RE: cascading style sheets -- WEB400

Style sheets (at least CSS1) are something every web desaigner should know.
Even if you do not use a CSS File or in-page Definition <STYLE></STYLE>
tags, in-line CSS is becoming the preferred method of HTML manipulation.
There are of course advantages/disadvantages to each approach.

The original question was whether or not IBM HTTP server supports CSS.  This
is a common problem among those newly interested in CGI, that is
understanding what the HTTP server is responsible for, what the CGI program
is responsible for, and what the Browser is responsible for.

At the risk of seeming overly basic, here is the breakdown:

1) The HTTP server is responsible for finding, redirecting, approving, and
delivering the web page.  This does include some technologies, like SSI
(Server Side Includes), but we won't dwell on that... :-)

2) The Browser is responsible for actually presenting the formatted HTML
file.  This includes most of the things for which you may have support
concerns... HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Plug-ins, Applets, etc.  No matter what,
don't believe for a second that any two browsers support anything the same
way.  Platform issues can be a problem here, and let's not forget my
favorite... user settings.  I had a user who was quite upset with me that
she had to do so much left and right scrolling on our site, and by the way
why was our text so big?  Of course, she was set to 640x480 and had 'Text
Size' set to largest.  After I helped her change those she admitted to
almost never using the computer.  This is the one element that will be
completely out of your hands.

3) The CGI program finishes the trifecta and is responsible for writing the
HTML code.  That's right, a CGI program is a program that WRITES HTML output
for delivery (back through the HTTP server to the Browser).  The only
limitations here are those imposed by the language itself because all CGI
programs operate in significantly similar fashion regardless of language or
platform.

Solutions that claim to be technologically superior such as JSP, ASP, PHP,
flavor-of-the-month-P, are all still premised on the simple ideas above,
they simply go about number 3 in different ways, but the end goal of all of
these is to produce HTML output.


Joel R. Cochran
Director of Internet Services
VamaNet.com
(800)480-8810
mailto:custservice@vamanet.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nathan M. Andelin [mailto:nandelin@relational-data.com]
> Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 6:16 PM
> To: web400@midrange.com
> Subject: Re: [WEB400] cascading style sheets
>
>
> From: "R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr." <rbruceh@attglobal.net>
> > browser thing. Mine work from the 400 just fine as long as
> I'm not using
> an
> > old browser.
>
> Cascading style sheets offer many advantages over in-line
> HTML styles.  One
> benefit that I noticed recently, was that the browser will
> cache the style
> sheet.  It's only downloaded once while the browser is
> active.  The HTML
> content is smaller.  The net effect is better performance.
>
> Nathan M. Andelin
> www.relational-data.com
>
>
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