This patch is to enable the use of the Smarty template engine in the administration section. A default admin theme is also included, which is based on the default 2.3.0-dev theme.
The functionality of modules remains the same, this change is purely to allow for Smarty templates to be used in the admin section. The code is ugly, but I guess it's not too much worse than what was already there.
Themed admin is a feature of 2.2.3, this patch brings it to 2.3.0-dev.
To do: Improve the admin theme. It needs to be made cross-browser compatible and the css styles should only be coming from admin.css. General design improvements would be good too. If someone has the time and wants to take on this task it would be a great help.
To disable Smarty use in admin simply rename the "/themes/default/admin_theme.html" file. Themes which have no admin_theme.html file use the original 2.0 admin.
After installing this patch the system module needs to be updated. Possibly also need to manually clear the compiled templates from templates_c. I'll create an upgrade patch later which will perform these actions.
The patch was built against 2.3.0-dev (trunk revision 807)
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Still working on it and testing.
Version 2 has the legacy code removed. The fallback to using the default theme when there's no theme-admin.html template available is coded directly in the theme class now.
File Added: patch-1703978-v2.zip
template-enabled admin
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Added an upgrade script, and included files which were missing from previous download.
File Added: 1703978-v3.zip