The Cascading Style Sheet Implementation I implemented in NPDS 2.0 was designed primarily as away to enforce the layout of NPDS HTML without generating and transmitting gross amounts of formatting data. For instance, according to HTML 3.2 specs, to apply font choice to a document, one must apply it to every "Block element" separately. That means every P, TR, LI, etc has to have a separate FONT wrapper. That can add up to a HUGE amount of non-informative data to your page that slows down generation, transmission, and rendering. To further exacerbate things, the rendering of HTML formatted in this manner is very inconsistent between browsers and platforms.
Contrast the HTML 3.2 formatting approach to that defined in HTML 4.0 + Cascading Style Sheets. Under HTML 4.0, one declares all instances of a given tag's formatting before the document is rendered. Better yet, subclasses of each element can be defined with different properties from the parent. In NPDS, I defined a sub-class "HILITE" of TD (Table Cell) that is defined as having a highlighted background color. To make a TD element "light up", I define it as <TD CLASS=HILITE> instead of <TD> within the HTML.
The LI (list item) element also has NPDS specific subclasses which are "CHECKED" and "UNCHECKED" since I use lists as the HTML markup for outlines and To-Do lists. In one of my style sheets, I set the UNCHECKED class to have a highlighted background and be rendered in bold text. It looked cool. In general, I have the checked items set to normal font and the unchecked items set to bold. It provides a nice visual delineation between the two kinds of list item.
While there's quite an advantage to sending all the style data at the beginning of the document, we're still making NPDS do more work than is 100% required. The common way of using style sheets is to reference a single style sheet file from several HTML files by using a forward link to import the Style sheet. Since my standard NPDS Style Sheet is about 500 bytes, this means we could save that 500 bytes every page we served by storing the NPDS Style sheet somewhere else and referencing it. Actually, using a remote style sheet would allow you to custominze the look of your Newton server by changing the REMOTE FILE! So, with all these advantages spelled out, let's get to work on this.
On the UNIX account I use to administer Lightyear Media, I have stored a style sheet file named "lym_book.css" that I want to use to format my Newton server pages. To use this file, I'll open the CSS Editor and change the Style Sheet from a full CSS file wrapped by STYLE tags to the following:
<LINK REL=stylesheet
HREF="http://pop.life.uiuc.edu/~mwvaugh/lightyear/lym_book.css"
TYPE="text/css">
Now, when a NPDS page is served, the browser will be directed to look for the style sheet on my MUCH faster Solaris machine!
You can | click here | to access this CSS file to see a real Style Sheet. Feel free to modify it or use it verbatim. Keep in mind that this is my actual current style sheet and may change frequently!
We all want really cool looking Newtons, right? And the drab olive color I shipped as the highlight color in NPDS 2.02 is the pits, too, ain't it? Well, never fear.. I have found a small series of tables that present the 216 color Web-Safe Palette of colors along with their respective Hex codes. Hopefully, these will help you overcome the lack of a color picker on the Newton for choosing your Layout colors and lead to some snazzy-looking Newton sites. Usually, what's nice to do is keep the same level of brightness but vary the hue around 1/6 to 1/4 of the color wheel. Just fool around with it, eh? I am currently running a light salmon background with steel grey highlights. It looks really subdued but I like it since I keep my Newton open to my weekly overview in a browser on my desk.
Since it's a goodly amount of HTML, the page containing this color guide is here.
You folks are really golden and I happen to think that linking to a remote style sheet is cool. So, if you create a neat-o style sheet using whatever method you choose, I'll host it on my server for you to reference from your Newton. I can give you one or two updates of it a month. What I'll need, if you want to do this, is an email containing the .css file sent to me along with your name and any other info I might need.