[Seaside] html & css basics and tutorial

[Steve Aldred]

r00t uk wrote:
> Thanks for the response and I completely agree with you that it is not 
> Seaside's place to teach HTML.  What I am looking for is the Smalltalk 
> expressions used to create the HTML, i.e. the "receiver, message 
> selector and arguments".  For example, to display a url in HTML you 
> would type:
> <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/">Visit W3Schools!</a>
>
>
> but in Smalltalk you would type the following in a "rendering" method:
>
> html anchor url: 'www.3schools.com <http://www.3schools.com>'; with: 'Visit W3Schools!'.
>
>
> Now, without using CSS, you are able to change font, font-size, style etc. of the link above, but how is it done using Smalltalk expressions?
> How, or where can I find information that will give me valid "receiver, message selector and arguments"?  I assume that the "receiver" will always
>
> be "html".
>
> I hope that clarifies my question(s)?  If it is a matter of just working your way through class libraries and comments (which ones?) then that
> is what I will do.  Just feels like there must be an easier way for finding the information. 
>   

Sorry but I'm still not sure what you are asking. Do you mean what 
methods do you send to generate the various HTML tags? If so look for 
the implementor of #anchor (I think its WACanvas but haven't an image in 
front of me). That will give you all of the messages for 
components/tags. The implementor will site the tag brush class.

To find what you can send to a tag it is pretty much examine the tag 
brush class and its hierarchy. As always in Smalltalk the code is the 
most up to date documentation. Luckily it doesn't take long to learn the 
common methods you need.

As for CSS, there mostly won't be methods for controlling style on a 
component/tag. The code is for the structure and behaviour, CSS is for 
the look/style. You can implement a #style method on your components to 
define the CSS. If the tag or tag path is not sufficient, set id and 
class on your components. Just make sure if you use ids they are unique, 
we only tend to use those for singletons on a page. In our development 
we tend to have few style methods, mostly its defined on a Look&Feel 
class we use as a container for everything else.

cheers
Steve A