Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] Panel / Menu

[Mike N. <mh...@us...>]

On Mon, 2004-08-30 at 04:49, Shaun Murray wrote:
> On 29 Aug 2004, at 21:21, Mike Noyes wrote:
> You can still have <ul class="menuman horizontal"> if you want. It 
> makes more sense than using divs to me most of the time although it may 
> not fit in with getting it to work easily with phpWebSite.

Shaun,
Prefixing selectors that originate in module css thus making a
descendant selector module set, is the main thrust of this proposal
(e.g. .pagemaster, .menuman). I agree I probably went overboard with
div, but I wanted to show structure in the prof-of-concept.


> I also wonder what happens when you've got multiple templates? eg. 
> Announce has a view_small.tpl and a view.tpl which both have menus in. 
> Do you define two classes so that each template view can be styled 
> differently? Using the module name wouldn't let you have two different 
> menu styles defined so I guess you'd have to use a content variable as 
> the class?

That's left to the module developer. They have three choices:

        A) Use a style defined in another module
                Note: core modules are the only ones guaranteed to be
                available in all installs.
        B) Use a style defined in another module, and modify it.
        C) Create a new style


> I agree, but I'm trying to make them non-module-specific. I want to 
> avoid having to define a 'horizontal' class for every module. It should 
> be defined just once and work through all modules unless the theme 
> designer has chosen to override them specifically for a module by 
> building in an extra style sheet for the theme or module.

Ah. We differ here in structure.


> I really think we should avoid as much as possible multiple 
> spreadsheets. I really, really, really don't want the default behaviour 
> to be that module developers have to provide a stylesheet by default. 
> The problem with that is that you're then setting a precedent that the 
> style is set locally in the module and not globally by default so each 
> module developer will set their styles up differently to each other. 
> Whereas that's powerful, it's also hard work for a theme designer, site 
> maintainer and prone to errors. It's a lot of duplication too.

How much duplication we experience is a function of
coordination/cooperation.

If all the css is contained in preferred and persistent style sheets,
how would additional module installation or upgrade be handled? For a
dynamic modular cms to function, I believe module style sheets are
necessary.


> That gives you basic functionality with no theme stylesheet and no 
> module stylesheets - ie. just one stylesheet. It's then easily 
> overridden for different media, like print or PDAs.

Can you work up a prof-of-concept for this structure?


> "horizontal" isn't a very good gobal classname, no. I just used yours 
> so you knew what I meant. I think you might have persistent and 
> preferred the wrong way round also as preferred.css looked more like a 
> persistent to me. ;-)

I'm still trying to figure out what styles belong in each. The main
thing is making sure alternate stylesheets work for WAI purposes.


> With menus, I think it's something that should be as global as the 
> boxstyles templates so that you can style menus in one place and they 
> get used everywhere. If you want something special for a module then 
> they can have your own module menustyles although I imagine if they are 
> nice enough, they'd make their way into the global menustyles.

In my proposal menumaker.css specifies default menu style sets/types.
Unfortunately, menumaker isn't a core module.


> > I'm still learning things about cascade, so I might well be wrong.
> 
> Who isn't? I spent ages last week designing some css only to find I 
> couldn't get it to work on Internet Explorer again. Most annoying. Then 
> came across a new css hack I'd not seen before. CSS isn't simple so we 
> have a duty to make it as simple as possible.

Agreed.


> I'm messing around with different menu styles at the moment, showing 
> what can be done with a simple unordered list and working out menu 
> states and if you need other classes. I think you need an 'active' 
> class and a 'first' or 'last' class at least. It might get more complex 
> with multi-level too. I was hoping to have this finished a while ago 
> but paying work got in the way.
> 
> http://www.aegisdesign.co.uk/examples/pwsmenu/
> 
> The html is exactly the same on each variant bar a class name for the 
> ul, only the css changes.
> It's not then too much of a stretch to imagine a php function 
> generating the html from a template when passed an array and a menu 
> template name. The html is in /templates along with lists and 
> img_gallery. I think perhaps boxstyles should be in /templates also if 
> we're tying the whole thing up..

This is a very good example for menuman.css.

-- 
Mike Noyes <mhnoyes at users.sourceforge.net>
http://sourceforge.net/users/mhnoyes/
SF.net Projects: ffl, leaf, phpwebsite, phpwebsite-comm, sitedocs