Welcome to the Wider Layout

Noticed anything new about my blog? It seems to have been eating pies and grown wider, somewhat like it’s author.

I’d really appreciate any feedback on if this new width is acceptable or is too large for how you browse the internet. I know it will be too wide for netbook users (of which I am one) without scaling the screen to 75%, but I seriously needed more space.

I very much liked the look of my blog when I set it up and I’ve been very happy with the service WordPress supplies for free for my blog. Their technical support have even answered a couple of questions I have thrown their way over the last 10 months or so {I get better free support off WordPress than I have had from software I’ve paid for}. But the narrow window for the text of my blog has been annoying me since the second or third week after I started. As for code and Explain Plan layout, boy that has been a pain. The use of “sourcode” was an early and much appreciated find and this formatting tool has been improved several times, even in the last 12 months. In fact, that earlier post I just linked to does not fully make sense now as one failed attempt to use the “sourcode” layout now works.

But the width limitation of the style sheet I chose forces me to spend a long time trying to edit code and especially Explain Plan outputs such that it lays out in a readable format. It makes doing technical blogs even more time-consuming.

It all came to a head a month ago when I started using screen shots in my blog. They are rendered down to an illegible 460 pixels wide. This was a real blow as, along with the other threads I want to blog about, I want to do some stuff on AWR in OEM and that can only be done with screenshots.

As you can see, this width issue is no longer such a problem for me. WordPress let you alter the CSS of your style sheet for a fee. But WordPress being the nice chaps they are, you can try it out for free first, to ensure you can do what you want to do. So I got a friend who understands all this web/CSS/html stuff to help me and within a couple of hours we had it sorted. The final step was to give 15 dollars a year to WordPress {I see it as buying them a couple of pints} and I can now bring to you the Wider Widlake Ramblings.

If you are curious as to how this change in width aids layout, see this post I have edited to show before and after layouts.

Screenshots are still going to be an issue, I can’t go beyond 800 pixels for the text window as with the side-bar, window margins, scroll bar etc, the blog would become wider than 1200 pixels (and I decided that 1200 pixels was as far as I could go without it becoming a major problem for some people to read my blog). But code layout is now fine and I can manage screenshots if I am careful.

It pains me to say this, but bigger is sometimes better.