CSS: User-customisable Site #1 Support
This three-part tutorial will take you through the process of building a site that uses CSS to not only allow the user to change the color scheme and font size of the site, but allows them more precise control over the layout and colors used – allowing them to select x color scheme with y layout and z text styling – in any combination that they wish.
In this first part we will plan our layout and create the default stylesheets for the site, splitting the styles into those used for layout, color and font styles. Next time we will create our alternate stylesheets and in the final tutorial will look at ways to allow the user to select which stylesheets they want to use to view the site.
Because we move pretty fast, this tutorial is for those who have a basic understanding of CSS and is therefore not for newbies.
Rachel Andrew
Rachel Andrew is a trained dancer and singer, whose CV lists jobs as diverse as company choreographer for a physical theatre company to chargehand carpenter for “The Mousetrap” at St. Martin’s Theatre in London’s West End. After leaving the theatre when pregnant with her daughter, Rachel started to design sites mainly out of curiosity into how it worked. It didn’t take too long for her to figure out that her skills lay in development as opposed to design and these days she tends to leave the design to designers so she can concentrate on writing code, dismantling computers and installing Linux on anything that stays still long enough.
Rachel has worked in the industry as a webmaster, technical project manager and senior web developer but in September 2001 set up her own company ‘edgeofmyseat.com’, which provides complete web solutions and outsourced development services for design agencies and Internet start-ups who do not have in-house web developers.
As well as managing and doing much of the development on projects for edgofmyseat.com Rachel is a published author and worked as a co-author on the following titles for Glasshaus:
Dynamic Dreamweaver MX ISBN:1904151108
Fundmental Web Design and development Skills: ISBN:1904151175
Dreamweaver MX Design Projects: ISBN:1904151272
Rachel is also a member of the Web Standards Project serving on The Dreamweaver Task Force.
In her spare time Rachel studies for ‘fun’ with the Open University, does family and local history research and spends time with her 5 year old daughter and her other half, Drew McLellan.