Forum OpenACS Development: OpenACSZen

1: OpenACSZen

Posted by Jon Griffin on 01/02/07 09:12 PM

I know that there is a project https://openacs.org/xowiki/dotlrn-zen-project for cleaning up the css in .lrn, I think that it should start at OACS.

I am going through the css now and trying to figure out a way to make OACS more easily templatable. I will apply what I can from the cssZenGarden, and see what other features are needed.

2: Re: OpenACSZen (response to 1)

Posted by Torben Brosten on 01/03/07 04:33 AM

Hi Jon,

Jeff suggests in Tip 78 thread[1] "Theming changes" to use WSRP's CSS standards.

1. https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=280099

3: Re: OpenACSZen (response to 2)

Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 01/03/07 11:40 AM

WSRP 2.0 is out since june. WSRP is certainly worth a look, but by its intention, it defines only portlet-specific CSS selectors (portet-font, portlet-menu-*, ...)

a superset of WSRP is defined by the jboss portals, which is real-world proven:
http://docs.jboss.org/jbportal/v2.6/reference-guide/en/html/

aside of css selector, we need a design or vision or style guide, how css files should be organized, what's a core-framework issue, what's a oacs-package issue and what's a page or page-fragment (portlet) issue, and how to influence this from a single point, a theme...

4: Re: OpenACSZen (response to 1)

Posted by Jon Griffin on 01/04/07 07:27 PM

I took a quick glance at the jboss spec. It is much closer to what I think is needed.

Some questions:
1. How many css files do we really need (right now with xowiki there are 7 included. We should be able to cut that back.

2. Should there be a real theme package with a default theme. That would allow a database or file based approach to theming (I prefer db based as it is easier to put an admin interface).

3. Will this require a tip?

4. Can the templates be cut back from the normal 3 to just 1.

5. Can we please for once and for all get rid of the dependencies like:

&lt;if @curriculum_bar_p@ true>
  &lt;p&gt;&lt;include src="/packages/curriculum/lib/bar" />
&lt;/if>
and &lt;if @dotlrn_toolbar_p@ true>
      &lt;include src="/packages/dotlrn/lib/toolbar">
    &lt;/if>
    &lt;if @developer_support_p@ true>
      &lt;include src="/packages/acs-developer-support/lib/toolbar">
    &lt;/if>

It probably isn't a big deal, but it sure is ugly and designers don't like it.

6. We should be able to inject into a theme through an admin interface. Things like google analytics and html_area or whatever through a hook.

7. There should be an interface to edit/preview "themes". Many apps already do this (wordpress, zen-cart & etc.)

These are my quick thoughts, please comment and let

6: Re: OpenACSZen (response to 4)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/12/07 01:12 AM

#1. agree

#2. as is happening far too often, a feature of this sort has been added ... to .LRN. Won't get corrected (made part of acs-core) in time for 2.3, I'm afraid. Perhaps we can look towards 2.4 ...

#3. yes

#4. good question ... I'd like the answer to be "yes" but don't know. No one ever explained the rationale for having three to me, was there one?

#5. if you can think of a less-ugly way, propose it. I haven't thought of one (I agree entirely that it's ugly).

(hey I replied to question #4 and used the reply button and this post ended down at the bottom, not attached to #4. What gives? This used to work. Who's been "improving" the forums package???)

5: Re: OpenACSZen (response to 1)

Posted by Jon Griffin on 01/06/07 04:23 AM

I did a quick (really quick) hack to use the jboss templates.
http://jongriffin.com

I copied the css verbatim so nothing is optimized, and some doesn't work well.

Some things I notice:
1. There are many useless tags.
2. It is designed for portals so all the themes have a "portal" feel to them.
3. They still use tables.

I think that having a package will do the job for theming. My thoughts on this are to have each subsite query a table that shows what themes are available in the file/db system.

It should be relativly painless to make <master> a data driven parameter. This will make it easy to also make admin pages not themed. This becomes important when you want to "inject" certain elements to some pages (i.e. google analytics, digg etc.) and not others.

7: Re: OpenACSZen (response to 5)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/12/07 01:19 AM

(replying to post #5)

We'll be using a table-less portlet layout for 2.3 (the zen theme). I'll be doing a bit of work to incorporate this into the standard oacs classes (making sure names are congruent, etc).

There's going to be a push to get rid of the tables and use this div-based layout method for package page contents that are used by .lrn, too.

My suggestion is wait for this work and then let's talk about the future. we're talking weeks for this 2.3 zen work, not long at all compared to most openacs/dotlrn happenings.