ok. two very simple things required to ensure that inapproprirate diary entries are not viewed:
1) set the diary "rating" on a user to "1". bring back the version of mod_virgule which allows you to set the viewing threshold (it was an experiment that appears to have been lost somewhere somehow).
2) put in a trust-metric check such that only apprentice-and-above (not observer) diary entries appear in the recent log.
v. simple.
CSS styles
verry very interesting: i've been exploring CSS styles, and with some careful egg-shell-treading work, it's possible to have fluid styles - of menus and of layout - that look reasonable, irrespective of the screen width.
it's taken me about a month to find appropriate articles and learn from them. now that _has_ to be a pretty hard-core technology if it takes _me_ that long to get used to :) [actually, i've been trying to grok css for a hell of a lot longer than that].
one funny thing: i put the menu option items on the right-hand-side, by using "float:right;". i looked at the options and went "huhn? there's something odd about those menu items" - of course, they were in reverse order :)
by adding "float:right;" they get right-floated in priority that they're added from your page!
the neat thing about using float:right; is that when you shrink the screen - even down to 600 or less - the menu options all kinda... jumble and cascade onto the page, at the top.
here's the thing: i _could_ put a border round them, i _could_ shrink the text size, i _could_ set a fixed width... but i'm not going to.
i'm pissed off that i can't resize google's advertising as it is. hm, maybe i will do some auto-screen-width detection some day...