modifying ezmlm mailing list

[oboedrew]

I'm setting up an ezmlm mailing list on my new website. Anyone know how I can change the color of the "subscribe/unsubscribe" arrows to a shade of gray? My site has a black/white color scheme, and the blue really stands out.

Thanks,
Drew

[johnfl68]

Drew:

I think you are seeing that on a Safari browser??? It is grey on FireFox, IE, and Opera, and only blue on Safari. As I last recall, there is no standard for changing colors on Form elements that works for all browsers (unless this has changed recently). I think some of these you can change with CSS, but does not work for Safari.

You could always use custom images for the elements, to override this. Here is one example:

http://ryanfait.com/resources/custom-checkboxes-and-radio-buttons/

Hope this helps!

John

[Tom E.]

Hi Drew,

Welcome to FQ!

Now that we've been introduced, I can tell you my darkest secret...

...I removed the subscribe/unsubscribe selection from my mail list form and replaced it with <input type="hidden" name="mode" value="subscribe" />
Then you can change your button text to "Subscribe" or "Join" or something.

I created a separate unsubscribe page, and I put a link to it in the footer of all mailing list messages. The unsubscribe page has this hidden form element: <input type="hidden" name="mode" value="unsubscribe" />


Good luck,

Tom

P.S. Now back to oboes. Are you a fan of Paul McCandless?

[oboedrew]

Many thanks for the tips. I just made that modification and I'm much happier with the look of the mailing list now. Next question... is it possible to change the font within the "subscribe" button?

I'm not familiar with Paul McCandless. Is he an oboist?

Cheers,
Drew

[Tom E.]

I think you can set the font with something like<input type="submit" style="font: insert-your-font-here">

From www.paulmccandless.com (http://www.paulmccandless.com):
A gifted multi-instrumentalist and composer, he specializes on the oboe, English horn, bass clarinet, soprano and sopranino saxophones and a collection of folk flutes reflecting his grounding in both classical and jazz disciplines

I think he's best known for being in the groups Oregon (http://oregonband.com/) and the Paul Winter Consort (http://paulwinterconsort.com/), but the only times I've seen him live was when he played with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (http://www.flecktones.com) on some of their mid-1990's tours. He also appears on a few of the Flecktones recordings from that period.

[oboedrew]

I think you can set the font with something like<input type="submit" style="font: insert-your-font-here">


I tried these:

<input type="submit" style="times new roman" value="subscribe" />

<input type="submit" style="font: times new roman" value="subscribe" />

<input type="submit" style=font:"times new roman" value="subscribe" />

But no luck.

Cheers,
Drew

[Tom E.]

If the font name contains spaces, it has to be quoted - but the style property has to be quoted too. You might be able to use single quotes for the style, and double quotes for the font, but I'm not sure if all browsers would support that.

It's easier to put it in a class. Then if you add other CSS attributes, the <input> tag doesn't get too crowded with a huge style attribute.

<!-- in the "head" element -->
<style type="text/css">
<!--
.button_class {
font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}
-->
</style>
.
.
.
<input type="submit" class="button_class" name="submit" value="What font am I?"></input>

[oboedrew]

If the font name contains spaces, it has to be quoted - but the style property has to be quoted too. You might be able to use single quotes for the style, and double quotes for the font, but I'm not sure if all browsers would support that.

It's easier to put it in a class. Then if you add other CSS attributes, the <input> tag doesn't get too crowded with a huge style attribute.

<!-- in the "head" element -->
<style type="text/css">
<!--
.button_class {
font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}
-->
</style>
.
.
.
<input type="submit" class="button_class" name="submit" value="What font am I?"></input>




Hmm... can't get that one to work either. Actually, I had already tried something similar:

<input id="button" type="submit" value="subscribe" />

...and then in the separate style sheet:

#button {font-family: "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px}

But that didn't work either. At least, the font didn't change in Safari, Opera, Firefox, or Camino on my Macbook. This is kinda baffling.

Cheers,
Drew

[Tom E.]

#button {font-family: "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px}
I copied this from your post above and it worked in my test file on Opera, FF & IE on windows.

Perhaps there is something else in your CSS that is overriding it, or maybe there's a syntax error in your CSS and it's not even getting to the line.

Try pasting the submit button and the #button style element into a new test file and see if it works.

If it does, then paste lines from your external CSS file until you find out what breaks it.

[oboedrew]

I copied this from your post above and it worked in my test file on Opera, FF & IE on windows.

Perhaps there is something else in your CSS that is overriding it, or maybe there's a syntax error in your CSS and it's not even getting to the line.

Try pasting the submit button and the #button style element into a new test file and see if it works.

If it does, then paste lines from your external CSS file until you find out what breaks it.

This sorta works. Here's the complete XHTML for my test file:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">

<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="test.css" />
</head>

<body>
<p>e-mail address: <input id="input" type="text" name="to_sub" value="" size="25" /></p>
<input id="button" type="submit" value="subscribe" />

</body>
</html>

and the complete CSS:

body
{font-family: "times new roman", times, serif;
letter-spacing: 2px;
word-spacing: 4px;
background-color: #fff}

#input
{font-family: "times new roman", times, serif;
font-size: 15px}

#button
{font-family: "times new roman", times, serif;
font-size: 15px}


Now Opera and Firefox read the button in times new roman, but not Safari. The text in the button is still unaltered in Safari. Any ideas why?

Not that it's a big deal. I've got far worse bugs to work out in my site than the text in the submit button. It just bugs me (no pun intended) when I don't know WHY something isn't working, 'cause then I won't be able to figure it out in the future if another situation really requires that I change the font style or size in a button.

Cheers,
Drew

[Tom E.]

Browser support for various CSS options is far from universal. It might just be that Safari doesn't support changing the font in a button.