How best to highlight an an item...

I will be soon making up a page with a table of items. There will
be a fair few rows. All not high, all tabular.

People will be referencing parts of it via links that latch onto
ids that will be placed on the s. But while this will narrow
things down for folk, they will still see a whole lot of other
stuff depending on the vertical size of their browser window. I
was rather hoping there might be a neat way of also highlighting
the row concerned, not necessarily literally the row, but
something to mark it out as the one to be attended to. Need no
help with the actual css, more with how to let the browser or
server know which row needs the style.

Can't think of any normal html/css way of doing this. Not
particularly keen on a js way ...though I might consider it as it
is sort of an extra bit of help and not fundamentally bad if
anyone has it turned off.

Anyone know of a php way perhaps? Do I have to go to alt.php. or
alt.js.

Can't I please just stay here? I like it here in spite of my bad
treatment.

I am reminded of that php stuff that I have used to stick in an
id="current" on some list items depending on the html file being
accessed. Perhaps it will all be clear by morning. But if anyone
knows the way to go without blinding me with science... please,
do spill the beans.

--
dorayme

Re: How best to highlight an an item...

"dorayme" wrote in message
news:doraymeRidThis-4F2D6C.18120421082007@news-vip.optusnet. com.au...
>I will be soon making up a page with a table of items. There will
> be a fair few rows. All not high, all tabular.
>
> People will be referencing parts of it via links that latch onto
> ids that will be placed on the s. But while this will narrow
> things down for folk, they will still see a whole lot of other
> stuff depending on the vertical size of their browser window. I
> was rather hoping there might be a neat way of also highlighting
> the row concerned, not necessarily literally the row, but
> something to mark it out as the one to be attended to. Need no
> help with the actual css, more with how to let the browser or
> server know which row needs the style.
>
> Can't think of any normal html/css way of doing this. Not
> particularly keen on a js way ...though I might consider it as it
> is sort of an extra bit of help and not fundamentally bad if
> anyone has it turned off.
>
> Anyone know of a php way perhaps? Do I have to go to alt.php. or
> alt.js.
>
> Can't I please just stay here? I like it here in spite of my bad
> treatment.
>
> I am reminded of that php stuff that I have used to stick in an
> id="current" on some list items depending on the html file being
> accessed. Perhaps it will all be clear by morning. But if anyone
> knows the way to go without blinding me with science... please,
> do spill the beans.

I do something similar in a CMS. There is a table of, say, pages. One of
those pages will be the current one being actioned (deleted, renamed, edited
or whatever).

// $arr is an array of rows from the database.
// $current is the index into this array of the page being actioned.
for ($i = 0;$i < count($arr);$i++)
{
echo ' if ($i == $current)
{
echo " class='current'";
}
// optional if you want rows coloured alternatively. Easier to read.
else if ($i % 2)
{
echo "class='odd'";
}
echo ">\r\n";
// echo a for each field in the row
echo "\r\n";
}

Flavour 'current' and 'odd' to taste, probably using background colour.

--
Richard.

Re: How best to highlight an an item...

On 21 Aug, 09:12, dorayme wrote:

> Can't think of any normal html/css way of doing this. Not
> particularly keen on a js way

No reliable :hover outside of , so you're stuck with either JS or
both. Both works fine. It's hardly a crucial feature, so a graceful JS
degradation shoudl be OK too.

Use standard JS rollover code to flip the class on the row. You should
be easily able to integrate this with your CSS rules for the :hover
selector too. Make sure that the JS doesn't wipe out any previous
class settings though, such as an even/odd indicator for a striped
table.

> Anyone know of a php way perhaps?

Nope. It's an asynchronous client-side event, you're going to have to
cope with it client-side.