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**cdicken** · 17-Jan-2006, 09:52 AM

Hello Yvonne

Why in the world is the body tag for BusinesCSS filled with formatting???

Because when BusinessCSS was first developed 5 years ago, we didn't really fully understand the full implications of CSS. So we didn't implement as purely and efficiently as some people would like. You can safely remove (or comment out) all content from the <body> tag other than

Code:

onLoad="NETQUOTEVAR:ONLOAD"

The reason we haven't removed this code is that it doesn't do any serious harm to the design (and is easily removed) but if we decided to 'clean-up' our default themes, it makes people's designs much harder to upgrade to the latest version. We decided that the slight disadvantage of having this code still in the <body> tag, is far outweighed by the benefits of not having your primary template upgraded by the Actinic Upgrader.

Second, why this love affair with nestled tables? Even when they don't make the least sense they're there. It's a pain to strip off all the excess tables and sometimes it's not even possible without creating untold horrors. Like Ted I keep ripping and ripping and ripping...

Believe me, I have no love affair with nested tables, and I agree that we have rather overdone tables in the past. But on the plus side, tables in general are robust, reliable, work across a wide range of web browsers consistently and understood by a wide range of the web design community. They also work brilliantly with a templated system like Actinic as they can grow and stretch in expected ways when data is placed within them.

But they are perceived as being out of date by the web design community, and they are also incompatible with the W3C guidelines which state that tables should only be used for tabular data. They are also not great for people using screen reading devices.

So, over the last year or so I have been involved with learning CSS-based standards-compliant design and figuring out how to use it best with Actinic. So in a future version of Actinic you should see designs that are more to your liking.

**domino1** · 17-Jan-2006, 09:58 AM

Chris,
Do you have any updates regarding the "pure CSS Actinic Theme"? I gather there's a Catalog V8 due out later this year. Will it include this?

Thanks

Dave

**cdicken** · 17-Jan-2006, 04:49 PM

There will never be a 'Pure CSS' theme - because there are certain features in Actinic (e.g. being able to put section links into columns) where tables are the only solution.

However, there will be a theme in the next version of Actinic where tables are only used when they are necessary.

**yvonne** · 17-Jan-2006, 06:28 PM

Hi Chris

I commented out the onLoad="NETQUOTEVAR:ONLOAD" as well without problem. I don't like preload features, they slow down the rendering of the page in the browser. I also understood the onload to have to do mainly with the navigation graphics and since I don't use that type of nav system I see no reason for it.

As to tables I don't mind them at all and the sites I've done are hybrids as well. However, there is a difference between nestling two tables within each other and five or more! Tables may be robust as a whole but nestled tables can create havoc if not done right and even then it slows down the pages, particularly if one forgets to state width and height. Since I do graphics heavy sites I try to scale back on the invisible so I can splurge on the eye candy.

Btw, what's this about v8??? Wouldn't it be a good thing to get v7 bug free FIRST before embarking on a new version? If not I want a free upgrade! One reason I've stuck with v5 for so long was that most of the bugs had been worked out of it, but because of the recent change at UPS the shipping module is no longer working, so forced us to upgrade. But I can say now that if I have to keep using this buggy product (see my bug report message) for 6-8 months and then pay up again to get v8 I am not going to be particularly happy!

yvonne

**NormanRouxel** · 17-Jan-2006, 06:48 PM

Yvonne,

The onLoad in recent V7 is also used to set a flag that indicates that the page has fully loaded. This is used by the Extended Info Popup pages to reload the main page if it wasn't fully loaded when the popup was clicked.

The reason for this is if a customer clicks a popup link before the page is fully loaded, that ceases the page load and the customer would now be stuck looking at an incomplete page.

You can easily fix this (and do without the preloadimages stuff) by setting the <body onLoad="bPageIsLoaded=true;" ...>

Wouldn't it be a good thing to get v7 bug free FIRST before embarking on a new version?

An excellent idea if possible within a finite time frame. Unfortunately you can never ever tell if any piece of code longer than a few lines is bug free, especially if it has to interact with the outside world. We'd all still be on DOS V1.0 if this was the practice, and all software companies would go bust as they be in an infinitely long support phase.

I don't like preload features, they slow down the rendering of the page in the browser

I rather feel that as they only run after the page has loaded (onLoad actually means after the page is fully loaded) they speed things up by only loading (as yet unused) rollover images while the customer is looking at the page.

**yvonne** · 17-Jan-2006, 07:30 PM

The reason for this is if a customer clicks a popup link before the page is fully loaded, that ceases the page load and the customer would now be stuck looking at an incomplete page.

Which browser is this? I've tested this both in Netscape/Mozilla and Internet Explorer with the same results. I have some mightily long store pages and when I click any pop-up before the page has fully loaded the page continues to load until done below the pop-up window.

Actually, I wasn't expecting 100% bug free product but I Am expecting one where the features work as intended. It bugs me (pardon the pun) particularly when features from previous versions of Actinic that worked correctly suddenly develop bugs in newer versions, not to mention bugs that should be easy for the development team to fix! I expect any reputable software company to test their program in the real world before releasing it since that's where it's to be used.

Look, this is a forum mostly for tech people but the real world is out there and it's for THEM we are doing this! Imagine not being able to use the shipping calculator when adding products to offline orders. Imagine customer names not sorting in alphabetical order. Imagine order value not listed in numerical order. We cannot sell to all USA states because the state drop down list isn't generated unless we leave out a state. We cannot ask customers for the authentication number on their credit cards because 3/4 of our customers will get caught by the bug and unable to place the order. These are just a few of the bugs in v7 that I have discovered after using the program real time for less than a week! My boss is having fits that we are to pay for such a buggy product and I cannot blame him! Don't talk to me of DOS 1.0!

yvonne

**NormanRouxel** · 17-Jan-2006, 09:36 PM

Hi, Yvonne

If all the things you posted were so, we'd be hearing about it a lot here.

For example I don't see the cart Content cookie problem as you describe. I just made a test and it just wasn't so. Could it be that you've removed some necessary code?

Also could you be confusing the card Issue Number (which is a sequential count of previous cards issued to you and usually starts at 1 (you might need one for 3,000 years to reach 999) with the Verification Value (which is any 3 digit number and works as such just fine).

The popup page breaking page loads is well documented - I think it depend on whether you're clicking an onClick or using an <a..> tag to initiate the popup as to whether the load stops. You may get different results with both. Try it with both clicking Product Image and the Button and see. See http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=7325 for one of the several discussions on this.

**wjcampbe** · 17-Jan-2006, 10:19 PM

Yvonne said;
this is a forum mostly for tech people

Far from it. This forum is where the people without tech knowledge can come for help. It's Joe Public who had never heard of HTML last week that will get the most benefit from posting a question here.

Those of us with some knowledge come here to share, and yes, to support Actinic. (aside: so that's why it's called the Actinic Support Forum????)

**NormanRouxel** · 17-Jan-2006, 11:59 PM

Here are a few of the things I try to take into account when writing the various tweaks that I do.

Code:

Actinic -> 1
x V6 | V7 -> 2
x Business (not logged in) | Business (logged in) | Simple Catalog -> 6
x CompactHTML | Commented HTML -> 12
x Via Search Script (no Highlighting) |  Via Search Script (with Highlighting) | Direct -> 36
x Framed (ugh) | Normal -> 72
x CSS Theme | Non CSS Theme -> 144
x Windows server | Linux server -> 288
x SSL | No SSL  | Shared SSL -> 864
x Qty on Product Page | Qty Confirmation Page | Qty in Cart | Single Add -> 3456
x Internet Explorer | Firefox | Opera -> 10368

So that's only 10,000 things to worry about. And then there's the unknown number of firewall / anti-virus / parental control stuff between that page and the end user.

**jont** · 18-Jan-2006, 10:37 AM

You can multiply that exponentially when you add a human user into the mix

**jxm28788** · 09-Sep-2006, 04:11 PM

Can anyone point me to any working css based sites? All the examples here seem to be long gone, and I don't have access to the developer forum...

**pinbrook** · 09-Sep-2006, 04:35 PM

There are css sites in v8...

the contemporary theme and clean css themes are css (well as css as actinic seem to be prepared to take it) There probably will be more css sites when V8 gets going properly.

Rural webs hunters pudding uses contemporary theme

**jxm28788** · 11-Sep-2006, 07:21 AM

I have taken a quick look at that site but it looks pretty standard to me...?

Maybe I should start with some more fundamental questions -

Is it possible to build the header (eg. logo) and navbar from the .css file?
If so will this lead to faster page loads (as the code is only loaded once through the .css file rather than in every page on the site)?

**jont** · 12-Sep-2006, 10:30 AM

Originally posted by jxm28788

If so will this lead to faster page loads (as the code is only loaded once through the .css file rather than in every page on the site)?

No! It will still take the same time to download and once in the browser cache will be drawn locally from the browser cache when the user navigates to the next page ... regardless if coded into the page or into the CSS.

The page will only load quicker using CSS if you do away with the myriad of nested tables that are complex for browsers to render quickly ... CSS can position the logo in a few lines of code compared to complex tables and cells using a standard layout.

The nav bar can be speeded by dispensing with any images with hover effects and utilising plain text with CSS to style a hover background effect

**jxm28788** · 12-Sep-2006, 10:54 AM

Originally posted by jont

No! It will still take the same time to download and once in the browser cache will be drawn locally from the browser cache when the user navigates to the next page ... regardless if coded into the page or into the CSS.

So are you saying that if the user goes from productpage1.html to productpage2.html the browser is smart enough to take the navbar out of the cache from page1 rather than downloading it from page2? That can't be right - I don't see how that would work?

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