What you can do with CSS is definite a class – and then redefine that class when it appears within another class. How this is usually done in apps is that you specify the name will show up as yellow normally, but when that name is inside the class GROUPNAME, it'll show up as red, instead. This “overwrite” only works on the attributes you specify in the “overwrite”, so doing something like:

.class { height:20px;width:20px;background-color:red; }
.GROUPNAME .class { background-color:blue; }

will only change the background color, while leaving the other attributes as they're specified in the default .class styling.

That's the jist of it, anyway! Basically, by surrounding the whole app template in a GROUPNAME class, you can call on any class in the template and have it change depending on the name of that outside div. You could technically also surround each individual div you want to change with the GROUPNAME class'd div to get the same effect, but that's super tedious for both the coder and the app writer, so just... don't... do that.

Depending on the number of member groups you have on site, it may be easier to just set up pastebins with the GROUPNAME class already written in, but if you have, like, four or more member groups, it's probably easier just to direct people to where to change it, since it's really only finding and changing one word to one different word. You can make it easy to spot by having the very first line of code in the app be the div you change the name of, and only that div. Just remember that the name is going to be case-sensitive, so make sure people to know to change it to the proper casing.

Hopefully this answers your questions? ;u;

sits back and contemplates life

so that's it? Just adding that extra tag. Why did I make this out to be harder than it needed to be lol... Do you think it would be better to put the css in my stylesheet like you did on TBE?

That's entirely up to you! There are some pros and cons.

I mostly put the CSS directly into the skin because it made styling it a lot easier with the visual editor (since I write up HTML in its entirety first, and then write up CSS afterward), but more importantly, it cuts down on a LOT of space in the code that people need to copy, paste, and edit. My thought process was that, the less bulky code there was in the template, the less likely less code literate members would get lost trying to find where they needed to edit things.

On the flip side, I've been told by people with slower Internet that CSS loading from the skin is slower than CSS loading from the template. This isn't really a problem if it's just the app in its app thread, but it can bog down loading times if you're looking at, like, the recent posts page and there are ten separate apps there.

I'd say code clarity takes priority over loading time in this case, mostly because it's not an issue on the page where it most counts (the app thread itself). For stuff like a member directory with individual members posts, though, it's better to put the CSS directly into the template, otherwise you'll end up leaving your slower-Internet-having members to DIE.

mmm that makes sense. I've never put my newclass directly into the style sheet before, is there something specific I need to do beforehand? I am probably overthinking that as well but do i have to put a specific .tag before anything and everything relative to the app then? And thank you for the help pharaoh leap

Nope~! The only difference is that, instead of writing it like

[attr="class","... you write it like normal CSS. But you probably had that figured out yourself. ;o

It's no trouble at all, though~! <3 Lemme know if there was anything yet that you had questions about!