What fonts to use

[pdenchfield]

Kevin, do you know why this instance of a complex selector doesn't work? I think some of my previous complex selectors worked with Flare.

[LTinker68]

That wasn't a complex selector, it was a combined (shortcut) style grouping, or whatever you want to call it. And it's not that they don't work, it's that Flare doesn't properly handle modifications made after you've inserted the combined styles. For instance, by default, new projects in Flare have a combination for the ol and ul tags, that I think have a margin setting or something. If you modify that same property for just one of those tags, then Flare doesn't separate the combined line into two separate ones, like it should. In other words, you could end up with the following in your stylesheet:

Code: Select all

ol, ul {
   margin-bottom: 0;
}

ol {
  margin-bottom: 6px;
}

That can cause problems because there are two different values specified for the same property in the <ol> tag. So you can use combinations in your stylesheet, just beware that Flare isn't savvy enough to correct any mistakes/conflicts you introduce later.

[pdenchfield]

Ahh, I've been using incorrect terminology.

I tried inserting commas in accordance with W3's standards (http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/selector.html#grouping) and it worked!

Code: Select all

@media print
{
     h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6
     {
        font-family: Georgia;
     }
}

[KevinDAmery]

As Lisa said, they work - the problem is, if you later need to make a change to some but not others (for example, if you decide to use Times for H4, H5, and H6 but leave the others as Georgia) the Flare stylesheet editor may not make the changes correctly. If you keep them all separate you can edit each independently later if you have to.

Note that this only affects using the Stylesheet editor gui. If you don't mind editing your CSS as a text file you won't have any problems with the issue I'm describing.

[trent the thief]

ah, messy, messy. Overloading the stylesheets isn't such a good idea. One output, one stylesheet. Therein lies safety and security

[LTinker68]

Yeah, the interactivity and error-checking with the stylesheet file definitely needs improvement.

[trent the thief]

which comes back to my multiple stylesheets vs media overloading in stylesheets discussion.

Recipe for disaster

[pdenchfield]

Great conversation.

Lisa and Kevin emphasize the need to avoid introducing errors into the stylesheet. Trent suggests that more than one output per stylesheet could be messy and cumbersome.

For our needs, I think one stylesheet with the group of selectors for heading styles (print medium only) will be a great departmental standard for everyone in our team to share, provided they don't edit it (I suppose I'll be appointed the enforcer role). That's what I think today, anyway. Feel free to check back with me in a few months to see how it's going. :=)

[LTinker68]

which comes back to my multiple stylesheets vs media overloading in stylesheets discussion.

That wouldn't take care of the problem. Even if you had two stylesheets - one for online, one for print - Flare still doesn't do basic checking of the stylesheet file, so the problem Kevin and I are talking about is still a factor.