Template Design in CSS

Tobit · 11.05.2005, 19:29

Hi,

for quite some time I am looking for the "right" CMS for a project. And actually I had already decided to use Mambo, installed the Mambo Standalone Server and had a glance at what this CMS is.
Well, I was quite enthused and started designing the site I want to create, i.e. designing the graphical layout and implementing the Code for the menus, etc.

Now I wanted to start the implementation in Mambo and searched through the different forums and sites I found about Mambo. But now I am a little bit confused if Mambo really is the right CMS for me as I found a thread, saying that Mambo only works with tables but doesn't yet support CSS and XHTML.
There was only mentioned that there is a "version" called xMambo supporting CSS and XHTML.

Well, I am designing only with layers, my menus work as list elements, etc. ... so actually all my pages only work with CSS. What's about that? Do I really have to use tables and wait till version 4.6 or 5.0 to get CSS with Mambo? All information I found about the release dates of that version say that I can't wait for them.

So my question is: can I use CSS for the complete Template-Design in Mambo or do I have to look for another CMS?

Tobit

GRAM · 11.05.2005, 19:40

Mambo's core code still creates tables, but you can design a template entirely in Divs and it will still work well. Mambo will insert content oriented tables into the divs that you create.

I frequently check my sites with the WC3 css and xhtml validators and they validate well.

The MLSHomeQuest.com website link in my sig is one of these templates. The entire template is divs, most with css class labels. It works very well.

Important note here, Mambo CMS can use components and modules written by third party coders, some of which do not comply with the full xhtml spec. But the core components I have used seem to be fine.

Remember that your template only creates the elements within which the content items are placed. Although they may be tables, they can live quite nicely within divs. This gives you the advantage of a page that loads its core divs very quickly, and has tables that require less parsing by the browsers to be displayed.

Net is that the pages load a little faster when you use divs to create your template.

For the record, Mambo is very css oriented as you are about to find out. CSS is used for the majority of the elements it creates (including the tables) so not sure where the comment about it not using CSS came from. Perhaps it is slightly out of context, or even just wrong.

Tobit · 11.05.2005, 20:25

Hi Gram,

I was to referring to the following thread:
New mambo fork xMambo

and it is really a reasonable discussion. Actually there was another thread, too. But I am not able to find it again.

Tobit

GRAM · 11.05.2005, 20:45

I have seen these as well. xMambo looks like a very good initiative. It would be nice to delegate more control over a sites rendering to CSS.

Not really sure why it is being touted as being more xhtml compliant, but Mambo is xhtml transitional so perhaps xMambo takes it to the next level. From what I have seen of the two specs (transitional vs. strict) it looks like strict would load faster due to have a more consistant tag base and rule set.

There are CMSs out there that are entirely based on the newer standards, although I can't think of one right off the top of my head. I have checked several out and decided to stick with Mambo due to the direction the team has plotted, the maturity of the code, availability of third party add ons (hundreds), and stability/security of the existing code base.

You should probably try to get a handle on the site visitors you plan to serve. This was the real deciding factor for me. The vast majority of my site visitors are still using some varient of explorer, and it is not real compliant with regard to properly rendering or parsing to the W3c specs. Foxfire sure does a lot better job.

Reliance on the newer specs (CSS2, xHTML strict) would sure lead to faster and better rendering of sites, but would also leave quite a few of my site visitors out in the cold who do not have browsers which can properly render them. I chose not to pursue either of these due to this limitation.

This is a great discussion topic, but one which I really think should be placed in the context of support for these specs within the greater community of available browsers.

Just my opinion btw...

, and we all know what that is worth.

Tobit · 12.05.2005, 01:08

Thanks a lot Gram, it's quite good to get to know to the reasons why somebody choses this CMS and not another one. So you helped me a lot with your detailed explanations. As you say ... with the actual IE it's always a lot of trouble making a page compliant to it. I still hope that IE 7.0 will improve this status ... but on the other hand I can't imagine a MS product that adopts to the standards.
Well, we'll see this summer, won't we

.

Tobit