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This page provides a CSS-based HTML implementation of the 2009-? CSS-based CommonSpot template's look and feel for use outside of CommonSpot, using the standard 960-pixel design width.
We also have other pages available that similarly provide alternative implementations of CommonSpot templates' look and feel for use outside of CommonSpot:
None of these four designs should be used for personal, student organization, or other unofficial web pages.
The bar at the very top, with the five sitewide audience-based navigational links, is part of the standard design. The wider green-background header bar (containing "Main Heading," etc., below the white space containing the logo signature graphic) is optional; if you don't have any other feature extending horizontally just below the header, you might choose to use it.
In the HTML for this page, the stylesheet link tags in the HEAD must be in the order shown, except that the global_nav and the secondary_footer can be swapped. The several instances of tables that are hard-coded for a width of 960 pixels should all be specified at the same width as each other; that width may be 530 pixels or any larger value, provided that there is adequate room for the content of the "Main Heading" bar (if it is used) and for the content of the footer; it may also be 100%. However, other features of the page layout are specified by the CSS, so that the page header and footer will still be 960 pixels wide, regardless of the width of those tables, so leaving them at 960 is likely to be the best choice.
This page will not load properly when you view it from your disk drive while your computer is not connected to the internet, but it will display correctly through the internet from any location, on any server.
The current date in the upper-right corner is generated by Javascript (in CommonSpot, it is generated by the server, being part of the HTML sent to the browser), and so may introduce some browser-sensitivity. It is a preferred, but optional, part of the standard design.
The second line in the upper part of the footer, below, identifying the author, URL (in the printed version), and date, is not part of the standard design, but may be added. Identifying the people responsible for a page raises the odds that people will contact you with suggestions for improvements; including the date of revision as part of the visible text of the page is particularly appropriate if the page contains instructions for others to follow, or if the information is likely to change; including the full URL of the page is likely to be of value only in cases where someone has printed the page, and their browser has not automatically included the full URL in the top or bottom margin (some browsers will "fit" a long URL by leaving out the middle or truncating it, rendering it useless), so the "PageURL" style in the HEAD of the page, and the SPAN tag in the footer conceal it during on-screen viewing.
To achieve full width for a specific item, be sure that it is preceded by a </P> tag, because the CSS imposes small, non-zero left and right margin indents on anything inside a <P>-tagged block.
Feel free to "view source," or to "save page as..." in order to copy the HTML of this page to your disk drive to use as a starting point. If you do, be sure to change both the visible text and the HREF for the e-mail link at the bottom-right! We do suggest leaving the pre-loading of the e-mail subject in the code, but, of course, change it to be appropriate to your subsite. The other required customizations of the footer content should be obvious.
The Google Analytics code will only generate useful information for you if you let us know that it is in use for your subsite. Please leave it exactly as it is in this page, and place it at the end (just before the </HTML> tag), so that if the Google server is slow for some reason, your page will still be fully displayed by the browser without delay.