April 2010
14 posts
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Welcome to Petit Mondrian!
Hello and welcome!
I built this theme out of a desire for a bright, colorful, easy-to-customize theme that was friendly to the short bursts of a photo blog, but that could also handle wordier posts in an elegant, readable fashion.
The theme is built around the skeleton of Rubber Cement by Sleepover. Its simple layout, clean, precise coding, and Creative Commons license made it an ideal starting...
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How do I install Petit Mondrian?
Click here! You’ll be transported to a Tumblr backend page where you can preview or install the theme with a single mouse click.
If you’re old-school, you can also check out the source code and install it by hand.
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I hear you're customizable
Cosmo: I hear you're customizable…
Mondrian: Oh yes.
Cosmo: How customizable?
Mondrian: You can specify the color of the header, the sidebar, the footer, the post backgrounds, the page background, the header texts, the body text, the links, and a selection of alternate texts as well.
Cosmo: Wow, that's pretty good.
Mondrian: Plus you can put a tag cloud, your latest Tweet, or your Tumblr profile in the sidebar—all without knowing a single bit of code.
Cosmo: Yowzers!
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Great for Longer Text Posts
Justified text, ample line spacing, short, readable column width. I’m no fan of lorem ipsum, but it’s a useful example in this case. Just remember to keep those paragraphs short—you’re on the Internet, after all!
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam non mollis quam. Curabitur nec pulvinar leo. Aliquam aliquet scelerisque libero quis aliquam. Donec sed...
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Feel free to put pictures into your text
While the big, well-reasoned text post has its place, you can’t tell me that things won’t be a bit more compelling—or at least more aesthetically appealing—with an image or two tossed into the body.
This feature is optimized for images that are 500 pixels wide. That might seem random, but it’s the size Tumblr reduces larger pictures to by default, and most digital cameras—even...
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“Quotes are friggin’ huge and offset to the left.”
– (They’re important, right? Don’t want people thinking they’re titles, do we?)
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“Though I also scale the size of my quote text to keep things from getting out of...”
– Petit Mondrian
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Audio posts will automatically pull in your meta...
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Your netbook may have some trouble...
The sidebar and posts are fixed at 1024 pixels wide, and with the background, you’ll need about 1100px to see everything. This might be slightly larger than your netbook screen can handle without scrolling.
The posts themselves are only 700px, however, so even your Grandmother’s decade-old 800x600 display should be able to get the message across (though I take no responsibility for...
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Check Out the Alternate Text →
The “Alternate Text” refers to link post headers, post tags, and the non-linked text in the footer and header.
The idea is to add contrast and highlight a different functionality.
Note also how the sidebar color changes between single posts and the main tumblelog page.
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Setting the minimum index page height
If you put a lot of information into your sidebar using the Petit Mondrian theme, it will become very tall.
Under normal circumstances, the theme will scale to meet these demands, but sometimes you’ll end up with a single post and a bunch of sidebar-colored space underneath it.
To avoid this problem, increase the Minimum Index Page Height beyond 1200px. This will shove your footer a bit...
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How about some more tags?
Pile on in, kids! Plenty of room for everyone. The design will scale, I promise.
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hello, world