Well, I've made progress. In the original implementation of the custom skin in MW1.16, all of the custom html was added directly to the cloned vector skin code as well as a portion of the styling. Additional styling was added to main-ltr.css. So to just get this done, I copy and pasted only the custom html into the myskin.skin.php file and put all of the custom styling into screen.css. This mostly worked right away. I then proceeded to compare the original site and new site using Firebug to tweak the new screen.css file.
Although I'm sure this may not be the proper way to do sub-skinning, it's worked for me for now. Moving forward, I'll likely break screen.css into several smaller, easier to managed css files.
This effort has been highly educational. What would really be useful is a documented example of being handed html and css from a designer and implementing a custom skin or custom sub-skin. Is there really any need for completely custom skins anymore? It would seem sub-skinning is way easier.
On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 4:39 PM, Forest S forest@tmswiki.org wrote:
Sounds good, Bill, let's keep in touch. This email thread could serve as a resource for anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation. If we make any progress, perhaps one of us could add to the official documentation or at least include a link to this mailing list thread.
Can any of the gurus on the list give us a starting point for how we can create a modified version of the Vector skin while still preserving the original as an option?
Forest
Use Google technology to search 10,000 pages about TMS: search.tmswiki.orghttp://Search.tmswiki.org . Want to see what I'm working on? Click herehttp://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/3368/. (link fixed)
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Bill Traynor btraynor@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 9:10 AM, Forest S forest@tmswiki.org wrote:
Hi Bill,
Unfortunately, I think that there is a gap in the public documentation regarding this. I am in the same jam as you. The Redworks tutorial
teaches
us how to clone a skin to add CSS, but if I remember correctly it does nothing if we want to add actual content such as a custom header,
footer,
or sidebar.
I agree. Daniel's subskin tutorial is great as a starting point, but what's I need is the next steps to make customizations.
You can read my thoughts on the issue here:
http://wikimedia.7.x6.nabble.com/MediaWiki-l-Cloning-Vector-to-modify-its-PH...
Part of me wonders if the reason that no one responded to it is that
the
people who could answer it prefer a more elegant approach. To me,
though,
it seems like the most natural thing in the world to clone a skin and
the
edit it's code. I'm more than happy to do the extra work when it is
time
to
upgrade. Mediawiki is such a mature product that I can skip a lot of upgrades anyway.
I actually prefer the subskin concept in my particular instance as the
old
skin I'm trying to replicate was also based on the Vector skin.
I think that the best approach is just to follow the directions in the following tutorial on a nonpublic installation of your wiki: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skinning/Vector Just do experiments. I found that the html comments were helpful in identifying which sections of the code corresponded to which sections
of
the final html. I don't know if you've ever made a development server before, but it's only a couple hours of work to figure out. You just
copy
the filesystem to a new location, use mysqldump to clone the database,
and
then edit the appropriate files to point the code in the new filesystem toward the new mysql database.
Thanks, I do indeed have a development server running already and am experimenting continuously. Hopefully, I'll have a solution soon.
Thanks for your response, it's very much appreciated.
Forest
Use Google technology to search 10,000 pages about TMS: search.tmswiki.orghttp://Search.tmswiki.org . Want to see what I'm working on? Click herehttp://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/3368/. (link fixed)
On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Bill Traynor btraynor@gmail.com
wrote:
In an old vector based skin on a 1.16 version of MW, the skin author
added
custom html and css directly into the skin.php code to add a custom
header
above the personal tools links.
Where do I put that code in a vector subskin in MW 1.22? Do I add it directly to myskin.php again, or to myskin.skin.php? Do I separate
the
html and css and add the html to myskin.skin.php and the css to
screen.css?
Thanks Bill _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
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