[Chameleon] table-less CSS layouts

[Paul Spencer]

Bart,

sorry for the delay in replying.

This is something that has been thrown around once in a while :)  We are 
starting to become more proficient with CSS, or at least understanding 
some of its basic capabilities (and limitations).

It seems, at first, a highly desirable thing to attempt to come up with 
table-less layouts.  We have attempted this with several projects with 
varying results.  It turns out that there are some technical 
difficulties with implementing an application page based on this 
philosophy, particularly when it comes to small differences between 
browsers (such as the default box model!).

I am certainly in favour of removing as much HTML from the widget output 
  as possible.  I am hesitant to wrap everything in divs as the default 
behaviour, preferring to either let the designer wrap everything or have 
a separate 'draw mode' that would do this.

I have been working (in my head) on a design for a web-based application 
that could be used to generate Chameleon templates that would use this 
method exclusively.  All widgets would be controlled by absolutely 
positioned divs and the editor would maintain a style sheet to control 
position/size and a tag editor for editing the attributes of widgets.

But perhaps before we do this, my most pressing desire is to work on the 
jsapi mode to the point where it is practical to build client-side 
applications using Chameleon as the 'application generator'.  I have 
been experimenting with some javascript/DHTML code that may eventually 
make its way into the core of Chameleon, but I have not yet evaluated 
the potential impact this would have on all widgets (probably quite a 
bit of work).

Also, as you indicated, there is the whole thing with popups.  I would 
love to have a way to direct popups to be 'popins' ala MapNotes and to 
allow for custom interfaces to be created

All in all, quite a bit on the books!  I'll keep the list informed when 
I have news ...

Cheers

Paul

bartvde at xs4all.nl wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> another topic which has probably been discussed inside of DMSG :)
> 
> Chameleon has a lot of HTML code that contains tables. There seem to be a
> lot of benefits in trying to switch over to table-less HTML, where
> everything can be controlled through css, even (re)moving of elements.
> 
> Maybe with this case, every widget could get its own css file, or you
> could stick with keeping one big css file for all of the Chameleon
> widgets/layouts.
> 
> Have there already been discussions on this? It must be a hell of a job to
> implement this, but it would definitely be an asset for the system in my
> opinion. Do you guys consider this an option, or is it considered
> impossible or unwanted? If it is considered an option, it might be good to
> put up some guidelines for this, which can be followed with the creation
> of new widgets.
> 
> This would be the long-term solution to maintaining a different
> look-and-feel to the Chameleon GUI (instead of overruling the popup phtml
> page for a widget, a previous thread on this list).
> 
> Best regards,
> Bart
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Chameleon mailing list
> Chameleon at lists.maptools.org
> http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/chameleon
> 

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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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