Re: multiple instances of a CSS link due to server-side file inclusion and tools requirements

Jonathan:

Thanks for your post on this thread:


in article 1e649$4929bd4f$40cba7ca$27646@xxxxxxxx, Jonathan N. Little at
lws4art@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 11/23/08 12:30 PM:

<snip>
<snip>


Why not use Dreamweaver? Well if you do not know what you are doing,
then Dreamweaver is *not* a substitute for knowing and understanding web
design basics, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In the hands of clueless
designer, Dreamweaver just makes it possible to make really lousy markup
really fast!

How can I not agree? That's a characteristic of all "high-level" design
tools, the capability to go wrong at maximum speed.

If you intended to point out my cluelessness, that's quite all right. I'm
less clueless now.


Oh, yeah, I've also heard that DW is capable of producing crummy markup even
in the hands of a skilled designer. So it seems one really must use common
sense and validation tools, as well as to study the current best-practices.



<snip>

Whether is is or not a valid HTML document has only one HTML, HEAD,
BODY, and TITLE elements properly nested. If not, then the result is not
valid. Therefore if you are including fragments within a document, by
whatever means (including manual Cut-n-Paste), the includes should only
be HTML fragments *not* complete HTML document. If they are not, then as
I have said to you elsewhere in this thread you need to do
post-processing on the include to remove the unwanted portions. If you
have access to the original sources for your include it would be best to
edit them to make them just fragments rather than process on the fly.

I think we've totally established that point as true and correct!


Question 4: Am I missing something completely obvious that would achieve
the same result without all this trouble? Again, I'm self-taught and I
could be completely oblivious to better ways to do this.
Include just the code you need in fragments, Why one would include
comeplete HTML files is totally beyond me. There is NO reason for this
in Dreamweaver, or anywhere.

Ummm, I have a very weak excuse for attempting this.

Well if you are admitting your shortcomings, "I'm self-taught and I could
be completely oblivious to better ways to do this"

Then why are you arguing against solutions from folks who actually do
this for a living and know how it should be done?

Well, actually, I have been listening attentively.


But first, a review: I got started down that road because I was renovating
an existing site, in which all the content chunks _were_ complete HTML
files.

Okay then edit the "chunks _were_ complete HTML files" that are to be
included and make them fragments! Either manually edit (low tech and
tedious) on (hi tech and efficient) create some script to automate the
process. Perl comes to mind, but can be done with PHP or sed, or even a
word processor macro (just be sure to save a plain text).

That's all done. (Using DW's site-wide search-and-replace, supplemented by
some manual editing.)

In fact, now I've successfully validated about 98% of the site.




I naively hoped that I could rebuild the site to use a PHP include
scheme while making minimal changes to the actual content.

Maybe. But from your description it needs some "conversion"

Yes, agreed.

As I think I said earlier in the thread, considering the number of problems
in the earlier version of the site, now I realize I should have stripped the
entire content down to bare ASCII, and rebuilt from scratch.


That's the history, now here's the weak excuse: That attempt appeared to
work quite well. In admittedly limited testing, I never saw any bad effect
from multiple CSS links, or nested outer tags, either. The only trouble I
actually saw that was attributable to this scheme was that the pages failed
W3C validation.

If you have nested whole HTML documents then the only reason they "work
quite well" is the error correction in your browser to parse tag-soup.
Neither recommended nor guaranteed to work for all browsers or for all
times...

Right, I introduced this as a weak excuse!


<snip>



I can recommend you get the book "Mastering.CSS with Dreamweaver CS3"
by Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis <http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-
Dreamweaver-Voices-That-Matter/dp/0321508971/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227354193&sr=1-1>, for one source of solid ideas
on how to work WITH web standard oriented designs in Dreamweaver.

Thanks for the recommendation, but I have learned I learn best by doing,
even if that means making large, embarrassing mistakes.

Good luck with that, bless your heart...

Thanks! Well, I now know a huge amount more about web design than I knew
when I started.

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't need to learn more. My next challenge
is to resist the temptation to add all sorts of glitzy gee-gaws to the newly
renovated site. <grin> That, and to convert the template to completely
table-less layout using CSS.

For the near future, I need to add content, and more content, and then even
more. Here is hoping that the new design is friendly to that!


Besides that, most books I've tired quickly lost in the details of such
technologies, of which there are plenty. They generally don't help with the
big picture. When I first thought up the scheme, I really did look around
the Web quite a bit for guidance. I found a lot of pre-built templates,
free and for sale, but nothing that described the pros and cons of such a
design. Nor did I find anything specific about multiple instances of a CSS
link that would logically occur. Perhaps if I had tried one more search
term variation I would have found what I was looking for. Typical.

Hire someone then is your best bet.

No money. This is a totally volunteer effort. If I don't learn how to do
it, then it isn't going to get done.



DW
is a powerful tool, but that power can be misused, mispent or used to
your advantage. The choice is yours.

I didn't set out to be a rule-breaker! I don't believe DW led me in one
direction or another in this respect.

It helped, but you seemed to be quite capable by yourself...

Ouch! <grin>

Thanks,

Henry

Remove 'zzz'

.

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