You want to use the settings right? same colors and such same css, but then you want to modifiy it but leave the original intact?

It will inherit all of the parrents changes, css and templates and everything else that a style ineherits.

;) trust me

no i want to write my own css file altogether, same structure (bbs_logo.gif, etc but more like bbs_logo_blue.gif or blue/bbs_logo.gif)

how come vB doesn't give me an option to declare my own style sheets? :( or does it and i'm missing the declaration in my style.xml file?

Its not specificly designed that way, you can if you want decalre them in the headinclude template.

ooh this is interesting.

can you explain why it was designed that way? maybe i'm just approaching this from the wrong angle ;)

Well, If you are going about it the alternet style sheet route, mostly the only people who will take advantage of it will be Mozi and FF users.

If you just need to define more classes,
AdminCP > Styles & Templates > STyle Manager > Click on Go > Custom CSS

If you really want alternet styles i suggest making a new child style and customizing it from there.

maybe i can save some of your time ;) is there a how to or a deeper explanation of child styles? do i have to write the css IN vB's interface? that's sort of what's got me down, it's way faster for me to write my own and attach it, but perhaps not BEST if i do it that way.

Thank you for your patience Zachery, i would have flamed me by now ;)

I enjoy my work and if I did not, Jelsoft would'nt have hired me ;)

You can write it yourself, in some other application and copy it into the additional css box.

Basicly, before in the long long ago of vB2, styles and template mods were a pain, because either all templates could share 1 single set, or all be unquie. Now in vB3 we have a parent child system However, this has always been the case to some degree as it was in vB2, just most people never knew, and you really couldnt take advantage of it.

We have the following template setup in vB3

*Master Hidden Style*
-Default Style

Now, everything that would be done to the master style if you were to edit it (but by default you cannot, and you really shouldnt) it would get inherited into the default style, unless that template or bit of css or style var, etc.. were already customized in the child style

So If you want to have a bunch of styles use the same template set but only differ in colors and images

Default Style
- Blue Style
- Orange Style
- Red Style
-- Red and Black Style

So like i said up there, any changes made to the default style, get inherited by all childeren, unless they have that aspect already customized. :) Lets take this abit further, lets say you make a few changes to the Red Style, it will have the changes and so will the Red and Black style, if you were to then make one more change to the Red and Black style, only the red and black style gets it.

ok i'm with you so far (THANKS) now how do i go about making a child style? do i have to write the xml or just go into Styles & Languages >> New Style and go from there? :D

I'm down with this ;) it might not be my ideal solution, but it just might be easier in the long run :D

When you add a new style, there is a option to set a parrent style :)

so now let's say my images are normally in:

/img/ss/misc/bbs_logo.gif

i want the child style to point to:

/img/ss/misc/blue/bbs_logo.gif

how would I go about that? Edit every image entry in all templates via the Find and Replace option in Templates? :)