[Zope-dev] ZPT for CSS, anyone?

[Dylan Jay]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jamie Heilman" <jamie at audible.transient.net>
To: "Chris Withers" <lists at simplistix.co.uk>
Cc: "Dylan Jay" <me at dylanjay.com>; <zope-dev at zope.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 8:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Zope-dev] ZPT for CSS, anyone?


> Chris Withers wrote:
> > Dylan Jay wrote:
> > >disadvantage that the css is no longer valid once templated. ZPT of
course
> > >would be the solution if CSS was XML, but alas :(
> >
> > I think ZPT is just fine for generating CSS. It coudl do with a plan
text
> > mode, like it has an HTML and XML mode, but apart fro mthat, it rocks
:-)
>
> Stylesheets should always be static documents, a dynamic stylesheet
> defeats browser caching and destroys the advantages over just inlining
> all the presentation markup.  If you want to have dynamic style, you
> should use dynamic cascading & inclusion instructions, but the
> stylesheets themselves should remain static.  As such, generating
> style in ZPT is a complete waste of time and effort.  The File object
> is a much better fit.

Actually my use case isn't really for dynamic stylesheets but for absolute
urls. I want to be able to edit say a filesystem site using dreamweaver and
have relative urls like background-image: url(back.jpg) work, and then when
this is used in a zope site such as a plone site then have it use something
like background-image: url(http://site.com/back.jpg) to save on repeated
requests.
The other possible use case might what plone does with dtml in it's skins
which is to define a color/font once and use it in many places. I'm not that
fussed about that one, but neither of them are really dynamic.
What if there was a CSSFile that when loaded changes all urls to absolute
urls? That might be too specific but at least it does open the dynamisim
flood gates.



Dylan Jay
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