Domino as a CSS generator?06:13:35 AMTom Roberts and I have been having a brainstorming session deep in the bowels of this site about using Domino as a CSS generator.
This is Tom's idea and it's a good one--no, it's a great one. It's time to bring it up to the front row.
In simple terms, here's the premise: 
Domino already has an engine built into it to convert rich-text to HTML. That's what puts all the <FONT> tags and such into our pages. That's all well and good but we're all learning how limiting hard-coded fonts and sizes and such can be.
A much better solution, in many cases, is pages tagged for CSS which are then related to style sheets. This makes making global changes fast and easy. The rough part though is getting all the tags in in the first place.
Enter Tom's idea, stage left.
The original inspiration was this comment: "...Now if only Domino would allow a global web setting (per db perhaps) to use css instead of all the font tags...."
Reading that, I had what my friend Dick Gorelick calls a Brilliant Flash of the Obvious: If Domino can serve up all those <FONT> tags, why couldn't it just about as easily create tags for CSS?
Today, from Domino, we get stuff like this:
<font size="2" face="Arial">Annoyed by how Netscape renders a font size differently than Internet Exlorer...or how a Mac renders different from Windows? Domino has a feature no other Web platform offers, computed text! Its easy to fix these browser and platform differences with CSS. Here's how...<br> </font><b><font size="2" face="Arial"><br> Code</font></b><br> <br> <font size="2" face="Arial">Modify your exisitng CSS to use Computed Text where ever the differences occur. (Your CSS will need to be a page or form and not an Image Resource in order to do this.)</font> <p><font size="2" face="Arial">Since the prime differences occur in frame spacing and font sizes, I've provided examples for both.</font> <p><b><font size="2" color="#000080" face="Arial">FONT SIZE DIFFERENCES:</font></b><font size="2" face="Arial"><br>
But it seems like it wouldn't be that hard to make it come out like this:
bodyText1 {
font: 9pt Arial, sans-serif;
}
bodyText2 {
font: 9pt #000080 Arial, sans-serif;
}
</style>
<span class="bodyText1">Annoyed by how Netscape renders a font size differently than Internet Exlorer...or how a Mac renders different from Windows? Domino has a feature no other Web platform offers, computed text! Its easy to fix these browser and platform differences with CSS. Here's how...<br> </span><b><span class="bodyText1"><br> Code</span></b><br> <br> <span class="bodyText1">Modify your exisitng CSS to use Computed Text where ever the differences occur. (Your CSS will need to be a page or form and not an Image Resource in order to do this.)</span> <p><span class="bodyText1">Since the prime differences occur in frame spacing and font sizes, I've provided examples for both.</span> <p><b><span class="bodyText2">FONT SIZE DIFFERENCES:</span></b><span class="bodyText1"><br>
Yes, I know there are redundant calls here, but that's the same way Domino deals with the font tags. I could write it cleaner by hand, yes, but wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to?
Ideally, the actual style specifications would be stored separately--not in the same page as I'm showing them here--so you could make your own modifications. Maybe I'm missing the picture, but it doesn't seem like this would all that hard to do.
If it CAN be done, suddenly Domino would become an incredible CSS generator. Users wouldn't need to know CSS, they'd simply edit rich-text fields, inserting italics, weight changes, colors, and so on, while the Domino engine underneath did the heavy lifting.
More to the point, web designers--that's us!--could fiddle with the CSS rules hanging out behind the scenes to control the overall look and feel of the website separate from the users' fiddling (but subject to their guidelines as specified by italics, bold, and so on).
Are we doing drugs here, or is this even remotely possible? Does anyone know?
1. Tom Roberts11/09/2004 08:48:22 AM
Homepage: http://www.wwwebfeet.com
<drooling>drool... drool... drool</drooling>
Thanks Scott. You hit it right on the head.
Tom
2. css dersi06/29/2008 11:24:09 AM
Homepage: http://css-dersleri.ucoz.com/index.html
css Font examples , Properties , Attribute - - //
http://www.css-lessons.ucoz.com/font-css-examples.htm
3. sezer07/05/2008 10:46:07 AM
Homepage: http://orgu-ornekleri.blogspot.com
HI i need your help i really want to create my own website/web page but i dont know how to go about doing it so can you please help me out
