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By This is a continuation of the previous entry, Don't I know you?
You can personalize a site by changing its STYLE...
Whatever you came up with in terms of customizing a site, it boils down to knowing what your customer wants. Do you have younger customers who want fresh designs, but essentially the same information as your older clientele? Do you have different segments of professionals, some who want their information short and to the point, and others who want long descriptions and lots of links?
Whoever your customer is, though, you've really only got two basic ways to change a site. First, you can change the site's style... the look and feel of the site. This usually involves different CSS stylesheets for different types or groups of users:
CSS isn't the only way to change the style of a site, right? I could do it programmatically, too.
There are definitely more ways than just CSS to create multiple styles for a site. For instance, you could write a server-side script to write out HTML specific to each user, or group of users. But CSS is pretty much the universal way to change a site's style, and it involves a lot less programming logic, too....or by changing its CONTENT
But suppose that you need to show different users entirely different things. One customer wants movie reviews pulled from an RSS feed, the latest on the NBA playoffs, a rolling stock ticker, and their local weather. Another customer doesn't care about any of that... they just want the top three stories from the Wall Street Journal, the OpEd piece from the New York Times, and a miniature view of their calendar. These choices are about content, not style.
If you want to change the content of your site, CSS isn't going to cut it. Instead, you'll need new data in your page... and sometimes, you'll even need to change the structure of your page, too.
How would changing the content of a page affect the CSS you write for that page? What if you've already got several CSS stylesheets for your site. Would providing several different content-versions of your site create a problem?
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Very cool... Does this have to do with a certain head first book coming out (webdesign?)
if its about webdesign i will buy it for sure.. im hoping for a ASP.Net one soon though
So what's my prize for answering the last question correctly? ;-)
And to answer this question...
Different content would probably mean different CSS. Some of the CSS would probably be reusable in which case you can separate out the reusable parts of your stylesheets. Applying the concept of microformats could help a lot with the reusability of styles.
Hi guys-
This actually isn't from Head First Web Design (a book that is coming late this year, you'll be happy to hear). It's simply some stuff we've been thinking about here at the Labs, and I've decided to post. Expect a lot more... there's a set of conclusions I'm driving toward, and these first two posts are just getting us into that.
Hope that helps a bit :-)
Thanks
Brett McLaughlin
Series Editor
ok,
Hey .. come up again with a book by all these thoughts. It will be hit for sure. thanks for the information. made my morning beautiful.