CSS in Log4Net Dashboard

The work on Log4Net Dashboard is progressing. I had a long sidestep into CSS. I wanted to make the user interface customizable through use of CSS. A lot of work to put all the pieces together, put I finally found out that I needed one style sheet witch is common and one style sheet the user could choose. I finally grasped the meaning of cascading – never actually given it much of a tough.

In the user chosen style sheet I’d put all the colors and font stuff which defines the look. In the common style sheet (mainstyle.css) I have all the other stuff

When I release the Log4Net Dashboard, the different style sheets will be available to view, but to give you an Idea on how I have done this:

In the MainStyle.css I define the basic layout of the menu

.MenuItem

{

padding-right: 0.7em;

padding-left: 0.7em;

height: 1.4em;

vertical-align:bottom;

margin-left: 2px;

}

And in the different style sheets (selectable by users) I, for example, have this definition.

.Menu

{

font-weight: bold;

font-size: x-small;

background-color: darkgray;

}

In runtime the browser will join these two style sheets to form the complete definition of the .Menu element (Cascading).

A also struggle a lot with how to change the style sheet in runtime, based on the value the user had chosen (and which I stored in a cookie).

Actually I found some quiet advanced method on the web (which I didn’t get to work). But the solution which I came up with was simply to have a static method in a utility class (l4ndashutil) and in the aspx page I wrote:

<% Response.Write(L4NDashUtil.StyleSheetRef(); %>

<% Response.Write(L4NDashUtil.StyleSheetRef(); %>

This is almost old style asp syntax, but I had forgotten……..(Sometimes my brain is like a Teflon casserole, nothing sticks to it).