Jon, if I change my spoiler CSS to a blackout bar, like:

spoiler: {
color: black;
background-color:black;
}

it also messes up things in my left linkpanel. Can we lose the spoiler style up there without breaking anything else?

How's that? Palatable? (eta: the blackout bar effect is kinda cool. I just have to add some more margin on the right side, for some reason. It looks like the CIA went through the site with their sinister markers)

Can we lose the spoiler style up there without breaking anything else?

Sure. Just add another class to the main css sheet that makes text white, and change those two +'s to use it instead of using the spoiler class.

Actually, I just replaced them with non-breaking spaces. Why are we pushing them out with characters? Can we push them out with CSS itself, in fact?

Actually, I just replaced them with non-breaking spaces.

Crude, but effective. Except for people who are using fonts with different specing.

Why are we pushing them out with characters?

Because we weren't using css when we set it up.

Can we push them out with CSS itself, in fact?

I don't see why not.

Except for people who are using fonts with different specing.

But the width of one "+" and one non-breaking space--the idea is to keep it aligned with the elements that have the visible pluses, right? How about we make them list elements with a graphical icon, one blank, but of the same width? Sort of like the folder list elements: background: url("http://www.buffistas.org/images/ico_triangle.gif") no-repeat left;

Making that whole left column a bunch of list elements is, I think, the way to go. Gives folks even more flexibility in terms of formatting.

grr argh! i decided to change my spoilerfont to red because the gray wasn't alerting enough to keep from reading and now it's just gone back to the default of white. WUWT?

ETA: yes, i've refreshed and deleted my cookies/files.

Can you cut and paste the spoiler section of your css file, tiggy? Maybe the syntax is messed up.

Jon, right now those boxes are all linkclusters, so it'd be li.linkclusters that are being altered--from your design POV is it important to have a visual difference between the verbs (read/message center/maintain) and the links to the more static or less-used pages--would you have them be different classes still?

I'm playing with just making them undressed up t li elements in css.net, and it looks okay so far, but distractingly uniform down the side.

I've noticed that sometimes when I go to my message center stuff on the right hand side disappears. Is it supposed to do that now?