Cascading over the cataracts with CSS

I wanted to make more effective use of the white-space in my blog to present more text on each page, so I took the plunge today and paid the WordPress folks to give me the right to edit my CSS pages.

I will of course continue to use Chris Person’s wonderful Cutline theme. I am committed to using it, both because of its fine design and that endearing picture of Ferrara Cafe — seeing it always reminds me of my cutie-pie,as I wrote some time back in On Ferrara Cafe.

Here’s what I’ve done so far, copied over from a rough log I’ve been keeping:

Added Arial at start of fonts list and cut the percentage from 62.5 to 42.5.

That’s too small, moved to 52.5 percent. This is in the “body” tag.

Changed “container” from 770px to 900px. This gives more room for text.

Changed “content-box” from 770px to 900px. Effect unclear.

Changed “content” from 500px to 700px. This caused an overflow and the right column wound up below. Not acceptable.

Trying “content” of 600px. That helped, the right column is now back on the right, but the bars go too far to the right. Let’s make the right column smaller.

Change sidebar width from 230px to 180px.

Change masthead width from 770px to 900px.

Change “ul.sidebar_list li.widget {
width:230px;” to 180px. No effect I can see.