Personalized Lay-out

[Anon]

Hi,

I've created a website consisting of several pages. The style of all these pages is defined in an external stylesheet. What I would like to do is give the visitors of the website the posibility to personalize the colors and fonts of the website. They can personalize the lay-out by filling out a form with a few text-inputs like $backgroundcolor, $font, $font-size. The idea is that the next time they visit the website, it will be displayed in their personal style. Can anyone give me some hints on how to tackle this problem?

Thanks, Michiel

[amcgrath]

1. either store these values in cookie/session variables.

2. Store these into a database.

You can always have a default setting, and when a user changes just reference the values they selected....

[Anon]

Okay, but how would I construct the CSS-file?
Say I've got the following:

SPAN {color:red; font-size:12px; font-family:arial;}

How can I put variables into this line? And how do I create a default? I hope you can give me some more info ..

Thanks, Michiel

PS I think I prefer cookies instead of database.

[amcgrath]

Hers' one way:
set a cookie called $whatever. WHatever's value is red,12,arial. Then, when you check for this cookie, do this:

<? if ($whatever) {
$css_info = explode(",",$whatever);
} else {
$css_info[] = "blue";
$css_info[] = "10";
$css_info[] = "Times";
}
?>

Assuming you include this CSS file you mention, then SPAN {color:red; font-size:12px; font-family:arial;} could be written as SPAN {color:<?= $css_info[0] ?>font-size:<?= $css_info[1] ?>px; font-family:a<?= $css_info[2] ?>;}