/
Fluid Skinning System (FSS)

Documentation for a historical release of Infusion: 1.3
Please view the Infusion Documentation site for the latest documentation.
If you're looking for Fluid Project coordination, design, communication, etc, try the Fluid Project Wiki.

Fluid Skinning System (FSS)

Overview

The Fluid Skinning System is a modular CSS framework: a group of CSS files with a specially designed structure and class-specific format. The modular format allows you to add, remove, and mix classes to get the desired effect.

With FSS and User Interface Options, you can:

  • control the appearance of your website using pre-existing modular CSS classes,
  • support user-customization of the appearance of a website or Infusion components,
  • deliver a look-and-feel for Infusion components
  • and much more.

Features

The FSS offers:

  • Wrappers and containers for quickly laying out your page, including fixed- and flexible-width columns
  • Convenience classnames to quickly and easily create GUI elements such as tabs, menues, etc.
  • Convenience classnames for basic font handling, such asfont family, size, and formatting
  • Theming
  • Accessibility support, including
    • easy page linearization
    • tested for useabiltity effectiveness, specifically colorblindness
    • works with Assistive Technologies, specifically with off-screen AT readable content

Why Use FSS?

In addition to making it easy to lay out your websites, FSS is designed to work with the Infusion (Floe) UI Options (2008-2009) component to allow users to personalize the display of content to their own individual needs. This empowers users with visual or mobility impairments, for example, to alter the colour schemes or layout, enabling them to access content that otherwise might be completely inaccessible to them.

Getting Started With FSS

The FSS is intended to be used as the basis for your website, extended and customized by your own styles. The short-version of how to use FSS is:

  1. Include the FSS .css files you want, in the right order, ahead of your own .css file(s).
  2. Add FSS classes to your mark-up, ahead of your own class names
  3. If desired, override or extend any FSS classes as needed.

A slightly longer version of how to use FSS is provided in the sections below. For more details on the specific classes available in the FSS, see the FSS Cheat Sheet page.

1. Including FSS files

FSS includes several separate files, each providing particular functionality:

  1. fss-reset-global.css or fss-reset-context.css: new in v1.4 normalize visual discrepancies between browsers. Optional, but recommended. (For earlier versions, use fss-reset.css.)
    • fss-reset-global.css: The global file will affect the entire page.
    • fss-reset-context.css: Changes are scoped to the fl-reset class.
  2. fss-base-global.css or fss-base-context.css: new in v1.4 applies a default set of styles. O