Dynamic CSS Generator
Saturday
8/2/2003 11:51:32 PM
(CST) - Michael Wells
I haven't considered this thoroughly, but it seems that for web applications that must be customizable, that the most effective way to customize the look and feel is to implement dynamically-generated Cascading Stylesheets (CSS).
In modern browsers (esp. MSIE), the stylistic control available through CSS is tremendous. Simple, plain-jane HTML can be thoroughly stylized using nothing but CSS.
However, to require a non-programmer to create CSS is unsavory. Instead, it may be possible to allow users to define specific attributes, such as the CSS details of an H1 tag... when can then be stored in a relational database, and used to generate a CSS file dynamically.
Advantages of this approach...
- A clean, simple UI can be provided for the development of the CSS file.
- Specific style rules can be enforced by the application developer.
- Special CSS classes can be brought to the forefront, and given special attention.
- As new CSS standard come out, the CSS-generator can be modified rather than changing the CSS files themselves.
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