Re: [pLog-General] simplifying templates with CSS
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From: nexia <nex...@ya...> - 2004-04-05 11:19:28
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Hi Daniel, thanks for your suggestion... as you look familiar with CSS, yeah, we can work together on this... your suggestion is exactly what i plan, detail the skeleton. because the skeletons will not be very complicated. they are the "base" of all content, not the way the css will be built. i was planning to delete the skeleton phase, but as tested with many css designers, i will keep it. the zengarden technique is the one to be used, that'S the technique we used on Wordpress to make the entire system use only css files for the style... but look at all these templates at wordpress.com... all linear, all with left/right panels, nothing new, nothing great. i'e seen many css from wordpress be trashed because the designer was not able to fix the left panel at the proper place, or not able to enter the calendar the proper way... why ?! just because you need a real knowledge of CSS do to so, and a lot of testing for each skin you will apply. if you look at some non-winner skins at wordpress, the one you find in private blogs... you'll see that the designers helped their template by adding some tables or divs in the template, to make it work... the best example is my own wordpress: http://mini-services.com/wordpress/ in right bottom panel, you'll see a style switcher... i've built it... this is a better one than the Alex's version. anyway... before the "aubmark" style, you'll see that all the styles are corrupted, not properly set... but they were found in default locations... the designers built the css but modified their index.php to suite their needs. i planned to modify these skins to make then working properly, but i would need a new skeleton for wordpress... so i will not do it. anyway... having a skeleton for each situation would be best. but the more i think of it, and YES, the more i see that the user will not have to be asked for the skeleton part... only the designer. you're refering to zengarden for the complete list of styles with only a css... but i know Dave Shea myself, and i can tell that he have built this design in some weeks, not in an afternoon... and i don'T plan to make it so... and designers are taking a lot of time to make their own styles with the zendesign because they have to deal with all the diferent content with the challenge of making it work correctly. point is that it's a challenge, not the usual work of day. i want the designers to be able to make their css work in hours, not weeks. so my last thoughts brought me this: users don't have to choose from a skeleton and a skin... just skin choice is ok. designers will indicate their skeleton choice in the "thisskin.php like" file... -name -skeleton type -origin/author .. remember.. ;) if there is no skeleton type, the default one is used. the skeleton will be very simple, there is no challenge in it, no real content. but that's the trickiest part of this change... i'm not sure yet how i will operate to do so... or i take basic templates like they are, change them to make all the possibilities, or i take only empty templates with the proper divs to make the navs and menus have specific places to make the float at the proper place... problem with these things is that we have to think of every situation. now i see one other change we will have to deal with: added Templates content... the about page is added, not fix in all templates... i think Oscar will be able to deal with it, but we have to think of a new way to add these pages. they are added by the users with a link in their template... why not have a "Others" block where the user can add a title, and a description of it, and the content of each Other's page he want to add ?!... usually, they are colophons, greetings, about pages, etc... they are not really intended to be plugins, so they are a single page of information... no need to make it complicated. user can add as much Others pages he want... kinda like a wiki.. lol (damn i'm great) ok, back to the template thing: what i've seen so far, blogs are all fix template... with a left/right panel, and always the same structure for displaying the pages... even if there is no content to show.. reason is simple... this is not a CMS. but pLog works differently... if you play with the pages, you'll see that the error page and the album don't display the panels in some styles... that's a good and bad thing, but badly written: i think we would have to make a select in the plugin section to display or not the panels for each plugin, instead of making a template that not load the panels... so,: display the panels: yes/no ... in the plugin itself as a variable, or in the plugins page for the user to choose... but i think the variable is a better thing. so you see, there is more than just the css itself... details like that are important to play with, because Oscar as the others are willing to make this tool better than the others. now i have to state what to put in the skeleton if i keep them... just definitions of the left/right panel location in the pages, or extra informations like left/center/right content in the header... like in zengarden... a lot of hidden stuff because he added so much empty divs for the pleasure of it... ;) because that's it... a skeleton with a load of stuff, only one, or some with different techniques of css ?!... the debate is not finished! --nexia waiting for Daniel to comment again ! --- Daniel Kehoe <ke...@fo...> wrote: > On Apr 4, 2004, at 4:36 AM, nexia wrote: > > skeletons are the actual files you > > see in /templates/ ... "skins" are to be simple > css > > files. > > I'm following the template planning discussion and > wondering if it is > more complicated than needed. > > Couldn't there be a single template with all > differences in appearances > managed by CSS stylesheet files? In other words, one > "skeleton" and > multiple "skins"? > > The single template would have all the possible > elements of a page > specified with DIV IDs. > > If a certain style or page doesn't use an element, > use the CSS > "display: none" to prevent it from appearing. So if > a list of links > isn't part of style "barebones", it will be included > in the .template > file but barebones.css will hide it with: > #linklist { > display: none; > } > > Apply a similar technique for positioning elements > on the page. There > should be no need to define anything as "left > sidebar" or "right menu" > because page elements can be positioned anywhere. > Rather, define a <div > id="navigation"> and then use the CSS stylesheet to > position it to the > right: > #navigation { > position: absolute; > top: 0px; > margin-left: 480px; > width: 200px; > } > or to the left: > #navigation { > position: absolute; > top: 0px; > margin-left: 0px; > width: 200px; > } > and so on. > > To use different images with different styles, CSS > Zen Garden has a > great approach. For a "barebones" style, the logo > might be defined in > barebones.css as: > #pageHeader h1{ > background: transparent url(barebones-1.gif) > no-repeat; > } > and if you want the "fancypants" style, > fancypants.css contains: > #pageHeader h1{ > background: transparent url(fancypants-1.gif) > no-repeat; > } > > I've had some success with this approach on other > projects and can > provide some examples if you're interested. > > -- > Daniel > ke...@fo... > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux > Tutorials > Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, > President and CEO of > GenToo technologies. Learn everything from > fundamentals to system > administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id70&alloc_id638&op=click > _______________________________________________ > pLog-General mailing list > pLo...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plog-general __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? 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