Dynamic PHP-Driven CSS Stylesheets

[Computer Guru]

Can you imagine running a website with hundreds of pages off pure, static, html? Without a single bit of server-side code? No PHP, Perl, Ruby, or even SHTML? What about a site with hundreds of thousands of pages? or millions? Of course not. So why do you put up with static CSS files then?!

This article takes a look at the unused potential of dynamic CSS sheets and how they help.

Case Study: Shaun Inman's site with 33,306 CSS Sheets in use.

Other benefits:

Completely overhauled user experience

Faster sites

CSS-Contained browser detection

That's just some of the stuff you can do with something like that.

Article: Dynamic (PHP-Driven) CSS Stylesheets

Source: NeoSmart Technologies

[digg]

Edited October 28, 2006 by Computer Guru

[whitebread]

Wow. Now that is impressive. :o

[Computer Guru]

Thanks! :D

[Dotdot]

Bookmarked!! Gonna have a proper read over this tomoz before implementing some of its ideas :)

[Colin-uk Veteran]

its a nice idea, but having a different stylesheet everyday could be confusing..

[Computer Guru]

^ Did you RTFA?

Because that's the point of the article - you no longer need to do that. With dynamic CSS it does it automatically for you.

[jtchange]

it's nice for having different themes for your site. you can set a cookie and PHP will handle the rest based on the cookie

[Joshua-San]

Very handy! Of course, why didn't I think of this before? This is probably the perfect solution for those ugly CSS hacks for IE!

[Computer Guru]

It's just one of those things that are so obvious that no one thinks of them no matter how useful it might be IMO.

[Colin-uk Veteran]

^ Did you RTFA?

Because that's the point of the article - you no longer need to do that. With dynamic CSS it does it automatically for you.

it's nice for having different themes for your site. you can set a cookie and PHP will handle the rest based on the cookie

Thats what i meant :p

didnt think about the cookie thing though :shiftyninja:

[[idkfa]]

I've done this before, so here's a handy tip: give your PHP'ed CSS file a .css extension and set PHP to interpret it via a .htaccess file. Now your techniques are a bit more covered plus it might avoid problems with older problems.

[Computer Guru]

' date='Oct 29 2006, 01:15' post='587996470']

Now your techniques are a bit more covered plus it might avoid problems with older problems.

:blink: Come again?

....

Also, if you use the header() line mentioned in the article there is no need for css extension - it's just another MIME - esp. since only Apache has .htaccess.

[Trix.Neo]

Very neat idea :D

[Code.Red]

Nice, never even thought of that. Oh, and I hope that guy that had 33,306 styles had those files automatically generated. :pinch:

[primexx]

The part about serving useragent specific stylesheets, that is FLAWED! People can mask their UA so you DO NOT KNOW what browser it is using PHP. Stay with IF IE conditional comments for the hacks. Otherwise, the article is just rephrasing common sense.

[Computer Guru]

Yes, you can mask it. But if you do, that's your problem. Blocking JavaScript is one thing - there's a legitimate reason to do so. But blocking your UA-Ref is just plain stupid. It exists for a reason, you're being a paranoid doesn't make coders'/designers' jobs any easier.

There are great advantages to PHP-CSS, they may be "common sense" but to date no one is using them... eh? :shifty:

[primexx]

Yes, you can mask it. But if you do, that's your problem. Blocking JavaScript is one thing - there's a legitimate reason to do so. But blocking your UA-Ref is just plain stupid. It exists for a reason, you're being a paranoid doesn't make coders'/designers' jobs any easier.

There are great advantages to PHP-CSS, they may be "common sense" but to date no one is using them... eh? :shifty:

maybe because 99% of the time there's ONE stylesheet associated with the entire site? That's the point of CSS isnt it? to centralize all styling. And as the web dev you're not supposed to depend on sniffing useragents to make your site work. It should be able to work regardless of who is claiming to be who but is actually who.

[Computer Guru]

^ "should be able to" and "are actually capable of working in today's highly mixed-up online world" are rather different, doncha think ;)

Anyway, like the article states, UA-ref is just one of the many things.

Imagine a neowin where you can click on the header, and change the color, then open your control panel and change the display fonts, or a million other things?

That would be near impossible without dynamic css.