PHP and Classes - Page 4

This function will take a message passed in the argument and print it out in the appropriate style object. So to print a message we can:

Notice, there are no <BR> between the two function calls so they will print on the same line. Also, I just wanted a smaller font for the second part of the output and I had already declared that in $Tbody so I used that. This is safe in this instance as the only other difference between $Basic and $Tbody is "bgcol" and that isn't used in this function. Notice the "&nbsp;" in the function declaration? That is there so if no message is passed the function will print out a non- breaking space. Why will become clear later on.

So far we haven't saved a lot of work. The last example is easier if you want to change font color and/or size in the middle of a sentence but still doesn't justify writing an entire class. How about we add to the functions:

Now, we're getting somewhere! Remember, I wanted to have different background colors for my tables. Now I can do this:

There. See how the colspan argument works. If it's not declared it defaults to 1. So in the first table row "Name" spans 2 columns and "Location" spans 3. In the second row all of them cover a single column.