Working with Multiple Style Sheets - Working with alternate style sheets
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One of the most common methods used for swapping between different style sheets attached to a given web document involves utilizing alternate style sheets. These sheets are loaded along with the respective web page and theoretically can be selected via a simple menu provided by the user's own browser.
A simple example of how to use alternate style sheets is shown below:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0
Strict//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-
8859-1" />
<title>Swapping Style Sheets</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"href="default.css" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css"href="reda.css"
title="redstyle" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css"href="greena.css"
title="greenstyle" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css"href="bluea.css"
title="bluestyle" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet"
type="text/css"href="fontsizea.css" title="fontstylea" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet"
type="text/css"href="fontsizeb.css" title="fontstyleb" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet"
type="text/css"href="fontsizec.css" title="fontstylec" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>Working with multiple style sheets</h1>
<div>
<p>This is the sample content of the DIV.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>This is the sample content of the DIV.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>This is the sample content of the DIV.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>This is the sample content of the DIV.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
As you can see, the above (X)HTML file first loads a "default.css" style sheet, which as its name suggests, is used by default, and also includes some alternates by using the "<link> tag and specifying an "alternate style sheet" value for its "rel" attribute as well as a title. Logically, these alternate style sheets can be easily swapped by using the visitor's own menu provided by most modern browsers, like Firefox, for instance.
However, IE 6 doesn't support this feature. Therefore, switching between alternate style sheets should be performed via client and server-side scripting. In this case, I'll show you how to achieve this style changing process with JavaScript, but naturally you're free to use the approach that best suits your needs.
So far, you have seen how to attach multiple style sheets to a selected web document. Nonetheless, as you saw earlier, this standard approach isn't supported by IE 6. So, keeping in mind this issue, in the following section I'll define a simple JavaScript function, which will allow users to swap between different alternate style sheets with a few simple links.
To see how this will be done, please go ahead and read the next few lines. I'll be there, waiting for you.
Next: Switching alternate style sheets in a cross-browser fashion: defining a basic JavaScript function >>
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