I am going to start working on theming for openacs. I want
three things to come from this.
-
Documentation for CSS classes on existing widgets and "Package
markup Guidelines"
-
A structure for self contained themes that can
style a standard OpenACS install.
-
A basic "theme generator" which can construct a theme based on some
simple inputs.
In rough terms I think packages should:
- Validate as XHTML 1.0 strict.
- Use structural markup.
- Be styled via CSS.
-
Use the available standard mega-widgets (list builder, form builder or
ad_form, etc).
I am willing to do a lot of the work to make the packages meet
those requirements but of course any help and extra eyeballs
on the problem will make a big difference.
I want to be able to produce most of the standard styles of
persistent nav on an unmodified distribution. I would say thats
topbar, right and/or left sidebars, and combinations of that
(with submenus handled either nested or separate).
Particularly important is that themes be self contained so that
a designers can package up a theme without chasing down changes
across dozens of files in the tree. As an adjunct to this I
would like to consolidate the images used in the packages and
provide a standard image dictionary as well. I think on other
projects that allowed for this sort of thing there have been
some very professional looking results contributed back.
I am not sure if any of this is at all controversial but I would
like to hear any feedback people might have and I will
incorporate it into the two TIPs (on Package HTML Guidelines and
on Theming Package Structure).
