Plone 3.0 RC1 is out, great! :-)

It is now time for 3rd party product developers to experiment with this
fantastic release.

Plone 3.0 introduces some major improvements, that come with some
changes in the architecture. Some of those changes will slightly modify
the way we develop a theme for Plone.

Some of the changes that Plone 3.0 introduce:

- New CMF version: Since version 3.0, Plone is built to work with CMF
2.1. The skins tool setup has been improved: Thank to the 'based-on'
attribute for the '<skin-path />' node in the 'skins.xml' GenericSetup
file, it is now possible to specify which existing skin should be used
as a base while creating a new one. I can add to portal_skins a new skin
based on 'Plone Default' without having to specify explicitely all its
layers.

- Viewlets and viewlet managers are used instead of METAL macro calls.
This make it possible to modify the structure of the main page elements
without having to customize main_template. Viewlets are powerful because
they let you write trusted python code directly in their class, they are
testable, and they are based on the Zope 3 Component Architecture.
Andy is currently working on a way to customize viewlets from the ZMI,
which means that TTW customizers will still be able to modify the way
some page regions render.

DIYPloneStyle 3.0 (now beta) addresses all those changes.

If you are used to work with DIYPloneStyle, please help having it's 3.0
final version out: experiment with it, and file as many bugs as you find.

What's new in DIYPloneStyle 3.0 (taken from the product release page on
http://plone.org/products/diyplonestyle/releases/3.0):

     * The generated product can hold a viewlet registration basic
example if the generator script is called with the '--add-viewlet' argument.

     * The generated product stores all the needed Generic Setup files
with inline documentation.

     * If called with the '--add-setuphandler' argument, the generator
script generates a product ready to provide custom import steps in its
GenericSetup profile.

     * Example Theme has been moved to an 'example/' subfolder, other
examples have been added there.

As you can read, more examples have been added to the product, mainly in
order to show how to organize and customize viewlets.

There is also a tutorial about using viewlets and viewlet managers to
customize main_template.pt:

http://plone.org/documentation/tutorial/customizing-main-template-viewlets

The tutorial was updated yesterday in order to illustrate new
functionalities with examples that ship with DIYPloneStyle.
I think it's in good shape now and I would be pleased to have more
feedback and suggestions to make it even better.

A new version of the DIYPloneStyle tutorial is also on the go, but that
will probably take a bit of time before having it finished. I want it
done before the Plone conference (early october) though.

Last thing: I you prefer to develop a theme for Plone as a Python
package (to be placed in $INSTANCE_HOME/lib/python/) or as a python egg,
you should be using ZopeSkel instead of DIYPloneStyle for generating
your skeleton code.

Using ZopeSkel is super easy:

$ easy_install ZopeSkel
$ paster create -t plone3_theme mytheme

Although ZopeSkel doesn't support as many options as the generator
script in DIYPS, I personaly love working with it and I try to keep it
in sync with DIYPS as much as possible.
ZopeSkel might become the new standard way to generate skeleton code to
get started with a Zope/Plone project, so it's always good to keep an
eye on its development.


Cheers,
-- 
David 
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://www.nabble.com/DIYPloneStyle-3.0-beta-released-tf4112562s20094.html#a11693935
Sent from the Product Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


_______________________________________________
Product-Developers mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/product-developers

Reply via email to