Simplr Revisited, Part 1

     Simplr's "Recent Comments" needed a makeover so I went to work on it. Simplr is designed to work with WordPress Widgets. Hence Simplr's "modular" look. For what it's worth, I'm not using Widgets. Nor do I plan to.
     Simplr's "sidebar" isn't on the side. Instead, it shows up between the content and the footer. Simplr keeps its sidebar parts in order with "li" list tags. For example, here's what the search box looks like:

<li id="search">
  <h2><label for="s">Search</label></h2>
  <ul>
    <li><?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?></li>
  </ul>
</li>

What I didn't like about Simplr was how close the list items were crammed together. So I went into style.css and added the following code:

div.sidebar h2 {
    margin: 3em 0em 0em 0em;
}

     What did this do? It told the Simplr theme to add "3em" of space above every "h2" item in the sidebar. The first item after "margin:" is the top margin, followed by the right, bottom, and left margins. I like how this opens up the design. It's not like we need to be stingy about space here--this is the Internet. Added cautiously, this additional "3em" space allows your eye to see the sidebar's individual parts as well as the whole. This gave the "Ad Links" space to breathe too.