php selecting multiple stylesheets

Hello,
I'm trying to set up a web site. This site has multiple stylesheets,
one default stylesheet that should be used if the other is not chosen.
The second is a high contrast stylesheet and can be selected by user's
who need it. I'm also thinking of adding two more for smaller and
larger font selections. My issue is I want the high contrast sheet to
be used on all subsequent pages and on subsequent visits to the site
by user's who have selected it. I thought of using php with this and
cookies. I'm using php5 and would appreciate any suggestions, googling
has shown some examples, but none are working.
Thanks.
Dave.

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Re: php selecting multiple stylesheets

On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 11:20:18PM -0500, David Mehler wrote:

> Hello,
> I'm trying to set up a web site. This site has multiple stylesheets,
> one default stylesheet that should be used if the other is not chosen.
> The second is a high contrast stylesheet and can be selected by user's
> who need it. I'm also thinking of adding two more for smaller and
> larger font selections. My issue is I want the high contrast sheet to
> be used on all subsequent pages and on subsequent visits to the site
> by user's who have selected it. I thought of using php with this and
> cookies. I'm using php5 and would appreciate any suggestions, googling
> has shown some examples, but none are working.
> Thanks.
> Dave.

There are two main PHP-centric solutions to this. First is cookies (as
you described) and the second is using the $_SESSION global array.

Doing this is relatively straightforward, so if it's not working for
you, I see two possibilities: 1) You're not actually doing it right. 2)
The users isn't pressing the "Reload" button after selecting the
stylesheet. (My experience has been that simply redisplaying a page will
not clear the cached CSS styles for that page. You must hit the "Reload"
button. In fact, in some cases, like offices with caching webservers or
proxies, an admin will have to be called in to clear the cache on the
proxy/server as well.)

You should be able to do something like this (I'm using SESSION
variables because cookies are more complicated):

// Top of page
session_start();

if ($_SESSION['stylesheet'] == 'enlarged_print')
$css = 'enlarged_print.css';
else
...

?>

....

....


Paul

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Paul M. Foster

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Re: php selecting multiple stylesheets

You could use PHP and cookies (session variables are only useful until the
browser is closed, so it's not as persistant as it sounds like you may
want).

You could also have a system where users log in and they can save their
preferences on their user account settings.

What you may also look into is using Javascript (which can also set and
retrieve cookies) and with a good Javascript library like jQuery, it
should be relatively easy to dynamically switch style sheets.

Here's an example of a jQuery based stylesheet switcher:
http://www.kelvinluck.com/assets/jquery/styleswitch/toggle.h tml

Click the styles1, styles2 and styles3 links.


Also, there are JS scripts for adjusting font size, so you may not need a
completely different stylesheet. But it would mean having well designed
HTML that will scale nicely with the font change. Or you could just
have a different stylesheet, as you mentioned, so you know it will look
exactly how you want. You can see an example of a font size JS here:
http://www.joomla-beez.com/

Keep clicking the links in the upper right and you can continue to increase
or decrease the size quite a bit, not just one step.


I know this is a PHP list but I think a client side script may work better
in this case.

-TG

----- Original Message -----
From: David Mehler
To: php-general@lists.php.net
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 23:20:18 -0500
Subject: [PHP] php selecting multiple stylesheets

> Hello,
> I'm trying to set up a web site. This site has multiple stylesheets,
> one default stylesheet that should be used if the other is not chosen.
> The second is a high contrast stylesheet and can be selected by user's
> who need it. I'm also thinking of adding two more for smaller and
> larger font selections. My issue is I want the high contrast sheet to
> be used on all subsequent pages and on subsequent visits to the site
> by user's who have selected it. I thought of using php with this and
> cookies. I'm using php5 and would appreciate any suggestions, googling
> has shown some examples, but none are working.
> Thanks.
> Dave.
>
> --
> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
>

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Re: php selecting multiple stylesheets

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Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

On Sun, 2010-02-07 at 23:45 -0500, Paul M Foster wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 11:20:18PM -0500, David Mehler wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > I'm trying to set up a web site. This site has multiple stylesheets,
> > one default stylesheet that should be used if the other is not chosen.
> > The second is a high contrast stylesheet and can be selected by user's
> > who need it. I'm also thinking of adding two more for smaller and
> > larger font selections. My issue is I want the high contrast sheet to
> > be used on all subsequent pages and on subsequent visits to the site
> > by user's who have selected it. I thought of using php with this and
> > cookies. I'm using php5 and would appreciate any suggestions, googling
> > has shown some examples, but none are working.
> > Thanks.
> > Dave.
>
> There are two main PHP-centric solutions to this. First is cookies (as
> you described) and the second is using the $_SESSION global array.
>
> Doing this is relatively straightforward, so if it's not working for
> you, I see two possibilities: 1) You're not actually doing it right. 2)
> The users isn't pressing the "Reload" button after selecting the
> stylesheet. (My experience has been that simply redisplaying a page will
> not clear the cached CSS styles for that page. You must hit the "Reload"
> button. In fact, in some cases, like offices with caching webservers or
> proxies, an admin will have to be called in to clear the cache on the
> proxy/server as well.)
>
> You should be able to do something like this (I'm using SESSION
> variables because cookies are more complicated):
>
> > // Top of page
> session_start();
>
> if ($_SESSION['stylesheet'] == 'enlarged_print')
> $css = 'enlarged_print.css';
> else
> ...
>
> ?>
>
> ...
>
> ...
>
>
> Paul
>
> --
> Paul M. Foster
>


I'm doing this on my own site, and it works like this:

The stylesheets are output in tags, so that a user can click on one
to select a style, refreshing the page.

In the header include, I check first to see if a new style was sent in
the $_GET array, then the $_SESSION array, then finally to see if there
is a stylesheet entry in the $_COOKIES array. If none is found, a
default is assumed, and I write this value to both the $_SESSION and
$_COOKIES array. By checking them in the order above, it lets a user
pick a new one from a link, and will remember their choice throughout
their current session and any subsequent visits to the site.

As all the stylesheets are included in the pages with the correct
tags anyway, anyone with a compatible browser (Firefox, Opera, etc) can
select the style from a drop menu directly in the browser, although it's
better to use the links, as the browser doesn't remember the choice from
page to page.

Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk



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