You said to only apply a style on a particular page. The problem is for me and I risk feeling ignorant, but the pages are not created as static pages. I can't look at an xhtml page within the code, as there are no xhtml pages in the code. So, I've got the .node .content black and so the image area around a picture is black but that's only a small part of the display area. The home page is a book page made from an image in a photogallery. I didn't feel so ignorant or confused using Drupal in a long time until I started trying to do this. I didn't think CSS was all that confusing.

The problem for me is that every page is being generated with php, so I can't just open a page in Dreamweaver and look at the Style on a part of the screen. There doesn't seem to be a way to edit these things in a WYSIWYG, type display environment... where I'd be able to apply a style and see that indeed there was a change to the background and then see the text and try a lighter text, all this in one step. It's like I have to try a change and then upload it and see if there is any change. Can anyone offer any tips? So, I've got the bluemarine theme and it's blue up top, left menu is grey with blue text. Just below the top area there is the text Home >> View some of our projects Then the title of the image. So, to the left of the image it's white, above the image is white, to the right is black. I want to get the image to be surrounded by black. All the themes are made such that the content area, including the top box, and menu areas are all with white or light colored backgrounds. This leaves my task to be tougher. If the design of a theme was based on a dark or black background for the content and menu areas, things would be a bit easier for me. It would be a better place to start for me. There aren't any themes with this are there?

Bruce

Vladimir Zlatanov vlado@dikini.net wrote:

I'm editing Bluemarine now and using the Firefox Web Developer kit. I'm not finding any place where the background images for much of the site is being set. I try one after another background color style and come up with no change as I'm setting each one to black background. Maybe I should move everything to my pc and use Dreamweaver to search each and every file, telling it to seach the code for background-color.

No idea about the developer toolkit, but your main problem is discovering which style has the highest priority. It could be a bit weird. As a quick hack - you can create your own class or id and make sure that it appears only on that particular page. Then style it with high specificity. NOTICE: This is a quick hack, it is ugly, it might quickly lead to serious brain damage, let alone mess.

About your original question - how to change the backround on a particular page - if you want to change the style of a particular set of pages, you might have a success with the sections module.

Alternatively, there used to be a tip in the handbook, giving code example of how to do it within the theme template, without the sections module. Not sure where to pint you to though. But the idea is simple: in the beginning of the tpl file do conditional loading of templates - if, switch, whatever you fancy.

An advice, if you want to save yourself some brain power, spend some time and split drupal.css into logical components and get a feeling what is used there. It looks scary, but it is fairly straight forward, and is well documented inside the file. The themes, tend to be messier, due to beautification hacks and are not documented to that extent.

Apropos, I like shooting in the dark, just don't tell the kittens

Cheers, Vlado

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You said to only apply a style on a particular page. The problem is for me and I risk feeling ignorant, but the pages are not created as static pages.

Well, yes. And that's the "problem". The structure is conditional and depends on context. I have my grudges with it as well. The key to theming is understanding when certain structures appear and why. An example - although you have one and the same title for a node, it can appear as a different <hX> element in teaser and node views, as it probably should. There is a semantic difference there.

I can't look at an xhtml page within the code, as there are no xhtml pages in the code. So, I've got the .node .content black and so the image area around a picture is black but that's only a small part of the display area. The home page is a book page made from an image in a photogallery. I didn't feel so ignorant or confused using Drupal in a long time until I started trying to do this. I didn't think CSS was all that confusing.

You have .tpl files and you have default theme functions. The definitions in a .tpl file override the defaults. Most of the defaults are snippets in code. Look for the *_theme functions to get all defaults. The .tpl is simply html with a bit of php thrown in to inject content.

The problem for me is that every page is being generated with php, so I can't just open a page in Dreamweaver and look at the Style on a part of the screen. There doesn't seem to be a way to edit these things in a WYSIWYG, type display environment... where I'd be able to apply a style and see that indeed there was a change to the background and then see the text and try a lighter text, all this in one step. It's like I have to try a change and then upload it and see if there is any change. Can anyone offer any tips?

If you want to apply the black-box method. Open drupal.css and the theme's css files in a handy editor. Open a page of a certain type - a list, a node view (they differ on node type), an editor form, admin page, etc... Use the CSS->Check Style Information and/or Information->Display ID & Class Details to get idea of the possible selectors, which could have been aplied. And find which rules are influencing the display. Or just ignore that, and define a CSS rule of sufficient specificity - that's a trial and error. You can alway put in your theme file an id, like <body id='my-special'> and do something like #myspecial h2.title {} to guarantee that your rules are preferred by the browser.

..... If the design of a theme was based on a dark or black background for the content and menu areas, things would be a bit easier for me. It would be a better place to start for me. There aren't any themes with this are there?

You are getting from the wrong end - colours and such. Look at what resembles your layout - it is the most difficult part of the design. The coulours will come from that. Unfortunately there is a lot of black magic involved in good css design. Or so it seems.

Cheers, Vlado