Changelog

• Potassium does not depend on an external file for layout structure anymore. This should satisfy both Sandbox 1.5 and 1.6, and possibly any older or newer versions.
• Changes made to the CSS of the blogroll widget list items.

Download Potassium 1.0.5 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 0b501cbe77c258c9f3c80aca6fe8e46b
MD5 (.tar.gz) 5bb3075e5a581f285aa5c0cfbb7d5079

Like Potassium, Bromine will be a variable-width design. Unlike either the distributed Potassium or Thistle, Bromine will consist of three columns, and I will be using NO images, only CSS for it! Interesting, eh? As well as having no images, I’ll also be going for a darker color scheme this time, so the orange and brown bromine-like hues will be a bit darker as well.

At Sandbox’s home page, Scott quotes Andy (both are Sandbox’s creators) as follows:

Given straightforward markup with plenty of selectors, there isn’t much that can’t be accomplished with CSS and a decent browser.

Bromine sets out to prove just that. Oh, and speaking of decent browsers, be reminded that Bromine will not support IE6. Neither will any more WordPress themes I make. There may be minute effort to get themes to display reasonably and perhaps up to the point of readability, but I guess that’s about it. I even almost called that too much. That’s how much I detest IE6.

I realize that Sandbox has advanced through a few minor version increases all the way to 1.5 since the last time I kept updated with it which is many months ago, but I will soon seek out any changes that I need to make to Potassium to cater to Sandbox 1.5′s new/updated/deprecated CSS classes (with Scott’s help if I need it). The only bad thing is that I’m still unsure which versions of Sandbox to support and which not to. I think I’ll really need to ask Scott about it.

See? I still love Potassium and Sandbox

Changelog

• Cut down blank lines wherever I could but still left the code readable.
• Included <pre lang="mysql"> GeSHi syntax for SQL highlighting.
• Made compatible with Sandbox 1.0.0 by altering some theme-specific CSS classes.

Download Potassium 1.0.3 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) aea9023cda19bfd193f52e83077c78f6
MD5 (.tar.gz) b80a05274e4c5be983c07bb0b2090ac4

To accommodate a typo being fixed for the widgets CSS class in 2.3.1, Potassium 1.0.2.1 has been released. It only contains this typo fix for WordPress 2.3.1, along with the erroneously-spelled CSS class for backwards compatibility with WordPress 2.3. Download it now!

Changelog

• Altered the stylesheet description to remind you that Sandbox is required.
• Support for tag cloud widgets introduced – the tag icon should now appear in these widgets as you can see in my own blog.
• Added .left and .right CSS classes… just in case.
• Tweaked .center so text in paragraphs and such are centered as well.
• Padding added to <div>s inside sidebar widgets.

Download Potassium 1.0.2 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 5643fa7a55225778ae2bb65ac9f083bd
MD5 (.tar.gz) de60ac6bea58753f96629f20e35848c3

Now to rant about my tag cloud and IE’s job of messing it up.

Apparently WordPress 2.3′s tag system changes all whitespace in tags to non-breaking spaces  . I don’t know why WordPress 2.3 developers chose to do that, but unless it’s considered a defect worth rectifying, I can’t do anything about it except hack WordPress on my own (which I’ve never done before and pledge never to do unless under perforce) because WordPress 2.3 has been feature frozen.

Why am I complaining about the whitespace entitizing? Because IE6 AND IE7 both exhibit the Expanding Box Bug upon encountering non-breaking spaces, which, unfortunately, my workaround is unable to fix.

A standards-compliant browser does this (screenshot from Opera 9.50 alpha 1, still world’s most compliant browser):

IE6 and 7 respectively do these (IE7 screenshot courtesy of Nicole, both taken on different dates):

Right now I’ve implemented, under my conditional-commented <style> tag, Microsoft’s proprietary word-wrap CSS property to at least tame this in IE6 (currently thinking of a way to fix it in IE7) but you’ll see pathetically broken words. Still, being the standards advocate and shameless link plugger, I suggest you get Firefox or Opera.

I’ve made my own copy of Potassium’s sidebar split into primary and secondary sidebars, but still kept them packed to the right and rearranged some widgets, and thinned them a little to give the content column as much space as possible. This is to improve readability of the content column (easier on the eyes) and make BoltPress look a tad more hip

Also, since I’ve recently decided to leave the 800 × 600 users in the lurch and move on to 1024 × 768 users for NOVALISTIC 3.0′s layout, I figured it’d be appropriate to do the same for Potassium.

But don’t fret, all you 800 × 600 users, you can enjoy BoltPress in your smaller screen resolution when I’m done with my very first publicly released full WordPress theme. I’m not revealing anything about it yet, you’ll have to wait for it EDIT [6:25 pm]: Right now there’s always Kubrick

EDIT [8/9]: Thanks for all your encouraging words, guys, I feel way much better and more motivated now. I think too much.

EDIT [8/8]: I can’t believe I forgot to plug a link to the results post. OK there you go.

You might think that Potassium only didn’t win anything. Well, worse. It received absolutely NO points at all!

Here are the winners:

1. SandPress by Arpit Jacob was the champion, scoring 26 points in total.
2. Moo-Point by Will Wilkins placed second, with 23 points.
3. Prima by Sunaryo Hadi came in third, with 19 points.

My utmost congratulations to the three of you. You did well.

Alright, if you don’t mind reading what I have to say for myself:

I’m just so disappointed with myself because it feels so much like I’m representing Singapore for the SDC, but Potassium scored zero. I never expected myself to win anything anyway, but I’m exasperated at my score.

I still feel I’ve let the rest of Singapore down. And besides, National Day’s in just a couple days. Plus, coupling all that with the fact that there aren’t exactly many Singaporean WordPress or free software advocates (or are there really many? AFAIK there aren’t many PHP developers here), I just feel overwhelmingly terrible… *sigh*

Also, I’ve just gotten dismissed from school *points to the post time*, but I checked for the scores during English class. Miss Law had brought us to the school library so I decided to seek permission from her to use the computers. And yes, my book report is only half-complete. Or a little bit more than that. Whatever, it’s still incomplete anyway.

I’m lucky I wasn’t after the money or I would’ve stopped blogging once and for all, srsly.

I’m sorry, Singapore. Happy early 42nd birthday. And I’m not in the mood for any Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy jokes.

If you’d like to console me, sure, just leave a reply right below. I’ll be glad to reply, just don’t expect me to be friendly if you aren’t.

Changelog

• Added a font size and line height to #footer because that gloss line in the background can serve as an interesting line margin.
• Added more margin between posts.
• Fixed .nav-previous going over and knocking down .nav-next, occurring most frequently with long post titles. It’ll still not work on IE6 though.
• Fixed .required so it inherits the background color instead. Didn’t seem necessary since Potassium has a white content background, but if you think about it a little longer…
• Fixed lists inside comment/trackback lists so they display as normal lists instead of looking like comments or trackbacks.

Download Potassium 1.0.1 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) cd6fa549eabad3b41668c898d220b4fd
MD5 (.tar.gz) c1e6a6dcaf0bac54e0a406a3387a6bf8