style.php vs style.css

Client Joined: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 735 Location: Ohio

What is the benefits from one to the other? What is the prefered method? Do I "include" either in a php page?

Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:48 am

I think its a matter of how big it is.

If you have many many styles in your sheet, you should use an external CSS file. That way, it is downloaded and saved once. However, this means your users have to have their browser check this file every time. For loading short pieces of style code, it maybe better to integrate it into the HTML output.. as in a .php file. This way it will not have to go to an external file everytime.

Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 1:08 pm

If I want a single place where I can change cell colors in a table or have borders= "0" or border = "1", it would be best to have a css file..no?

Since I don't have a way to manage fonts, colors, border or backgrounds yet I think I need an external css file.

How do I include one, and how does it override the theme style as far as <TD> or <TH> tags?

For instance

Code:

td.rowpic {


      background-color: #4A473F;


      background-image: url(images/cellpic2.gif);


}

Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:02 pm

You'll need to add this into your header

Code:




<LINK REL="StyleSheet" HREF="style.css" TYPE="text/css">

Your theme may already have on though, good to check your theme files first

Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:57 pm

If you are not planning on distributing, then you might as well add to your various theme style.css files. One caution, though, is that be sure to given them pretty descriptive names (they need to be unique) because you don't want another module, block or theme script re-defining it. I just prefix mine with something I feel would make them unique.

I have also added additional <LINK > statements for external CSS files in either includes/my_header.php or includes/javascript.php. You can take a look at my HTML Newsletter 1.3 distro in the "extras" folder to see how I have made it possible to use an external CSS file instead of using my style.php script. It might give you some ideas.

You can also see by viewing my site's source that I created a module CSS file for each theme that I support so that I can change the color schemes to better match my themes if I want to.