Re: [Phpwebsite-developers] Development Questions

[Neal S. <n_s...@ch...>]

> I'd stop using phpWebSite entirely if it generated the CSS from  
> inside the application and we didn't have templates. It'd be a  
> terrible resource hog generating CSS files or worse, inline CSS. IME,  
> developers often have no idea about design so leaving them to play  
> with the crayons is worse than if you let them create templates.
>
> Whilst I agree entirely with static content sites, I disagree  
> entirely with template driven dynamically generated sites. IME,  
> editing templates is much easier, more powerful and more consistent  
> than using CSS entirely.

I apologize that I seemed have conveyed my idea poorly. Allowing the 
developer to actually create the CSS would be as bad as having them 
create the templates. The CSS could be created completely internal and 
transparent to the users. The advantage would come that the CSS blocks 
would remain static and only the id tags (#name, and .class) would need 
to be changed. They could even be written out to a static file because 
they would not be changing often.

>
> There's a mix to be struck. I'd hate to see templates go and I'd hate  
> to see CSS being generated by PHP code. However, that's not to say  
> more CSS and less HTML shouldn't be used where possible.
>
I agree there is a ballence to be struck. All CSS is a poor design 
choice and all (X)HTML is a poor choice. Somewhere in the middle is the 
most efficient solution.

>
> ok, but the most differences are in how IE handles CSS and the least  
> in it's (X)HTML compliance, so the best solution would be sticking  
> with (X)HTML.
>
As I mentioned before, the CSS can be modified by JavaScript to make it 
display properly. It's cheating and defeats the purpose of CSS, but it 
is a function workaround.