Alternate style
I’ve been working doggedly at this whole “theme” deal this afternoon and have reached several conclusions:
- Though Gecko browsers and Opera 7 for Windows offer built-in style sheet switching capabilities, this ability is useless because the styles don’t stick. Refreshing the page reverts back to the original theme.
- Paul Sowden’s excellent Javascript Style Switcher fixes this problem through clever DOM manipulation whilst simultaneously enabling in-page style switching for people without the above browsers. Unfortunately, the javascript falls flat when the user doesn’t have it enabled. At first I thought that it just didn’t work in Opera 7 and couldn’t work out why… then I remembered that I’d downloaded the much-lighter “non-java” version of Opera 7. In other words, I’m a dick. But it proves my point about Javascript and justifies the ill-will I feel towards it… at least in my mind.
- My own PHP switcher has the unfortunate problem of only working for in-page switching. In other words, it’s not as seamless a function as the Javascipt solution (to Gecko and Opera users) because it doesn’t communicate with the style-selection menus that those browsers offer. This shits me.
So what is a concerned webmaster supposed to do? For now I plan to sit on my hands, that’s what. The new theme will launch on Tuesday (the first of next month) without a switcher for anyone. Such is life.