CSS question...

[Zack]

How? PHP is purely for page generation, not design.

[oracle]

It's far easier to go through a for/next loop outputting "class="left"" when generating tables than going through the whole list and doing it manually. In fact, you can go class="' . $row++ % 2 . '" to make the classes be "row0" and "row1", thus enabling you to have different coloured cells alternating.

It's just quicker, and better if you're generating tables based on database results.

[Zack]

Ah, I see.
Which brings up another of my questions: Does PHP have Perl's multiline output feature? That is, you declare an ECHO type thing, except you specify where to stop.
(pseudocode)
ECHO UNTIL finds_string "END OF ECHO"
<blah>
<blah>
<blah>
END OF ECHO;

[toonski84]

I dont trust html or css borders, because they render different on different browsers. Try this:

Code:

<table border=0 cellpadding=x cellspacing=1 bgcolor=#000000>
    <tr>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
    </tr><tr>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
    </tr><tr>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
        <td bgcolor=#FFFFFF>Blah blah</td>
    </tr>
</table>

That's always been my foolproof way of bordered tables constant on any browser. you can set the background color with CSS if you like, the W3 peeps are always saying you shouldnt mess with table style sheets but they're just talking out of their arses.

Btw, PHP doesnt need that because it's integrated.

Code:

<?
    //blah blah blah
?>

HTML HTML HTML

<?
    // more php code
?>

And besides, when programming Perl, I try and avoid that bit of the language. It makes for sloppy coding. I normally try and modularize my code and make a template script, using a global hash to edit the parts with content and and render the page at the end of the script.

EDIT: oops, oracle beat me to the cellspacing border trick

[oracle]

EDIT: oops, oracle beat me to the cellspacing border trick

I found it out the hard way as well, after a few sites with css borders got the better of me

[potato]

oracle covered the php part i was going to say.

i scorn standard borders for tables though. one border is preferred, (like left, or right, or top or bottom, just as a section marker.) check out my portfolio and other works to see how i use tables (shameless plug now) http://cartella.hokuten.net/

"Zack"]Ah, I see.
Which brings up another of my questions: Does PHP have Perl's multiline output feature? That is, you declare an ECHO type thing, except you specify where to stop.
(pseudocode)
ECHO UNTIL finds_string "END OF ECHO"
<blah>
<blah>
<blah>
END OF ECHO;

you could use a WHILE loop for this,
while ($string != "this") {
mysql_query for string or whatever
echo $string;
}

[Zack]

Meh, the whole point is to be able to quickly output HTML, without having any $html="sbas" and then $html .= "sdsdgsd".

[Zap]

eh isn't

(Perl)

Code:

[perl code here]
print <<<blob # Ok, long time no see Perl, but you get my point.
<p>this is a
<b>perl</b>
testing thing</p>
blob
[perl code here]

the same as

(PHP)

Code:

<?php
[php code]
?>

<p>this is a
<b>php</b>
testing thing</p>

<?php
[php code continues]
?>

From my point of view, the ability to jump in and out of php renders a php equalent of the Perl function unusable.

[Zack]

True, but what if you want to output vars?
This will print the "$cool" to the browser:

Code:

<?php
$cool="nice";
?>
$cool

[Plasma]

PHP does, in fact, support multi-line echo:

Code:

echo <<<END
<p>this is a
<b>php</b>
testing thing</p>
END;