Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Craig Gingell, 08-Jan-2005, 08:53pm
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : John Davies, 09-Jan-2005, 12:36pm
Craig,
I think I can understand what you are doing, but not how or why. I certainly couldn't do it myself!
But aren't these a bit trivial? The green is revolting! Other sites don't change their "look and feel", for instance Google hasn't changed the appearance of their pages for years. They concentrate on adding new facilities.
Recently, we have had Tools and Tips, and better searching - thank you. Is an index, or even better an on-line library of past technical articles from the Courier possible? If only for paid up club members?
I realise that a Club Board decision will be necessary for that, but do you have a technical solution up your sleeve?
John-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Craig Gingell, 09-Jan-2005, 01:17pm
John,
I'm a great believer in content over style and that's why this website hasn't changed much in it's presentation since September 2001. However, we can enable those Members will the time and skill to develop their own presentation "themes" - and probably do a much better job than my own attempt - and these themes could then be made available for other Members to use.
I haven't spent a great deal of time on this - it's just a by product of a requirement I'm developing on another project right now.
With regards to the Technical Directory, I would very much like to get this online. Right now, all we have is the latest version available as a PDF at -
http://www.tssc.org.uk/pdf/technicaldirectory.pdf
Rgds
Craig-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : John Davies, 09-Jan-2005, 11:57pm
The TD is a GREAT start, Craig!
Thanks - new things DO keep creeping into the site, usually without fanfare and below my radar.
John
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Mark Telkman, 09-Jan-2005, 02:55pm
John,
You can do a lot more with the CSS than simply change from blue to green! One of the primary purposes is completely separating presentation from content - an html document will contain all the content in a semantically marked up document, with the presentation then being entirely handled by an external CSS document.
A perfect example of this, and what Craig is playing with is http://www.csszengarden.com - you can select any design you want, many very different in presentation to the others, yet if you view the page source in each it will be identical, the CSS document for each controls absolutely every aspect of the presentation.
As far as redesigns go, Google isn't really that good an example, admittedly they make small tweaks to the layout/presentation of the various pages, but there really is very little to change in the first place, while as car enthusiasts we tend to struggle sticking to it, why fix what isn't broken?
I have to agree that I'd love to see the various past articles available online, but it would certainly be a fairly big issue for the club to decide on.-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : John Davies, 09-Jan-2005, 05:06pm
Mark,
Thank you! The changes demonstrated via that link are certainly not "trivial"! If this will allow such major changes, then the possibilities are clearly only limited by the programmers imagination - or can the user do the same? Set this "CSS2" file so that the page received has the layout they want, not the layout used by the provider?
John
PS. Rereading my earlier post, it may be read as criticism of Craig. If so, my apologies. I was puzzled not judgemental about the changes. I THINK I understand the why now! J.-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Mark Telkman, 09-Jan-2005, 05:48pm
Well in this sort of case, I guess the user is the programmer, but unfortunately in this case there are also more limitations than your imagination...
Take a look at http://telkman.co.uk/tssc - that is the page without any CSS (you can't just use a blank stylesheet with theme.asp, as the original stylesheet is still in use, the rules are just overwritten by the linked one).
The colour/fonts/sizes etc will be simply be the standard ones in your browser, as none are defined separately. As you can see, lots of the layout remains, however, meaning the rules for those are defined in the html document, rather than within the CSS, so without some modification to the html, you won't be able to change the layout etc, but I don't suppose that's really what Craig had in mind - after all, this is a functional information site rather than "A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design."-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Adrian Lee, 09-Jan-2005, 10:07pm
I wish i knew what the hell all these messages are about,is it like rebuilding an engine???????????????-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : James Carruthers, 09-Jan-2005, 10:18pm
No no Adrian, much more like being able to choose the colour and trim on your car...
Different people have different tastes... so this will allow every member to have a bit of a change.
Even if you have no idea what this technobabble is - you'll be able to utilise the option in your member profile...
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Don Cook, 10-Jan-2005, 01:58pm
What are you all talking about?-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Adrian Lee, 10-Jan-2005, 03:07pm
I'm with you all the way on this one Don....... -
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : James Carruthers, 10-Jan-2005, 03:28pm
Right... I'll try to explain...
See this website... it's all blue... it has a blue theme... now long a go, before the beginning of TSSC messageboard time - Craig decided on blue - he made a mental decision to make it blue.
Some people don't like blue... so they might want to change it. Soon you'll be able to do that.
For instance... I could make a Le Mans Classique "theme" and instead of all this blue, it'd be green - and there would probably be a photo of one of the Le Man Spits up in that top left corner where the logo is at the moment... and all the fonts that all this text is in, or the menus - would be of a oldy motorsport type theme... you could choose to have this theme... just because...
It's nothing ground breaking... it's just fun...
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Adrian Lee, 10-Jan-2005, 07:19pm
Ahhhhh........so it's like putting blue lights on your washer jets or light tubes under your car?-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : James Carruthers, 10-Jan-2005, 07:23pm
Kind of - how tasteful the end result is - is entirely down to the person who makes it...
Here's one I made earlier...
http://www.tssc.org.uk/theme.asp?http://www.mintyl...
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Adrian Lee, 10-Jan-2005, 07:30pm
That looks quite good James.........PSSST......what is a CSS?-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : James Carruthers, 10-Jan-2005, 07:34pm
CSS is a file that tells the web page what to look like...
The one I made really just told everything to be green... but it can do a lot more than that...
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Kevin Rochfort, 10-Jan-2005, 09:07pm
It's not the first time its been asked, and none of the "show-offs" has answered the question yet, so here goes..
A CSS is a "Cascading Style Sheet", which is the way that "modern" web pages define their "style" (look and feel) to the user. It enables the person designing the web page to reduce the amount of embedded codes that define the "style" of the page within the page, and enables the page designer to globally change the style much more easilly.
The clever bit, if you want to call it clever, is that you can create your own CSS (Save a copy of the webpage on your computer - File-Save As...- Copy the CSS file used by the website from the saved webpage directory on your computer, and then edit it yourself) to create your own personal look and feel for that website.
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Craig Gingell, 10-Jan-2005, 11:49pm
As James seems to be getting the hang of this, I've removed my rather dodgy attempts and made the following changes -
There's now a "theme reset" link on the left hand side
Themes are only available to signed in Members - some less scrupulous individuals might try to de-face the site with a less than flattering theme.
The overriding CSS now replaces as opposed to appends the standard CSS
Anyone who wants further information about the CSS used on the site, please feel free to contact me.
Rgds
Craig
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Colin Wake, 11-Jan-2005, 08:25am
Craig
I hope with all these 'wizzy-bangy' bits you add that you haven't forgotten that some people haven't jumped on the broadbandwagon still use dial-up connections to access the site. Lots of websites have got very blase about this lately and are now unusable without high speed access. Sadly I can't check anymore as I got fed up waiting 5 minutes a page on a couple of sites I need to use and jumped.
Colin
p..s the green is quite nice........ now where's the link to kill it!-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Craig Gingell, 11-Jan-2005, 09:55am
Colin,
This is the great thing about using CSS. All of the page presentation information that was present in each HTML page has now moved to a single CSS file. The CSS file is typically downloaded just the once by your browser and then cached for the rest of your visit to the website.
This results in much smaller HTML page sizes, so you should find browsing the site quicker on dialup connections.
Let me know what you think
Craig
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Adrian Lee, 09-Jan-2005, 10:20am
I have no idea what a CSS is,I have no suggestions or comments, but hundreds of questions,can you buy a book that explains the contents of your message
to computer illiterates like me Craig?
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Craig Gingell, 09-Jan-2005, 11:42am
Adrian,
Some have said the TSSC website is looking a little long in the tooth and could do with a face lift. With the powers of CSS anyone can add their own brand of go-faster stripes or furry dice to customise the look and feel of website. Let's call it the Carlos Fandango option.
Not sure of any books, but I can recommend a few CSS websites.
Craig
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Jonathan Reed, 11-Jan-2005, 06:41pm
All this goes a bit funny with Mozilla Firefox (just like my web site), maybe its time to go back to IE and a stronger firewall!
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Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Craig Gingell, 11-Jan-2005, 06:58pm
Hi Jonathan,
Those links kind of worked okay when posted, but the <html> has sinced changed and this has broken the CSS. The best alternative is currently James' Le Mans theme -
http://www.tssc.org.uk/theme.asp?http://www.mintyl...
Although this is still a work in progress.
Craig-
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Jonathan Reed, 11-Jan-2005, 07:29pm
That works fine! Now all you need to do is sort out the page width, half of the ad colomn is cropped and I have to scroll right. -
Bored with Blue?
Posted By : Jonathan Reed, 11-Jan-2005, 07:33pm
Only have to scroll from your message
Not like on the view entire thread where you scroll to see the
whole posting.
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