4 Jan
2011
4 Jan
'11
5:28 p.m.
On 01/03/2011 11:47 PM, Andreas Hahn wrote:
Am 28.12.2010 16:13, schrieb Anca Luca:
As Anca said, you can add classnames to any portion of text with (%
class="..." %)((( content here ))), and the macros for which a classname
makes sense do usually have such a parameter.
Hi guys,
Short story:
Where to put the css which is needed by java macros (e.g. the columns
layouting of the container macro)
1/ in colibri.css
2/ in a .css included on demand by the macro
a) from platform resources (using ssfx)
b) from the jar (using ssrx)
c) from an object in a page with ssx
3/ refactor the skin concept and create a 'platform css' to store all
these and not be affected by skin customization.
Long story:
I can see I've caused the web standards tests to fail for the trunk
(http://hudson.xwiki.org/job/xwiki-product-enterprise-tests/org.xwiki.enterp…)
because of the inline style attributes used by the columns layout of the
container, whijch is now used on the main page.
Now, I would like us to agree about where to store the styles needed by
the java macros to work right, such as the container macro with columns
layout. The options I see are:
1/ as until today (e.g. box macro, warning, error, info, etc), in
colibri.css/toucan.css/otherskinwehave.css. I don't like this solution
too much because it means that when another skin is used, things won't
work anymore unless the person writing the new skin takes care of
copying all these "things that must be there". The advantage of this is
having a single .css file to load on page load, the disadvantage being
that their css is loaded on all pages, regardless of it being used or not.
2/ loading of the styles on demand, each macro loads its style when it
needs it
a) from a .css file located in the platform resources, which the macro
has to include using the ssfx plugin when is executed -- much like a
wiki macro would to with a ssx.
b) from a .css file located in the macro archive (using ssrx), which the
macro includes when executed.
c) from a ssx page
c) has the advantage of being very very much more easy to change than a)
and finally than b) which is the hardest to customize. But on the other
side c) means the java macro depends on a page, which is not that good.
Note that "cascading" customization is possible for all these choices
(adding an extra css with rules to overwrite the rules in the default
css for the macro) and that in my view, it's enough, since the idea is
that the layout should be preserved no matter what (e.g. a user might
want to add a red border to the columns, but not make the columns
display as two paragraphs instead of two columns).
3/ refactoring the whole skin thing and creating a "platform" css, which
contains things that should work regardless of the skin used. Pros: it's
an adaptation of the current approach (1/), that solves the problem.
Cons: takes longer, might be very hard to separate what's platform and
what's skin.
These being said, I think I prefer 2/ if 3/ is not realistic, and for
the container macro at least, I would prefer to implement 2b).
Hi devs,
as an Xwiki user for about 2 years I'm not so deeply familiar with all
the nuances of styling capatibilities - ssx ssfx ssrx and all the like.
However this is an important topic and I would very much like to see
that XWiki would move toward a styling architecture comparable to that
of wordpress and other popular 'social publishing' tools so that it
becomes easier to customize the look and feel of a site.
I am aware of the contradiction between either offering components that
are fully self supported - meaning macros and style bundled somehow
together - and offering flexible code templates with separate styling (css).
As an example the ColumnMacro and its successor: the Container macro.
Both are IMHO a misconception leaving out the obvious solution.
The colum macro (java) is limited as it uses hardcoded inline styles.
This makes almost any useful layout modification impossible - ok you
might rewrite the .jar but that's beyond what most people are capable
and willing to do.
Same with the container macro: To modify the Layout you should really
write an implementation of LayoutManager ?
Someone must be kidding there - that's total overkill.
Why not just pass a parameter - say cssClass to such a macro (as it is
the case with other macros) for example the 'box'-macro. That's useful
because it can be easily customized and you can provide an own class
name and associated css.
IMHO it would be much more benefical if there were a style guide for
writing macros or templates making a small set of parameters mandatory,
for example the 'cssClass' and maybe an 'id' parameter. So if the parameter is not supplied you might go ahead
with some
internal or bundled styling (a default .css file) otherwise it might be
overridden.
I think there is a general risk thats XWiki is falling behind other
platforms because of the lack of design standards allowing designers to
customize solutions in terms of look and feel.
No, that's not true. Let me get this straight: *It is much harder to
style WordPress or other "popular" frameworks than XWiki*.
And I mean that without any tutorials, samples or tools, styling XWiki
is much more flexible, and much easier. The advantage of popular
frameworks is that they are more popular, with much more users, much
more interest, and an already established market.
1. When you style WordPress, you don't write a CSS file for it. You
write the full frontend, from <html> to </html>, and you're forced to
respect their requirements: "you must call this PHP function to display
the login/logout section, you must call this PHP function to display the
panels, ...". In XWiki you write as much code as you need, you can start
with just a color theme (for which there's a nice WYSIWYG wizard), or a
SSX object, or a Skin document with overridden templates attached to it.
Sure, you can go low-level and write a full skin on the filesystem, but
that really should be avoided unless you need a major interface overhaul.
2. Installing a theme for all those PHP applications is hard. Sure, they
make it sound easy, "download the zip, extract it, put it in this folder
on the server, change this configuration file". Installing a proper
XWiki theme could be as simple as selecting a xar from the future XWiki
app store. We don't have support for .xar extensions in the extension
manager yet, but it will be available in 3.0, and during the 3.x cycle
we'll build a very user friendly extension manager. And we don't have
such easy to install skins yet because nobody provided one yet. The core
developers don't have enough time to write extra skins when the users
are complaining about core functionality. And the users aren't
contributing their skins back in the extensions.xwiki.org repository,
although I've seen spectacular skins on top of XWiki out in the wild.
3. XWiki is not a blogging software, it is a *Development Platform*.
This means that you can't style XWiki, you can style the generic layout,
and then you can style different components. We're adding new macros all
the time, and users can develop whatever application they want, so we
can't make a style for *everything that ever was and will ever be
running in a XWiki instance*. Thus, given the extraordinary flexibility
that only XWiki provides, we're doing pretty well when it comes to styling.
4. To help overcome a bit the many degrees of freedom mentioned in 3,
we're providing several tools. The most important one is the color
theme, which allows to style components in a consistent manner with the
global skin. Then there are all the skin extensions plugins that allow
to develop standalone components/applications which bring their own
style, of course closely integrated in the current theme, since they're
using the color theme. Then there are the standards that we've been
creating and documenting, like
http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/VerticalForms and
http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/SpecialCSSClasses
which should help users (and committers as well) create extensions that
fit well inside XWiki. And we're planning more for the future.
5. Let me repeat that: XWiki is not harder to style than other popular
frameworks. There are so much more skins to use or buy for them simply
because there's a well established market for them. Simple users can't
easily write a skin for WP, but they can easily find an existing one to
download for free or for money. That's not a merit of the technical
aspects of WP, but of the community and market size.
Don't get me wrong - I do like XWiki and its
concept much - what worries
me is that it is simply too much work to customize a site design that
compares favorable with wordpress sites and others.
regards
Andreas
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu/