Forum OpenACS Q&A: Header size

1: Header size

Posted by Ben Koot on 04/28/04 10:07 PM

Hi folks,

In Heidelberg I discovered what generates the header size in the OACS modules. I should be able to change the ugly default header 1 into header 3, which return a more humanly exepted fontsize.

1. Is there a way to change the header style by default systemwide, or is it realy required to modify each individual module? This option is not realy efficient

2. Is there a way we could have a control option in the admin panel to set the header style?

3. Or could we agree somehow to change the headerstyle from default 1 to default 3 and never discuss the issue?

If we would go for option 3 and would also have a choice of fonts, OACS could become a minimalist text only designed web environment for those that like non design without having to wait for full CSS suport. Since text color and back ground color can allready be changed, this would for sure increase the presentation.

Just a thought

Ben

2: Re: Header size (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Koot on 04/28/04 10:14 PM

Thinking out loud, as I don't like to invent the wheel,
Is there aqnybody in the comunity that ever create a document that highlights the control options admins have, without changing the code? it would be great to have a cheatsheet on how to manipulate the look & feel.

Thanks
Ben

3: Re: Header size (response to 2)

Posted by Jeff Davis on 04/28/04 11:22 PM

The right way to do this is to change the size used for h1 in the sitewide css file. In general you want to preserve the semantic tags (things like h1, h2, ul, dl, etc) and not use a tag to get a particular look.

I have been thinking we should provide a "designers roadmap" to help people figure out how to easily change the look of the site but have not writen anything down yet.

On HEAD, developer support now shows all the includes used to generate a page which helps a lot, but knowing which of the several places you could change is the right place to make a change is pretty hard.

4: Re: Header size (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Koot on 04/29/04 12:26 AM

Thanks Jeff,

This helps a lot. I will continue to raise questions like this, and store the results into an endusers FAQ.

Cheers
Ben

5: Re: Header size (response to 4)

Posted by Jeff Davis on 04/29/04 12:37 AM

No problem; I also realized I did not say anything about where to change those sizes. On the CVS HEAD version of acs-subsite/www/resources/site-master.css they are set smaller via:

h1 {
  font-size: 120%;
  margin-bottom: 12px;
}

Already so I would guess that would be the right place to change other sites, although it depends a little on what the base version of OpenACS it is since the resources dir was not added until 5 I think (not sure).

6: Re: Header size (response to 1)

Posted by Richard Hamilton on 04/29/04 09:47 AM

I noticed that there was much greater consistency in OpenACS 5.0.4 than there was in 4.6.3 in terms of the application of style sheets throughout the modules.

Having recently been converted on the road to Damascus wholesale to style sheets, I found customising the site to be much much quicker than in previous versions.

This is a trend that definitely gets my vote. I hope that it gradually spreads further through the code until eventually there are no formatting html tags at all (barring the occasional sneaky <b></b> and similar) in a default OpansACS. In particular we will benefit from the elimination of the use of the table model for laying out the output from modules such as news, faq, ecommerce, photo-album, etc. This change can take place gradually and the end result will be really nice clean page code.

We could end up with a site master '.css', and the option of a subsite master '.css' for each subsite which between them determine the position, layout and formatting of every object in the OpenACS and allows for diversity amongst the subsites.

7: Re: Header size (response to 1)

Posted by Jarkko Laine on 04/29/04 10:27 AM

Just got a copy of More Eric Meyer on CSS and it has a whole chapter about styling a photo album (as well as a weblog, btw). Very interesting reading and as we are in a process of making the photo-album pages prettier we could as well take some advice from that book.

One thing that struck me is how can we make the editing of package specific and other style sheets easy for designers. Expecting them to ssh to the server is probably not a feasible way to everyone. OK, this is probably more like a 6.0 (or data-soup) issue but still a thing to consider.