On Wed, 2005-04-13 at 22:03 +0100, Shaun Evans wrote: > Hi all, > I haven't been a very good dev and haven't posted since last November, > but I have monitored the progress of leather-dev and it's implementation > of the scale-dev css.
Actually not much happened on leather-dev since November. Like I stated in the other mail I focused on view/viewHelper because your feedback opened my eyes. ;-) > Having tried to get the leather-dev skin looking good (I am a picky web > designer ;) ), I have hit the point of giving up - I feel that I cannot > get the css working well both in standards-compliant browsers, such as > Firefox and Konqueror, and other ones like IE. > Yeah I can understand you here. <snip lots we agree on/> > > Obviously, pelt and tigris will not have a future once leather-dev works > well, as the contracts will be able to emulate those of said skins, and > the css will be recycled, for those still needing to use pelt and > tigris. The plain skin, I suppose, will remain, so that a clear division > is provided between the 'full' skin, leather, and the html-only skin, > plain. Leather should be able to take the name of a css file as a > variable, and use just this css file as the presentation layer. One of > the main points of Forrest is to separate content from presentation, and > I hope we can further this by separating content from page structure, > and then from the specific presentation layer provided by css. The main > hurdle in moving to this method of presentation is the fact that Leather > is very dynamic, and can use a different DOM tree, with contracts that > can be placed elsewhere. Actually leather will never be released like it was. The idea of having contracts for the css elements become the idea of having contracts of e.g. html snippets. Like you said because the DOM is highly dynamically we have developed view/viewHelper. Here you can freely place the elements where ever you want. The hooks will be transformed into divs, the contracts will be resolved and then inserted. <forrest:view xmlns:forrest="http://apache.org/forrest/templates/1.0"; type="xhtml"> <forrest:hook name="container"> <forrest:hook name="branding"> <forrest:contract name="projectlogo"/> <forrest:contract name="grouplogo"/> <forrest:contract name="searchbox"/> <forrest:contract name="nav-main"/> </forrest:hook> <forrest:hook name="spacer" /> <forrest:contract name="nav"/> <forrest:contract name="content"/> </forrest:hook> <forrest:contract name="feedback"/> </forrest:view> > I don't know who else on this list is a web designer, but I am, and my > main headache is css-controlled positioning of objects. For example, I > think that the search box should be within the header of the page, or > close to it such that it is prominent. With scale-dev, I semantically > put it inside the header, so that I would not have to cause lack of > compatibility across browsers deliberately. Using css position:absolute > or position:relative would cause nothing but problems, with the myriad > of browsers, in focus those not using standards as they should be > (*cough* IE). For that reason, it is best that the capability *is > provided* for the search box to exist within the header, and not be > picky about where it is, but this, in the eyes of a web developer, is a > world nowhere near perfect, and this simply will not work. > To produce a skin, and make it visually appealing, would take little > effort. To compare to the example of an OSS project I gave above: no > basic users would need any of the advanced capabilities of leather-dev. > What they do need is a visual style that works, "out of the box". > Yeah we hope to deliver this with views. Views are capable to work on a per page basis but the user is not forced to use this capacity. The default view is based on the scale-dev patch you have send. It may need some tweaking but I reckon you are the perfect one to deliver a new patch. ;-) <snip historical stuff ;-)> > > To Thorsten in particular: why do you say that leather-dev is dead? I > see great potential in it, with a more refined output system, and it is > certainly the way forward for the even-more-dynamic skins expected > before a 1.0 release (it should be an experimental inclusion in the > post-0.7 releases, IMO). > Hmm, like stated above leather is not really dead but grown into the view/viewHelper plugin. To tie designer to a certain DOM structure for their site is IMO not the way to go (actually your case made this clear). Instead of forcing the user to keep a specific DOM structure we are using the naming conventions of the css-elements within the contracts. This way it is possible to freely style a page/site/project but still have common naming for css-elements. > So, that is a selection of some of the thoughts of an admittedly picky > web designer. I am particularly interested to know the opinions of > Thorsten and Diwaker Gupta, after your significant contributions of > discussion with scale-dev, but obviously, all comments are welcome... > > Thanks in advance, > #shaun > Thanks for your thoughts I am happy that you came back and give forrest another go. Please have a look on view/viewHelper and tell us what you as web designer thing. cheers and saludos -- thorsten "Together we stand, divided we fall!" Hey you (Pink Floyd)
