I note that you are using it on the current site, but it seems to be a mixed bag, with a lot of HTML formatting. I have to assume that the current site evolved to CSS, while the new one was built on it.
Yeah, they added CSS well after the fact and it shows. I added CSS well after the fact on iHub, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell.
One thing I see here that I despise (and also would like to see Dave get away from doing) is inline CSS. IMO, all CSS belongs in one file, and all the tags should be as efficient as possible, especially when it comes to naming them. For example "ter" instead of "TableEvenRow".
I've got a rather unique way of handling CSS on iHub, and have yet to see any other site do it this way. It took forever to come up with the idea and implement it, but after the fact it's very intuitive.
I don't want to give away all my secrets, but at the core of it is that everyone who wants one, gets their own CSS file. That's done by going into the "My Config" area on iHub. For example, since I'm user 6748 there, "6748.CSS" is the one that gets used in my session. That's why you might see a white screen with a blue menu bar going across the top with underlined links, but I have a light gray screen with 3D-looking menu buttons done in a darker shade of gray with no underlining. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm designing the default SI layout to pretty closely match my personal configuration on iHub.
Of course, it's not quite as simple as it seems. One major hurdle I had to overcome is that nearly every browser insists on caching CSS files, no matter how you configure it, and even if you've set them on the webserver to expire immediately.
I cleared that hurdle, and since it was extremely tricky, it's part of it I'm keeping secret. <g>
I love CSS; especially the kind where each user can have their own. What iHub currently has for user-configurable CSS and other layout functionality (some configuration is db-driven; not CSS) is probably about 1/4 of where I'm eventually going with it.
For one thing, it's extremely important to me that users not only be able to configure broader things like page background colors but have far greater control, even to the extent of moving screen elements around.
Once I have that in place (it'll be a LONG time after the Dev site becomes the production site), I'll make a couple of "presets" that people can click to change their layout to be very similar to the two flavors we have here. All from the same source code, rather than having two separate sets of source code and templates like this site has. |
