working on a new, vastly improved redesign of transmothra.com.
it contains elements of the two swiftest sites i’ve built yet – mars s.t.s. and tecumseh local music boosters.
basically, it uses the mars templating engine to deliver content seperate from layout, while giving the user a choice of what style (colors, fonts, etc.) they want to look at the page with, ALSO delivering browser/OS-specific code where such code may otherwise break down on one or more platforms (like my trademark translucent backgrounds, oy vey), and also has the added functionality of being able to use splash pages, slicker URLs (?page= instead of the more esoteric-looking ?p=), and customised additional scripting (for instance, a javascript image gallery pop-up on one page, and on another, maybe a different menu system and a widget of some sort, like flying text or something), extra content, and titles for every page (i think mars had that bit already).
so now, all i’ll need to do is make a content file, drop it into the “content” folder, maybe configure it for the extra scripting, and voila! the next time i want to redesign the layout, i just add another stylesheet… that way, the old layout is kept and both or all layouts are still selectable in a style menu.
total and utter independance of content from style.
and the whole thing should deliver completely valid, future-compatible markup (with the sole exception of what remaining Flash i decide to keep, and i might work around that where possible).
it’s going quite well so far. i’ve gotten the “splash page” bit working, and it’s recognizing two very basic stylesheets i’m using to test it with, inserting them into a dropdown box, and setting them up correctly.
