A few questions on CSS

[Forsaken]

Hello all!

I'll just go right to the point. I'm in the process of making a website (i'm using Dreamweaver 4, since I really don't have the patience to learn HTML, but I do know the basics). I've messed around with a couple of designs and most of the time, I have been using frames for the menu. But now I realized that it looks much better and professional without it. But here's the catch: If i make a change to the menu or the "Current Feature" thingy (it's located on the site: http://testforsaken.50megs.com/) I have to upload each and every page with the menu. Is'nt it possible to use CSS, so I only have to upload the .class file? (or something like that. Like I said, i'm no expert at HTML)

Also, does anyone know a hosting site, where I can decide where the banner is located? It's quite annoying.

Oh by the way, i'm new at these board. Nice to met you all :)

[COBOLdinosaur]

Welcome to the forum, and thankds for registering.

Using external style sheets across your site will make maintaining and changing it easier. It is an easy thing to do.

You just create atext file with the extension .css
and put you standard style declarations in it. You can apply general styles on the body and other tags like a and then use class for specific setups. You can cascade the tags by put them in a class and you can use local ids example:

<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
body {background-color:aliceblue;color:magenta}
.toplevel {position:absolute;left:5;top:120}
.toplevel IMG {cursor:hand;filter:alpha(opacity=60)}
.menucell { display:none;font-family:arial;font-size:xx-small;
z-index:10;position:absolute;left:15;top:37;
background-color:#eeeeee;color:black;
border-left:5px silver solid;
border-top:5px silver solid;
border-right:5px navy outset;
border-bottom:5px navy outset;cursor:hand}
.menucell TD {border:1px white solid;
border-right:1px silver solid;
border-bottom:1px teal solid}
</STYLE>


then for each page where you want to use the page you bring it in with this in the head:

<LINK REL="stylesheet" TYPE="text/css" HREF="styles/mystyles.css">

You can further cascade the styles by adding local entries in the head, and then even further local control can be added with inline declarations:

<div id="someid" style="positon:absolute;width:200">

HTH

[Unregistered]

Hi are you just making facial changes to you nav bar? if so then that is your answer, if you are making technical changes consider either a server side includes (ssi) or an external .js file.. let me know if you want further help

[Forsaken]

It's hard to say if its a facial or a technical change... I'm just trying to make things a little easier for myself, or I will lose interest in the site, since it takes to long to make updates. If you look at the site, there is a logo with a "bar" running to the right, and underneath it is a menu. Under the logo is the "Feature of..." etc. Is it possible to make those two things (the top menu + logo and boxes underneath the logo) kinda... seperated from the rest of the site? So I only have to make changes to some file outside each of the HTML pages? Sorry if this is confusing to understand, I did my best :)

Maybe someone could point me in the direction of some good tutorials about using CSS (or something) to "divide" your page into "pieces".

[COBOLdinosaur]

A place t start for CSS is: http://css.nu/

Using SSI of dynamic generation with .js files does not preclude the use of CSS. In fact they enhance each other.

The whole point of style sheets is to put all the site wide styles in one place so that you can make global changes to the site quickly. It does not matter if the code is in include file dynamically generated from JavaScript, or dynamically genereated using server side scripting.

The styles are applied to all the code by the browser at rendering time, and the styling can be modified dynamically with JavaScript functions triggered off of events.

Styles aren't the only way to do some of this stuff but they are the best way, and the future direction of the technology is more reliance on styling.

[Forsaken]

Thanx! I think I got it.