ESS Convert to / Use Style Sheet ACTIONS

Freeway
1

Please Help. I’m building a website that is broken down into modules (multiple .freeway files)using Pro 5.5 This will offer several advantages to the dev and maintenance of the site – including simultaneous multi-user development.

I want to use External CSS so that when changes are made to one mod (FW generated .css file-- ie “sheet1.css”)…I can simply copy the updated “sheet1.css” file to the other mods/sites and have the changes update automatically.

Problems:
From a blank test fwpro site. I’ve sets the preferences to use External css… and upon publishing, I do get a generated external sheet1.css file.—Since I want to build the .css from the internal FW styles inspector (and have it update/generate the changes to the external .css – this is where the trouble starts.

  1. How do I get a separate.freeway file to (A.) See the css file? I know I can use the page inspector to set up the pointer to it, BUT most importantly, (B.) I want the FW styles palette in this new/other file to populate / reflect the styles in its palette from the copied .css file.

Is this even possible? or is the external.css file “output” only??? I don’t want to use markup to tag the paragraphs manually… PLUS since you can’t clear all the styles… would freeway use the closest (internal) styles rather than the external???

Finally, I installed the ESS Convert to Style Sheet and Use Style Sheet actions – however:

  1. Is there any documentation other that the descriptions as to using these actions?

I believe my first set of questions is still relevant – in any of the above scenarios.

Thank you VERY MUCH!!!

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On Nov 4, 2011, at 3:06 PM, JJ wrote:

Please Help. I’m building a website that is broken down into modules (multiple .freeway files)using Pro 5.5 This will offer several advantages to the dev and maintenance of the site – including simultaneous multi-user development.

I want to use External CSS so that when changes are made to one mod (FW generated .css file-- ie “sheet1.css”)…I can simply copy the updated “sheet1.css” file to the other mods/sites and have the changes update automatically.

Freeway doesn’t work that way w/r/t styles. While it publishes CSS stylesheets, it doesn’t use them internally, so copying these styles to another document would not accomplish anything. What you can do is import the styles from one document into another document. But this is a one-time import, and any changes made later in the second document will not be reflected in the original document. If you want to set up a base set of styles, then propagate them across a number of documents, that is possible, but there’s no way to synchronize multiple documents in the way I think you’re describing here.

Problems:
From a blank test fwpro site. I’ve sets the preferences to use External css… and upon publishing, I do get a generated external sheet1.css file.—Since I want to build the .css from the internal FW styles inspector (and have it update/generate the changes to the external .css – this is where the trouble starts.

  1. How do I get a separate.freeway file to (A.) See the css file? I know I can use the page inspector to set up the pointer to it, BUT most importantly, (B.) I want the FW styles palette in this new/other file to populate / reflect the styles in its palette from the copied .css file.

Freeway generates a new CSS file any time you change the styles in the Styles palette. It uses an internal description of the styles that is not CSS at all, it’s the recipe for creating CSS. This recipe is used directly to draw the layout that you see in the design view in Freeway, and when you publish, that layout is converted to HTML and CSS as needed.

Is this even possible? or is the external.css file “output” only??? I don’t want to use markup to tag the paragraphs manually… PLUS since you can’t clear all the styles… would freeway use the closest (internal) styles rather than the external???

Finally, I installed the ESS Convert to Style Sheet and Use Style Sheet actions – however:

  1. Is there any documentation other that the descriptions as to using these actions?

Not really. Just what’s on ActionsForge. I wrote these Actions long ago, before Freeway could create or use external CSS files. They don’t have any more power than the internal system, except for maybe the Convert to CSS page action. That one has a nice editor window into which you can paste any amount of random CSS – hand-coded. This can be a lot faster than using the Extended dialog and all its many sub-sub-sub dialogs to enter fancy CSS tricks that the normal editor interface doesn’t support.

Walter

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