Hi,

I hope that this is my last message about theming:)

I'm creating new theme for qooxdoo that is free available on the net
and this message should be summary of my experiences of making and
using custom qooxdoo themes (and using default qooxdoo themes as
well).

Pros:
- Qooxdoo theming engine is cross-browser (good bye css hacks).
- Ability to create feel based on 'states' so themes can be quite
different and featured.
- Separation of colors, decorators and appearances (which combines
colors and decorators).
- Decorators are powerful.

Cons:
- It's imposible to create new theme from the scratch. There is no
documentation how to do it, there is no documentation about standard
decorators, appearances, etc. This should be improved in the future.
- There are not standardized decorator and color names (each theme is
different).
- Themes are not easily switchable if application extend theme.
- Appearances code is big and sometimes the same things are repeated
again and again (I don't like copy-and-paste programming).
- Icon theme is part of theme, I think that this is wrong (icons are
just icons and they have to be applicable for each theme).

I think that theming in qooxdoo is good, but not perfect. I wrote
small feature request so qooxdoo devs can say what is possible to do
and what not.

Feature requests:
- Standardize qooxdoo Modern and Classic theme to use similar
decorator names for similar things and write these standardized
decorator names into documentation. I think that this is important
because it will be allowed to use decorators that not depend to
particular theme. Also standardize order of keys in Appearance.js so
it would be easy to use diff.
- Write appearance names and their purposes into documentation.
- Write helper functions that will be used inside the big
Appearance.js to simplify theme development. I tried it, but I have
only few functions at this time (see here
http://code.google.com/p/qxet/source/browse/trunk/qxet/source/class/qxet/Util.js)
- Remove icon theme from themes.

qooxdoo-devs, do you agree with me? If I'm wrong in some points please tell me:)

-- 
Best regards
- Petr Kobalicek <http://kobalicek.com>

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