[aida] WebStyle <---> WebApplication

[Edward Stow]

Hi,

I'm continuing on my aida investigation -- and have just struck the
WebStyle and WebApplication classes.


My question, first up,  how would you create two or more WebStyles for
a site? and apply these to particular pages (or rather WebApplication
objects.)

My question led me to investigate WebApplication and WebStyle a bit
more closely.  These two  classes seem very coupled and because of the
obscuring (imho) #dnu: implementation ... that redirects many, many
messages to the style class it makes it difficult to understand the
framework.

WebApplication>>doesNotUnderstand: aMessage
	"forward a message to a style for processing"
	^self style
		perform: aMessage selector
		withArguments: aMessage arguments

My troubles began in the tutorial and the #pageFrameWith:title:

    viewMain
        | e |
        e := WebElement new.
        e addTextH1: 'Address book'.
        self pageFrameWith: e title: 'Address book'

 I guessed that #pageFrameWith:title: must be setting up the page
layout (the header, menus etc) but was surprised to find that
#pageFrameWith:title: was not implemented in the WebApplication
hierarchy.   Why not directly send the message to the WebStyle object
(and it is less expensive cpu wise) such as:

        self style pageFrameWith: e title: 'Address book'

WebStyle seems to me to incorporate at least the following features:
 -- setup a page template for the *Aida tutorial* site (the  page
headers, footers, navigation bars etc)
-- establish assets for the site (html header information - css files,
images files, script files)

Subclassing WebStyle to create my own web site page template is very
messy (as per the Joomla example ..)

Sorry for the long message -- in part I need to document these issues
to better understand them myself.

-- 

Edward Stow