StyleVars: Am I doing something wrong?

[Sarteck]

I don't understand these StyleVars... I wish we had some kind of visual reference to know what parts of the pages are covered by which StyleVars. (Googling, I found that "StyleVars Visual Dictionary on vbulletin.com, but it's not really helpful, tbh.)

I was trying to adjust the background and foreground colours of the sidebar that shows up on the left of the profile, to make it uniform with the style I'm trying to create. (I swear, I don't know who had the bright idea for this many StyleVars, but it really makes uniformity a big pain in the ass.)

Anyways, I'm sitting here looking at the StyleVars I can modify, and helpfully there's something right there for profiles, and more specifically, profile sidebars.

...

...or so I thought. After about an hour of frustrating myself trying to find out if I was doing something wrong, or not saving something, or whatever, I stumble across this random StyleVar, "tabslight_selected_background". As I'm trying to navigate around these StyleVars and didn't know what this did, I set it to an eye-burning bright purple.

DING! The profile sidebar background changed!

Okay, my first question is this. Having read this far, is it your opinion that my vBulletin itself is borked, or is this what everyone else is experiencing? Is that the correct way for these StyleVars to act? It's like most of those profile sidebar StyleVars don't do ANYTHING, but that tabslightwhatever changes the sidebar background?

If the answer to that is a woeful "yes, that is the way they are supposed to act," then my second question (after the obligatory "WTF?") is "Okay, now how am I supposed to change the font color of that sidebar? >.>

These StyleVars would probably be great if I knew how to use 'em... But IB doesn't seem to have made them very intuitive (assuming my vB ain't borked).