This sounds like a great proposal both for simplifying the skin file names as well as the CSS class names.

I just wanted to make sure that you're also aware of the work that Nick Blair has been doing on http://www.ja-sig.org/issues/browse/UP-2505

The result of this work will be a skin.xml file in each skin directory. This file will list all CSS and JS files the skin uses in the order they should be imported. I don't think these two sets of changes will cause each other any issues.

Something that will help with the aggregation that this new skin.xml and plugin provides is to as much as possible have CSS files listed so that files in the same directory are next to each other. The reason is if skin.xml lists:

/path/to/skin/main.css
/path/to/common/common.css
/path/to/skin/portlet.css

That can't be aggregated to reduce the number of files the browser downloads, where as the following:

/path/to/common/common.css
/path/to/skin/main.css
/path/to/skin/portlet.css

Could be aggregated down to a two files for the users browser to download.

-Eric

Gary Thompson wrote:
As you know, we've been looking at refining uPortal CSS files. A significant part of this is to accomplish UP-2389 (http://www.ja-sig.org/issues/browse/UP-2389), and in general to make the process of creating and maintaining skins easier. I wanted to run this proposal past you and get any feedback before I post it to the list.

Here's the proposal:

The root skin directory alone contains the unique skin name, for example "uportal3". Each skin would contain these files:

[skinDirectory]
   - main.css
   - fss-theme-uportal.css
   - portlet.css
   - thumb.gif
   - [images]

The new structure does the following:

1. main.css
A repalcement of the previous, skin-specific "uportal3.css" file, this CSS will contain imports of any other skin CSS files, and is the file linked to from the portal <head>.

2. fss-theme-uportal.css
The primary, portal-scoped CSS file and the new version of the "fluid.theme.uportal3.css" file. Formatted as Fluid Skinning System theme and follows the updated FSS file naming. Overrides to FSS or jQueryui will be done in this file, if necessary. This will eliminate the previous "jquery.css" file

3. portlet.css
Portlet-scoped CSS file that replaces the previous "uportal3_portlet_content.css" and includes the JSR-168 CSS spec. Eliminates the previous "jsr168_portlet_spec.css"

As a by-product, we will retire both "uportal3_legacy.css" and "uportal3_ie6overrride.css". The legacy file had support for the deprecated "uportal-" classes. An IE6-specific file will not be provided by default, but can be created as-needed. We may have an IE conditional CSS call in the theme.

We will also be changing the uPortal CSS namespace. Previously, the skin name was put as a class on the body, and all CSS classes used this as a namespace. We want to move away from using the skin name, and instead use a global uPortal namespace. I am suggesting we use the class "up". For example:

<body class="up">

and in the CSS:

.up .classname ...

instead of the previous:

.fluid-theme-uportal3 .classname ...

Let me know your thoughts.

Gary Thompson
User Experience Leader
Unicon | www.unicon.net

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