RE: Reducing bandwidth (even more!)

[Greg Robson]

Would it make sense to leave the CSS stuff in a separate file?

I think it would as it's about 2K and is loaded every time. Surely it would make sense to put this in the HEAD section instead:

<LINK HREF="path/to/yabb.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="YaBB Stylesheet">

This way the browser would have a cached copy (and it would be easier to try different colour schemes). It would make YaBB use even less bandwidth!  

[alexrolko]

Some sense, but then things like the template editor would become a touch more complicated... and then theres another file for board owners to loose, or muck up, and then using the correct link to the file.

[Greg Robson]

I'll grant you the fact that people much up their boards, but it does have the following advantages...

@ People can create different colour schemes  
@ It's 2K off the size of each file - if pages average 60K that's a 3% saving, which is a lot for a bandwidth hungry site.  
@ It's only one more file, and it can be easily covered by an FAQ.
@ It might make multiple board customisation easier in the future  

I think the benefits outwiegh the disadvantages especially for a modular project like YaBB SE

[alexrolko]

I'll grant you the fact that people much up their boards, but it does have the following advantages...

@ People can create different colour schemes  
@ It's 2K off the size of each file - if pages average 60K that's a 3% saving, which is a lot for a bandwidth hungry site.  
@ It's only one more file, and it can be easily covered by an FAQ.
@ It might make multiple board customisation easier in the future  

I think the benefits outwiegh the disadvantages especially for a modular project like YaBB SE

Yup    and as for the usage of a seperate document, it would be easy to make a MOD that would allow users to choose a color scheme  

[Greg Robson]

Exactly: Avatars, smilies, colour schemes - YaBB is the ultimate in customisation!  

[Peter Duggan]

Would it make sense to leave the CSS stuff in a separate file?

Of course!

The first thing I did when I put my board up was to link it to a separate style sheet, but then I stuck all the styles back in the HTML template because it was quicker to experiment with the settings that way. Although I've just been back tonight to separate them again now I'm fairly happy with the appearance...

Now, if you could modify a separate CSS template through your browser instead of having to save it to hard disk and FTP it, that would be something!

PS There's no reason why you couldn't have a choice of an all-in-one HTML template or separate HTML and CSS. It would only require one simple, reversible decision at the install stage.

[Peter Duggan]

Another slightly cumbersome thing about working online with a separate style sheet is that, if you want to add new styles and classes (as I've done), you have to edit both HTML and CSS to see the effect. Ideally the admin section would let you open both together in the same window to edit and save simultaneously, but I don't know how easy that would be to implement on the PHP side?

[PabUK]

I am all for reducing bandwidth, good idea!

[Michael]

Yeah, I've always thought that having the CSS in every page was a bit of a drag and just annoying to look at when you view the completed HTML source. There's a couple pros for keeping the CSS separate:

1) You can change the entire look of your board without changing the physical structure, simply by swapping .css files.
2) This opens up a whole new avenue for customization: if a feature is added to allow users to choose their own template, not only is there the option to change the layout of things in the forums by choosing different template.html files, but they can have every different kind of structure in any flavor they want! They can choose a "layout" and a "theme," ya know?
3) Following along with #2, yabb forum admins can easily swap templates without having to go edit every template file to fit the physical layout of their forum. Much more convenient.

As for editing the template and the theme, you could either put them both on the same page or provide a separate link for each.

Btw, is anyone doing something to allow users to choose their forum theme/template? Last night I wrote up a quick mod for this for SP1. If no one's doing anything for SE, I'll write something for it when I get a chance.

[Ben_S]

Ohhh you have to make that for SE, I'v been using something similar but it wasnt integrated with the forum, just set the selected CSS from a cookie. That as a mod for SE would be tops

[groundup]

hrmm.. an extra little textarea to edit the css would make the lazies happy

[Dave Smulders]

Well....I can make it optional....if one creates a template.css, automatically the edit screen would be added to the template-editing screen.