[pmwiki-devel] Looking for comments on possible standard for dynamic skins

Tue May 13 22:43:24 CDT 2008

All,

I'm cleaning up the skin I use on my websites, preparing to create more, 
and have encountered a simple issue that may have a simple solution. For 
dynamic layout websites (ie which use some javascript), there is often a 
need for more than one script to run some kind of initialization routine 
on load. It can be cumbersome to edit the onload/onunload attributes of 
the body element for each initialization, so I thought that the 
following (or something like it) might be a useful standard for us to 
collectively follow. (There may already be such a thing, and if so I'd 
be happy to hear about it.).

The standard would be to offer two simple javascript objects in the head 
of each skin. One to take registrations of load and unload javascript 
functions; the other to accept parameters for javascript routines. (The 
application javascript routines requiring initialization would typically 
be loaded through $HTMLHeaderFmt). The registered functions would be run 
on load and unload; the parameters could be read by any javascript 
routine that knows about them.

Here's the code for the header that I propose:

====================== start ==================

<script type="text/javascript">

var LoadManager = {

 loadlist:[],
 unloadlist:[],
 registerloadfunction: function (theFunctionName) {
  LoadManager.loadlist.push(theFunctionName);
 },
 registerunloadfunction: function (theFunctionName) {
  LoadManager.unloadlist.push(theFunctionName);
 },
 load: function() {
   for (var i=0;i<LoadManager.loadlist.length;i++) LoadManager.loadlist[i]();
 },
 unload: function() {
   for (var i=0;i<LoadManager.unloadlist.length;i++) LoadManager.unloadlist[i]();
 }
}
var Parameters = {}

</script>

============================== end ==============================

Here is the body element opening tag:

======================== start ==========================

<body onload="LoadManager.load()" onunload="LoadManager.unload()">

======================== end ==========================

If there is any interest or commentary on this, please let me know.

- Henrik

-- 

Henrik Bechmann
bechmann.ca
Webmaster, celos.ca webhosting services