Maarten--

I will add something to my last reply. This specifically concerns your idea about replacing the current site headers and footers with the "new" header/footer styles.

There are new styles defined that do not relate at all to the styles in tigris.css and inst.css, the old styles. I've just taken a look at Ivan's new style definition and these two old css files. We've got new defs for elements now that don't seem to exist in the older style defs.

Maybe I need to back down a bit from my last response. If we could come up with a mapping of how Collabnet currently renders the old styles TO the pages (this would take a LOT of digging!) with respect to tigris and inst, it DOES seem feasible that we could make changes to the existing site style files and edit in the new defs. Yeah--duh! on me I guess.

I, for one, don't remember how all this gels. Sorry about that. Maybe Christian could weigh in and point us in the right direction.

Anyway, I will retract some of what I said. If we can figure this out, then, yes, let's apply at least the new headers and footers to the existing site, and carry on from there.

-- your original post below --

:murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote:
Hi all,

The discussion on the removal of the !important statements seems to halt... No good. There are a few problems:

We want to launch a new website soon, but:
1. there is no staging server
2. a conservative sound is heard when only minor changes are proposed to the global css
  (and an even more conservative sound is expected
   when we are to change the global headers and
   footers)
3. it is incredibly hard to understand the current CSS soup, on top of which we are expected, because of 2., to launch a new site 4. it is already hard to design simple things at the domain openoffice.org, because of 3.

This is a situation we can't maintain forever. We need to think of how to proceed. We, as the website group, are responsible for a good website, and we have a bad website. We need to take responsibility.

Since we have no staging server, we can't guarantee a 100% fluent transition, however, we can do our utmost best to make it such one by reviewing the diff's on this website before committing. Since that won't give us a 100% guarantee, we have to inform the users, just like we have done in the past with a Collabnet (~up)grade during this period. It is simply the best we can do... Apart from standing still and changing nothing. The current situation is so frustrating that it makes more sense creating a new domain, and start with people who are enthusiastic a new portal from scratch for OpenOffice.org. But such split of community is not desirable. But tend to see this as an alternative which becomes increasingly more interesting, which I hate to say.

So I propose to focus on a process of change (I do not have any relationship with Obama ;) ), and make sure that it is a change that does not interfere with everyday operation too much. This requires a plan. A first rough draft:

0. announce on the website that we are working on the website, which may cause minor inconveniences. in case major sections break, please notify the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list. 1. delete all !important statements (of which none are related to display nones etc., but only colour or text decoration) 2. introduce the new html code needed for the new design to work to the header and footer files (e.g. the tabbed search, login etc., and the new tabs with as style attribute: display:none (this can, but only for testing in the tryouts area, be overridden with !important statements in a manually included css file) - the introduction of this code is first approved in a discussion at this list.
3. finish the website in the tryouts area
4. upload the new content files, to www
5. remove the old header items, and remove display:none attribute of the new ones (I am afraid that this will result, albeit for minutes, in a messy appearance, maybe we can refine this point)
6. start actually enjoying the website again.

I know, I'm looking at things from a progressive point of view, and rather see the site break ugly temporarily than continue with the current site in a ramshackle state. But we have agreed on a change in look, we are working on it all together... we need to take the final steps as well before we can actually implement it. Let's figure out how we can do this smoothly. Input much appreciated.

g.,

Maarten

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============================================================
Kay Schenk                                ph:  530-898-5339
Applications Development and Enterprise Design
CSU, Chico

"As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of
 time well knows, cats have enormous patience with
 the limitations of the human mind."      --Cleveland Amory

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