I have personally been invlolved in this kind of development for over a year
now. Another idea that I have found usefull has been to use computed text in
the table attributes, most notably width. This means taht if at some point you
find you have to change the size/layout of the tables, you can simply change
the field value from which the computed text is derived. You can then compute
spanned cells etc to ensure that your layout will change accross the site
(which may contain multiple databases) consistsntly and quickly.
Please check out http://www.kidneywise.com
This complicated HTML layout is used accross multiple databases. I use lookups
to immitate includes that you would use in regular websites.
I created a central repository for my graphics, my JS files and CSS files. I
also created my standard subforms in this database.
The other databases then inherit changes from this database (I do not set it up
as a template as then you cannot preview the cnages through a browser), hence
when I update the title section in the central repository I can then run the
designer task on thhe server and update the entire site quickley.
One thing to watch though is that when you update a JS file with a new function
which is called from a page somewhere in the site, you can get problems when
the older version of the JS file is cached either on someones machine or on a
proxy server, the functions will not be available to the web page and you will
generate errors.
Tricky one to solve, I thought about appending a computed number to the end of
the JS file name, this way if I update the JS file, I can rename it say
validate02.js and then change a lookup value in the configuration database to
reflect this change accross the site.
I hope someone somewhere finds this usefull.
I have personally been invlolved in this kind of development for over a year now. Another idea that I have found usefull has been to use computed text in the table attributes, most notably width. This means taht if at some point you find you have to change the size/layout of the tables, you can simply change the field value from which the computed text is derived. You can then compute spanned cells etc to ensure that your layout will change accross the site (which may contain multiple databases) consistsntly and quickly.
Please check out http://www.kidneywise.com This complicated HTML layout is used accross multiple databases. I use lookups to immitate includes that you would use in regular websites. I created a central repository for my graphics, my JS files and CSS files. I also created my standard subforms in this database. The other databases then inherit changes from this database (I do not set it up as a template as then you cannot preview the cnages through a browser), hence when I update the title section in the central repository I can then run the designer task on thhe server and update the entire site quickley. One thing to watch though is that when you update a JS file with a new function which is called from a page somewhere in the site, you can get problems when the older version of the JS file is cached either on someones machine or on a proxy server, the functions will not be available to the web page and you will generate errors. Tricky one to solve, I thought about appending a computed number to the end of the JS file name, this way if I update the JS file, I can rename it say validate02.js and then change a lookup value in the configuration database to reflect this change accross the site. I hope someone somewhere finds this usefull.