Powered by

DHTML - Cascading Style Sheet

DHTML (and particularly Cascading Style Sheet, CSS-Style) is supported since 4.0 browsers release. We can put all formatting data in the document header or, better, into another file. Until upcoming and promising XML, CSS is the current way to keep documents clear and structured with augmented control over presentation and layout of HTML elements.

Rules to create a page for this website

1. Keep text the most clear :
• get FONT tags into header or outside the document when possible (.css),
• use short, clear and simple tags.
2. Not use SPAN tag (which put FONT tags within text), check how Emphasize is interpreted by Dreamweaver (could be <em> or a SPAN and FONT tag).
3. Avoid custom tags which are defined with SPAN class="myowntag", not easy at reading.
4. Use standard HTML tags (<cite>, <code> etc.).
5. Style sheets (.css) are stored in a unique folder (/leon-lab/dhtml).

How-Tos and Tips

Dynamic text (hyper-link) change on mouse over :

I didn't find how to with Dreamweaver 3 editor but it's just a simple line to add in the style sheet :

a:hover {color: #FF0000}

In that case, text change to red while mouse is passing over (but it doesn't work with Netscape 4.74).

Netscape

With Netscape 4.74 on Linux system, style sheet support must be enabled in Preferences...Advanced... and Javascript support too. Nevertheless if they aren't enabled, display is very correct.

Bibliography

From Microsoft MSDN :

• DHTML, HTML & CSS
• Dynamic HTML Overview
• A Coast-to-Coast Cascade of Style Sheets

From HTML Help :

• Cascading style sheets reference
• Ask the Web Design Group : very active forum

Others :

• Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 from W3C
• Dynamic HTML in Netscape Communicator
• NCD Style Sheet Guide from Network Communication Design

Back to home page
Document release: 1.1EN
Created: December 16 - 2000
Updated: February 27 - 2001
Author: Leon