Dom Inspector - Customizing Blogger Theme / Layout/ Template

After a long time looking at others blogs with fancy themes / layouts, today i set out to get my self one different theme, which is not there in the blogger's default layout set. Since the aim was to get something out of the bloggers default arsenal, i was just looking around for some fancy layouts. and even got thru so many which i just fell head over heels.. But, as soon as applied them, it just felt as though they were not there for my blog.

Then i decided to do something which i would normally not do. play around with the css info in the xml to fit my requirement. first i went around with a fancy theme, but i couldn't make heads or toes of it.

Since now i had my mind bent on customising a theme for me, i decided to start with a ver simple theme, a minimalistic theme which would have just a background and display. i found one, i can't remember, from where i took this.. This is the current one, which was named redplanet... I did like the base template but not the splash image which was there at the top below the title.

I started off with Bluefish to edit the xml, and get out with my customization. But somewhere down the line, i remembered kavitha's saying, something about Dom Inspector in Firefox. Since I'm using IceWeasel in Debian, which is pretty much based on Firefox and is also similar to it, i chanced upon seeing weather it has dom inspector in it. I pressed Ctrl+Shift+I and, lo behold, there appeared Dom Inspector, it was pretty much simple, working with it. Editing the theme was nearly a piece of cake with this Dom Inspector. I had seen kavitha, Sumathi, Santhosh all playing with Dom Inspector for editing / customising look and feel at work, but this is the first time i have used it Dom Inspector. It was interesting to see such a powerful tool hidden away in a browser. I already had a strong belief, as firefox is the browser for developers, and one more reason in my arsenal to drive my point home.

Try using it.