9.1 Look and Feel Functions


9.1 Look and Feel Functions

Applications often have a common look and feel associated with every page, with certain HTML at the top and bottom to set background color, give links, etc. By placing this code in a pair of functions such as <look> and </look> , we can maintain the application-wide look and feel in one place:


  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=vortex>

  <A NAME=look title="">
    <IF $title neq "">
      <HEAD><TITLE>$title</TITLE></HEAD>
    </IF>
    <BODY BGCOLOR=white> 
  </A>

  <A NAME=/look>
    <P><HR><A HREF=$url>Main page</A>
    </BODY>
  </A>

  <A NAME=main PUBLIC>
    <look title="Welcome">
    Welcome to Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, Inc.
    ...
    </look>
  </A>

  </SCRIPT>

Here we use our <look> and </look> functions in <main> to simplify the generation of the entry page: it's logically contained within the look "block" tags. All other pages would use the look function similarly.

Security

Since it's called at the top of every page, the <look> function is also a good place to do security checking, such as disallowing non-trusted remote hosts, etc.

Our patent search example, which we'll see shortly, uses look-and-feel functions this way.

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