A tip ?

For want of a better description i've just starting writing my first
real pre written script for others to use called www.phpgb.co.uk

A problem I have is I have nothing to compare it with and can only
really guess at what the punter does or doesnt want .

The first website I seen that used my script was a indian restaurant in
australia and the webmaster used a background image so it fits into the
rest of their website - hope their curry skills are better than their
script hacking skills :-)

Taking a wild guess I would say about 20% of users will want to use a
background image and as i've installed lots of other peoples pre written
scripts myself I know its not always easy to edit or change stuff like
that if you dont really understand what it is you are editing .


The tip ? .

Give the user the optional option of specifying a background image in
the config file so its only a single line that needs changing to achieve
the effect .

none OR url(blah.jpg)

To my way of thinking , This means theres less chance of a inexperienced
user hacking around your script and changing stuff for the worse so its
looks terrible .

re: A tip ?

I developed an application that is used by museums with public access
projects the world over -- one thing they insisted on was changing the
way the thing looked, nobody likes cookie cutter stuff --- so all the
HTML it proceduces is minimal and the layout is managed by CSS.

This ultimatly was a great solution -- it meant nobody needed to hack
the actual code, and a config setting was created to point to a CSS
file so they could change it on a whim. Setting background images on a
page, or practicly any other element of HTML is really quite easy using
CSS -- and means less headaches for you.

re: A tip ?

Following on from James's message. . .[color=blue]
>I developed an application that is used by museums with public access
>projects the world over -- one thing they insisted on was changing the
>way the thing looked, nobody likes cookie cutter stuff --- so all the
>HTML it proceduces is minimal and the layout is managed by CSS.
>
>This ultimatly was a great solution -- it meant nobody needed to hack
>the actual code, and a config setting was created to point to a CSS
>file so they could change it on a whim. Setting background images on a
>page, or practicly any other element of HTML is really quite easy using
>CSS -- and means less headaches for you.
>[/color]

Or to put it more simply: "Click here for large print version"

BTW
Don't forget you can use more than one css file at a time eg one for
colour preferences and another for layout settings in a mix 'n match
way.


--
PETER FOX Not the same since the poster business went to the wall
peterfox@eminent.demon.co.uk.not.this.bit.no.html
2 Tees Close, Witham, Essex.
Gravity beer in Essex <http://www.eminent.demon.co.uk>