Dynamic CSS files with PHP - Page 2

falsepride · 06-23-2005, 09:35 PM

why would you want a dynamic css file? dont browsers cache those so they dont have to redownload them?

DJMaze · 06-24-2005, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by teknomage1

What the heck are you talking about DJMaze? There's no difference a far as the browser is concerned with the dynamic or non dynamic version (once it works). All this happens in the server. This doesn't affect the fact that he doesn't need load of tables to accomplish layout and it doesn't affect the browser's ability to cache the images.

Say you write a page in PHP and every time a visitor looks at that page PHP generates a nice HTML document.
Now you write a CSS file so that the HTML page size can be reduced and people will recieve this page, and others, faster and at the same time they don't have to re-download the CSS file again because it's cached.

If you make your CSS dynamic it's pretty useless because it adds a overload to the server because:
- the html page needs to be generated
- the CSS file needs to be generated

To solve this you should send the following header()'s
= Cache-Control
- Date
- Last-Modified
- Expired
and process the recieved header:
- If-Modified-Since
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/....html#sec14.25

Instead of doing all that just skip the dynamic CSS and use <html background="img"> or <div style="background:url()">
This is actualy faster then to have 2 dynamic generators.

sde · 06-24-2005, 07:38 AM

you can't be so close minded. vbulletin among many other Web Applications are a perfect example of CSS data being stored in a database.

i've written several web apps which give a user control to modify colors, font sizes, and other CSS attributes. these parameters get stored in a database.

programming my database values to modify the layout inline vs a single dynamic style sheet would be REDICULOUS!! this would be a nightmare to maintain.

your load time argument is seriously flawed also. a dynamic style sheet would be a smaller size to load vs putting style tags in every div you use since there would be a LOT more DHTML to load into the browser.

when was the last time you were worried about a couple of MS for a style sheet to load?? i mean huge bloated dhtml drop downs can get pretty bad sometimes, but if you are just making a little style sheet, the user is not going to notice a difference. ( especially considering my point that you would be loading a lot more html if you coded all style attributes inline )

whether your CSS attributes are in a style sheet or inline, if your page is PHP, then the server call is being made anyway. lol, i keep thinking wtf! as i write this. anyway what about my question .. what do you use PHP/MySQL for?

i would say your argument is completely invalid. take the scope of what he, or anyone else making a dynmic style sheet into context.

the only suggestion you have proposed as an alternative to dynamic style sheets is coding all your style tags inline which i can not believe someone as experienced as yourself would suggest.

metazai · 06-24-2005, 08:56 AM

One fell swoop and he solves it. All my CSS is self-taught, and I've never been clear on the differences between # and . when defining classes and ids . . . when learning to do more complicated CSS layout, I used some online tutorials and have been reusing code learned from that experience, so this is good to know.

Thanks everybody for all your help. My first CodeNewbie problem NOT solved by Stan! =+) (sorry, Stan).

teknomage1 · 06-24-2005, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by metazai

Thanks everybody for all your help. My first CodeNewbie problem NOT solved by Stan! =+) (sorry, Stan).

Aw, shucks...

sde · 06-24-2005, 12:17 PM

you're giving up? make sure you type back if you find an aswer.

teknomage1 · 06-24-2005, 02:36 PM

No Stan, it's solved, it was just an improper CSS selector. '#' instead of '.'

sde · 06-24-2005, 04:06 PM

lol sorry, i was too busy driving the thread off topic to notice

..

3 people have called me stan in the last 2 days so i guess i should say too .. that the mascott is named stan, .. not me

metazai · 06-24-2005, 04:32 PM

So your name is sde? How do you pronounce that?

LOL . . .

teknomage1 · 06-26-2005, 12:46 AM

an initial S and a tag line of, "look it's stan" do kind of set you up for that.

DJMaze · 06-26-2005, 06:43 AM

@teknomage1: Great that you solved it, my congratz to you.

@sde:

Quote:

Originally Posted by sde

i would say your argument is completely invalid. take the scope of what he, or anyone else making a dynmic style sheet into context.

the only suggestion you have proposed as an alternative to dynamic style sheets is coding all your style tags inline which i can not believe someone as experienced as yourself would suggest.

Don't get mad

i gave 2 solutions for CSS, one was dynamic and the other was inline.
But my dynamic version was probably misunderstood since it uses much more client/server communication then teknomage1 actualy needed to know due to the small size of his script.

I will write a full bloated tutorial about headers and caching someday

teknomage1 · 06-26-2005, 10:47 AM

I didn't need anything, actually. DJMaze the reason everyone got upset is that you basically flamed metazai for a valid use of technology and continued offering irrelevant alternate solutions, based on the flawed premise that dynamic style sheets are bad.
Your bit about the headers isn't needed because everytime it's passed through the php interpreter, it gets a time created header of now. Altering the images inline is not elegant or scalable considering you'd still have to position it with CSS.

sde · 06-28-2005, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by metazai

So your name is sde? How do you pronounce that?

LOL . . .

lol, my name is mike. sde is just an online nick i use. it was short for sdelectronic, which was a san diego based electronic music site i used to maintain and shoot/host video of events on. the site is no more, but the name just stuck.

jeffro · 06-28-2005, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sde

lol, my name is mike. sde is just an online nick i use. it was short for sdelectronic, which was a san diego based electronic music site i used to maintain and shoot/host video of events on. the site is no more, but the name just stuck.

I met a guy who I had been talking to on a forum for years in real life. We naturally just started referring to each other buy our forum nicks, since that is how we had been 'talking' since we first met on the board. :-)