Joomla! Discussion Forums

I've been trying to learn all I can about CSS (to use it soley to position things, aand do away with tables) have been doing 'viewpagesource' of sites in the process, and noticed while they all have style sheets linked to them, to affect the 'appearance' or style, some are using .php and some use straight .html...for the 'layout'  and .php or .html is just part of the template, along with image and CSS folder?)  I'm getting confused, is the php just for people using CMS like Joomla, so you can 'drop in' modulesss like ready made menus (instead of creating them longhand iin html..)  and these modules/components can be positioned all by CSS I guess,  by 'divs' (the modules would be in content boxes etc...) instead of tables>rows...  I notice some don't seem to show any 'text' in view source, and some show all the text (html)..Not sure what exactly my question is, but you can see I'm a little confused lol..oh, and believe it or not I AM reading tons of tuts, just going round,,and round..(trying to digest too many things at once, and it's all new sorry)

the whole extension thing- .php versus .html, on the client side does not matter. In other words, to my web browser, when I load mysite.com/index.php it is the same as if I had loaded mysite.com/index.html -- IN ONLY THIS WAY -- they are both outputting html.

On the server side, and to the web guy writing the pages, php offers a greater deal of flexibility. As long as php is installed on the server, he can use pretty much any or all of the functions and features of php (http://www.php.net). The main thing that is nice is that you can do any number of things without letting the client know they are happening. But the catch is, once it is outputted (sent to the client) php can't do anything. Javascript basically takes over for doing active code-related junk (like resizing, popping up windows, etc.)

So in regards to css, the file being .php or .html means very little-- if you are using php, on the server side, you could have it read a cookie (from $_COOKIE) and use that to determine what style sheet to include. But a .php extension doesn't change the way css is used or interpreted.

the css can be in three places, a 'style' tag, a .css file, or in-line (such as a tag with a 'style' attribute.)

again, to your browser, which is rendering the css, whether or not the page has a php extension or not is meaningless. Your browser is still receiving a 'http' transfer, and is still seeing the type as 'text/html', so technically speaking, as long as the server knows to send .php output as text/html, to the browser receiving it, it could have any extension at all.

Er, I hope that doesn't confuse you, but instead clears things up.

Yes, thanx, it clears one area up (or gives me a little better understanding ) -am surpised someone read my 'ramblings' lol, probly not posted in proper thread either..how everything 'ties in' basically confuses me from time to time...my first attempt at web pages- last year, the 'ol html web page, tables etc..text typed right in...now I add everything (almost) in Joomla CMS, I  go to content manager or W/E and do it there..and it shows up client-side in 'viewpagesource' html...I try to find that 'text' in my files with the other files (image, index.php,  *.CSS) of the site's template but..it's in Joomla but nowhere else??sorry I must sound really dense or crazy,  trying to 'unlearn' the html web page thing...probly shouldn't think about it....the text in this case is represented by 'mosloadmodules' or components or whatever,  in cases where I don't see ANY  text on a page in viewsource..hmmmm

Its there, you just have to look for it.

A template like solarflare has a lot of html code to it, and your content will end up somewhere close to the bottom, in amongst a bunch of divs and tables.

Ya, I should take the advice of my own signature I guess   less confusion  thanx for all the help so far.