Chapter 6. Style Sheets, Master Pages, and Navigation
Back in the early mists of time, when the Earth was young and the Web was new (Circa
1994)we created web pages in HTML (HyperText Markup Language). After many eons (or so it
seemed), we were able to add styles to the HTML elements, allowing us to take greater control over the
presentation of web pages.
Eventually content (the HTML)was divided from presentation and layout through the use
of styles, and that was good. In fact, it came to pass that presentation
information was given its own file—a style sheet—to allow for reuse, a consistent
presentation across many pages, and easier maintenance, and that was very good
indeed.
Styles and style sheets are a significant, but often overlooked tool for web
developers, too often ignored by “programmers” who disparage style sheets as being in
the realm of “designers”—leading to the creation of web applications that are terribly
difficult to maintain.
A new innovation for creating sites with a common look and feel across all of the
pages are Master Pages, covered later in this chapter. Master Pages
can easily contain menus and other navigational aids such as site maps and bread crumbs,
and these too will be covered in this chapter.
A style specifies how an object will be rendered to an output
device, typically a browser. Styles can be used to manipulate the layout and
appearance of controls and text, detailing every aspect from border color to font
size.
Web applications ...
