RE: [www-redesign] Current status

[Aaron Shi]

I'm using multiple style sheets to take advantage of the cascading
properties of CSS.  There won't be a separate style sheet for each section,
that would defeat the purpose of CSS.  ;)  What I have in mind is a global
css for all Gentoo sites (if I recall, we were going to implement this
design on bugs/packages.gentoo.org  etc.).  Then a sitewide style sheet for
each gentoo site (i.e. one for www.gentoo.org, one for bugs.gentoo.org, one
for forums.gentoo.org...) if necessary.  So as far as screen CSS goes, each
page would have two that completes the presentation: the global one for all
sites and the sitewide one for the current site.  The basic look and feel
would be consistent throughout all the sites, but I'm sure each site would
have individual needs that would be better addressed via a sitewide style
sheet.  Right now there are a few lines of CSS links within a page, but
eventually (if we don't care about old browsers like NS 4.x) we can use a
"loader" style sheet and use @import to load all the CSS into one CSS file,
and just have that one file on a page.

I contemplated about having one giant style sheet, but with more than one
site using the CSS we would have, for each site, a CSS file with partly
identical CSS and partly specific CSS...all in one file.  What we'd have is
multiple such files for all the sites.  Eventually when small adjustments
are made here and there (i.e. site level adjustments), the CSS files which
are supposed to do exactly the same thing one some levels and specific
things on other levels will become inconsistent.  Also, if we have sitewide
requirements that need to override global rules, then with the 2 tiered CSS
it would be clear where to find the rules (global or sitewide file), but
with the all-in-one scenario the above confusion can happen easily.

Picture this: you need to make an override to a global rule.  Since each
site has its all-in-one CSS, rather than making an overriding rule below the
global rule, you could alternatively just edit the global rule in the file
and it would achieve the ends.  Then suppose another person comes along and
is making a new network site, he'll take the all-in-one CSS from the first
site, copy the global rules for the new style sheet and then adjust the
specifics for the new site.  However, the supposedly global rule was
modified by a previous person, so what he just copied over will be
inconsistent with the actual global rules.  If this happens elsewhere, what
we'd end up with a bunch of inconsistencies.  I'm sure mechanisms (i.e. the
CVS) are in places to prevent this from happening, but with the 2 tiered
system it would effectively make it impossible for this kind of problem to
occur.

Or, if we have all the the CSS for all the sites in one file, then we would
be wasting a lot of bandwidth transmitting unnecessary information. 


To recap the 2 tiered system idea:

- "Global" controls the basics of all sites within the Gentoo network (i.e.
the layout and basic look and feel of www/bugs/forums/packages/etc., to
maintain a basic appearance consistency)

- "Sitewide" controls all pages within a specific site (I'm sure the site
level CSS requirements will be quite different for bugs compared to forums,
so each of these sites will have a sitewide file that governs all the pages
within its domain)


The cascading I have in mind goes like this:

- Global screen (tier 1)
- Sitewide screen (tier 2)

- Global print (tier 1)
- Sitewide print (tier 2)

- Font size variation rules for article pages (tier 3, though I wouldn't
really consider this a tier)


Using a loader:

- Loader

- Font size variation rules for article pages

Insider the loader:

We @import the all the necessary global and sitewide screen/print files.


Hopefully this clear things up a bit.  I wish I could talk in person and
draw pictures and things. ;D

-Aaron



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Curtis Napier [mailto:curtis119@×××××.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 7:36 PM
> To: www-redesign@××××××××××××.org
> Subject: Re: [www-redesign] Current status
>
> I'm working on the xsl at the moment. I'm trying to recycle
> the existing guide.xsl but much of it will have to be changed
> to fit the new layout. I have the main index.xml working if
> anyone wants to look at it. The style sheet needs to be
> tweeked a little though.
>
> http://curtis119.no-ip.org
>
> Some of the other pages work but the formatting isn't fixed.
> About, Get Gentoo and Social Contract(I added this to the
> jumppad). I'll be working on this all week and I'll give an
> update as it comes together.
>
>
> I have the handbook working a little but it's on a different
> virtual server. I'll try to integrate it into the main one by
> the end of this week so everyone can look (It's not very nice
> to look at at the moment).
>
>
> Aaron, are you planning on making this cascading stylesheet
> with multi .css files permanent? I think it would be easier
> if we consolidate it into one style sheet. Making a seperate
> style sheet for things like "about" and "socialcontract" and
> "docs" and "news" would make things to complicated when we
> could have one single css file that controlled every page. A
> seperate one for "print" may be OK though. Thoughts anyone?
>
>
> --- Sven Vermeulen <swift@g.o> wrote:
>
> > Okay, it's quite difficult to keep this one alive, but I'll
> try anyhow
> > :)
> >
> > Aaron, you told me that the design put online at
> > http://www.siphos.be/~svermeulen/gentoo/index.html was
> quite different
> > from what you had in design. Is this still the case? If so,
> I'll need
> > the "better" design to be put in CVS.
> >
> > We hardly have anything except this front-page design and
> that's not
> > much, although many can be distilled from it.
> >
> > As you might notice at
> > http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/roadmap.xml#layout we (I)
> > still need some designs for other reference pages. Really, this is
> > designing. I'm not good at it. I'd be *very* grateful if
> people take a
> > stab at it.
> >
> > My proposal for the structure used by the Gentoo website is
> online at
> > http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/structure.txt,
> comments are
> > appreciated. You might want to take a look at other
> distributions and
> > community-driven projects to get an idea on how you'd like
> the website
> > to evolve.
> >
> > We might also want to start looking at our XML DTDs, see if we can
> > improve the current XML formats, explain why certain tags are
> > obsoleted and what tags aren't, etc. This is the first step to the
> > XSLT.
> >
> > But mainly, we need those reference pages. Anyone with some
> knowledge
> > of layouting pages - go for it!
> >
> > Wkr,
> >       Sven Vermeulen
> >
> > --
> >   Documentation & PR project leader
> >
> >   The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>
> >
>
> > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature
>
>
> --
> www-redesign@g.o mailing list
>
>
>

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