Variable Style™
Variable Style™ is an alternate form of Variable HTML™. All
versions of the page layout are downloaded into the browser using unique
division IDs. A set of Alternate Cascading Style Sheets is sent along with
the page. These CSS files use the "display: none;" style
attribute to hide the elements that are not necessary for each page
design. OK, that was geek speak. A little demonstration will explain what
I just said.
Here is a set of links that will display this page in its various design
styles. For demonstration purposes, the Variable HTML™ JavaScript
file is not included in most of these pages so that the designs can be
seen.
- Auto Sized: This
page uses the Variable HTML™ script and will automatically
re-design itself for the browser window.
- Show All: This page
uses a special CSS file that makes all of the elements visible. The page
will look very strange, nothing at all that you would want to show a
customer. But this page is the heart and soul of Variable Style™.
By selectively hiding various elements of this page, all of the other
page designs can be created.
- Print: This page will be
hard to read on a wide screen. It is designed for printing, so its width
will normally be restricted to the width of the printer page. Note that
the standard navigation is missing from this page.
- Narrow: This page is
similar to the print design with navigation at the top of the page. It
is used when the browser width is extremely narrow.
- Normal: This page is
designed at 781 pixels for an 800 x 600 browser window.
- Wide: This page is
designed at 972 pixels for a 1024 x768 browser window with small
Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar buttons.
- Extra Wide: This
page is designed at 1220 pixels for a 1280 x 1024 browser widow with
large Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar buttons.
The important item to recognize is that all of these pages contain the
same HTML coding as the Show All page. The various CSS files selectively
hide different page divisions to create each page design.
We have created an entire website to describe in detail how
Variable Style™ works.
We are attempting to make the site readable by normal people, but some of
it will probably seem like geek speak. There is a FAQ page where we will
post questions and answers that we get from our comments page. Please feel
free to ask as many questions as you like.
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