Hey Anton,
Well the issue isn't really the size of the PHP. It's the size of the browser output. Because the browser will cache the CSS... But the PHP file is 6kb... And its 90% CSS, and just a few PHP switches and variables.
I dont like style switchers too much either. This really is a style creator/switcher. The main reason I did it is - proof of concept - and to try something new.
It just makes styling 100* easier and faster. because every new style I add. Is just based on editing the default. EG - a serif style, and a sans-serif style. Would simply be 1 line extra in the stylesheet.php file... Because if just needs to change the variable for the BODY_FONTS
But a more complex style sheet switch - like a fixed switch to fluid layout... that would be hard.
And at the moment it isn't setup to handle that.
But things like - moving the navigation to the left/right etc... It works great.
The MAIN reason I did this was.
I have always wanted more than 1 stylesheet.
BUT...
I HATEEEE creating new ones.
Becuase as soon as I make a new page.
I need to edit 10 stylesheet pages to add the new styles that may be needd for that page (if there is something new on them)...
This way.
I just add the new style to the Default stylesheet.
And edit how it displays in the other stylesheets by just tweaking the variables.
*Thanks for the input!*
Anton wrote:
Sounds pretty cool. I'm curious though, what's the file size of all that php in the css, as opposed to actually handling 4 separate css files for color that can @import the main body/text styles from a fifth master file? It sounds really big and fancy, but for a style switcher I'm just wondering how efficient all that work is? Sorry if I sound negative, I don't mean to... I'm just not really a fan of style switchers unless it has a distinct advantage of adjusting readability/usability for the visitor. Although, to your advantage, I love kick-ass php writing.
Anton
Quoting Chris Stratford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
*Hey WSG,*
I have just begun re-development of neester.com once again. This time because my server switched Magic Quotes on... Which is good! But all my old scripting had addslashes etc... and it just became really dodgy etc... It was a good excuse to redevelop it again.
If you goto www.neester.com you will see a grey page. I have used my own styleswitcher which I think is very efficent and well - its pretty cool how it all works. I will explain it here now - and I will write an article when I am finished with the site... BTW I know I could of used Lorium Ipsum - but Google will get annoyed and think its /latin/, happened before.
Ok.
What happens is, once you load the page - the PHP inside index.php sets
the stylesheet location in the HEADER to:
link rel="stylesheet" href="/styles/d_index_default.css"
title="Neester.Com | Default Style" media="all" type="text/css"
See how the location is d_index_default.css
Well, that basically means, it loads the default stylesheet, for the
index page, with the colour: default...
If you click on a different style on the page, say Green...
that will then become:
link rel="stylesheet" href="/styles/d_index_green.css"
title="Neester.Com | Default Style" media="all" type="text/css"
Each page also changes the link...
eg - if i had the contact page working.
The link inside that would be:
title="Neester.Com | Default Style" media="all" type="text/css"link rel="stylesheet" href="/styles/d_contact_default.css"
or if you are still using green
link rel="stylesheet" href="/styles/d_contact_green.css"
title="Neester.Com | Default Style" media="all" type="text/css"
Now I dont actually have 100,000 stylesheets for all these. I am using .htaccess to redirect these connections to a single PHP CSS file...
I cant include the whole file here, but here is an algorithm of how it works is below...
The PHP loads with about 100 variables (colours, margins, paddings, background images, fonts etc...) Then the PHP has a "switch" function - which deterimines WHICH colour you are loading... Then it resets some of the 100 variables - to suit that style...
THEN it echo's the DEFAULT styles to the browser... Then it has another SWITCH, which it echo's only that PAGES RELEVANT styles... eg: contact page would have:
#contact_form input,#contact_form select,#contact_form textarea { blah... }
SOOOOOO In effect. The browser sees 4 stylesheets per page if you go through each of the styles... And it will cache them too - because they actually have a real path (.htaccess just modifies it when it gets to the server)... So it will run asif I have 100 stylesheets... but in effect, i only have one!
adding those 4 styles has been a breeze. I just added about 20 lines to each of the STYLES SWITCH function points... And yeah - because you only edit the styles you want to change. The rest can stay default (margins for example...)
*If you are more interested, I can send you the PHP code for this. I dont mind if other people use this method - I would like it if you gave me credit. but yeah.
I havent seen it used anywhere else - but then again - I didn't really look. if you have seen this method used somewhere else - please post some links... Cheers!
*Hope that wasnt too long... And I hope it is easy to understand - and someone out there learnt something they might use... * *-- ------------------------ Chris Stratford [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.neester.com ------------------------ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
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-- ------------------------ Chris Stratford [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.neester.com ------------------------
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