Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - A BRIEF
Introduction
by: Bill Schell - bill@vikingasia.org
This is a VERY BRIEF outline of
CSSs and how they work and what they provide. I will 'flesh this
out' - provide more information later, but 'for now' (as of the 'last
updated:' below) I've not had time to provide more information.
Cascading Style Sheets provide similar (but more exotic) functionality
to the 'Frames Based' approach, in that they offer the web-page-author
an ability to develop a 'Style Sheet' for a particular web-page or part
of a web-page. Let me try to explain, perhaps, a little further in
text, then maybe later in images or drawings.
"Let's "Assume" if you will" that you are going to write a web-page for
a fairly large international conglomerate that manufactures some type
of product(s)... on several continents with sales offices around
the world.
Let's further assume, also, that the 'corporate' types (wherever they
may be and whoever they may be) want regional and international 'look
and feel' to be the same.
So -
we'll have a 'Title Frame' and we'll have a 'Menu Frame' and the Menu
Frame - will have, per-chance a section for different regions
(Americas, Europe, Asia, etc.) and a separate section for products
(Product A, Product B, Product C. ... ... )
Under each of these items (regional and product based) there would be a
computer-directory or folder to 'hold' all the items (...html files and
images) for that particular product or region.
Within each product-or-region folder there would be a file ending in
...css which is really exactly what it says it is in that it is a
"Style Sheet" -
and within that file there are places where - for instance, the
European Web-Master would Build a data-file to 'load-in-along-with' the
CSS all the appropriate data for the European Region or the Product B
manager would Build a data-file to 'load-in-along-with' the appropriate
data for Product B.
However, the Style Sheet part is 'built, maintained, managed by
the "Corporate Web Master" so that all regions will look alike and that
all products will look alike to the end-user / viewer of the
web-site... When / if the Corporate Web Master is told to change
the 'look and feel' of all the Regions or all the Products - he merely
changes the CSS and the data supplied by the Regional mangers or the
Product Managers is loaded-into the CSS and voila - things work (not
always flawlessly, though)...
Now - Believe me this whole concept is considerably more complex than
what I have laid out here. BUT from this BRIEF Introduction you can get
the 'gist' of what the CSS world is all about. Further - if your
web-site has to select data from a database and build a web-page 'on
the fly' and send-back-to the user / viewer in 'real time' then there
is / are other methods and ways to make that happen. The typical
approach to this situation is to use the Java language and some sort of
database with it.
More on CSSs much later when I have time
last updated: Sunday night, 17
December 2006; revID: 1a