Beginner needs advice on customising templates using XHTML/CSS

[tintin99]

Hi,

I'm just starting to learn where everything is in the templates and because I usually design websites in XHTML/CSS I really want to set the templates up this way, using div's instead of tables, css styles instead of font tags etc. I also want to set a lot of the formatting directly in the stylesheet rather than using the NETQUOTEVAR's in Actinic.

I'm wondering though if I'm going to get in a mess with this approach further down the line, with some things in ActinicSpeak/HTML4 and some in XHTML/CSS. Can anyone see any problems with it?

Thanks in anticipation!

Bob.

[Duncan Rounding]

You should be able to what you want, in fact Jont and others have 'pioneered' with removing a lot of the tables in v7. You will find it considerably easier though in v8/9.

[jont]

You should be able to what you want, in fact Jont and others have 'pioneered' with removing a lot of the tables in v7. You will find it considerably easier though in v8/9.

v7 was a pig to remove the tables and convert to a CSS layout. It is certainly not a lighthearted undertaking as table elements can often span several Act_templates and also come from the site design text.... you really do need an in depth working of Actinic and the template layouts before starting.

Don't try and convert the cart, that is futile insanity and as I have pointed out before tables are meant to hold tabulated data which the cart area most certainly is.

Formatting can be done from wholly within the actinic.css stylesheet. The NQV's inside the stylesheet are only there to allow changing of the fonts / colours from within Actinic ... you can safely hardcode these into the stylesheet if you are not going to change within Actinic.

[tintin99]

Thanks for the replies guys - nice to know there are no hidden pitfalls. I'll get stuck in and see what a mess I can make!