the Quick Escape tool here:

http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/quick-escape.asp

and then paste the results back in the comment (or post).

Hope it helps somebody!

Damn! If I'm so smart, why didn't I remember about code in MT comments - it disappeared!

Sorry folks. I'm a little bleary. Patrick, I'll email it. And I'll figure it out and send another comment for the rest of you. But at least you see the gist of it.

Patrick

I arrived at my 3-column MT layout by the same cargo cult route. And since I'm sitting up here in the Adirondacks listening to the rain, I'll describe the process, so you can have the satisfaction of genuflecting to the blog god until he delivers.

Seth's suggestions are good but I don't think you want both the left and middle columns to be fluid, as in the example he pointed to. The left can be fixed width, and the resolution of the monitor can vary and it'll still look good.

And I think Steve could do it for you (his layout looks good) but you probably want to change your Main Index template also. I'll explain how I did it and you can decide. If you like, email me your Main Index template and I will do it for you, but as you'll see it's not all that complicated.

Ready to genuflect?

First of all, if you are monkeying with your layout and don't want it to show online, copy your Main Index template (all the text), create a new template called Main Index Experiment that ouputs a file called index2.html, and paste the text into that template. Save and rebuild of course. Then you can check on the results of your hacking by looking at http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/index2.html and your public site won't be affected.

As for the CSS style sheet, you just have to add 3 new divs to the end of it, for the left column, the middle content, and the right column. Mine look like this (with credit to where I swiped the basic elements):

/* These are CSS elements borrowed from webgraphics.com */


#left {
9position: absolute;
9width: 190px;
9top: 100px;
9left: 10px;
9}

#middle {

9margin-left: 185px;
9margin-right:185px;
9voice-family: "\"}\"";
9voice-family: inherit;
9margin-left: 191px;
9margin-right:191px;
99}
9html>body #centercontent {
9margin-left: 191px;
9margin-right:191px;
9}


#right {
9position: absolute;
9width: 190px;
9top: 10px;
9right: 10px;
9font-family:georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", arial, serif;
9}


Now, you want to change the output file of Main Index Experiment to index2.php. Why? Well, this is really all the PHP I know or need right now - with PHP, you can "call" a separate html file, like a subroutine. It's called an include.

So all I need to do to have a left column is insert this in the template, after the banner code and before the blog content:








(that's in my site, obviously)



You still want to put your middle section and the right column into their new containers, so you enclose those sections of the template in these tags:


9.
9.
9.


and


9.
9.
9.


(As I said, email me your Main Index template and I can do this if you like)


Next you create a new template called Left Column that outputs leftcol.html. Copy bits of your right column tags into it (like sidetitles, etc.) if you are as lazy as me, and edit it for new content. Some folks would make new Middle and Right templates that output middle.html and right.html, then use includes for those also (makes for a compact index and easier editing of each section) but I didn't bother.

And you are done.

Done monkeying that is. If you want to make it public, copy all the text of Main Index Experiment and paste it into Main Index. Make sure that Main Index is outputting to index.php and then save, rebuild, and the world sees the new Electrolite.

I'll see what I can do to make the 3 new divs correct for your site and then email them to you. My right column in The Daily Glyph is screwy because it starts all the way at the top of the page, overlapping the right end of the banner. So it'll take a little tweaking. But not much.

There. Happy to help. I've enjoyed reading Electrolite over the last year or so. And I've got to come out of the Lower East Side to hear your band one of these days!

Saludos
Dave

...and the packets' red glare, wi-fi bursting on air...

We gotta change it. And we will.

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