[Commons-l] Monobook.css update?

[bawolff]

Original message:
> From: Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com>
> Date: Jun 15, 2007 7:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Commons-l] Monobook.css update?
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> On 6/15/07, Robert Leverington <lcarsdata at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > ... instead of having to search for and find and hand edit *.css, *.js,
> > > *.ini, *.conf, *.php and so on files.  I say, do all that programming
> > > ONCE, and do it INSIDE a new version of the MediaWiki distribution
> > > program.  Then let sysops/admins tweak everything to their heart's
> > > content from within the MediaWiki program without having to become
> > > OS/MySQL/PHP/CSS/and-so-on programming nerds (with NO documentation
> > > skills, apparently?!?).  You want the commons blue?  Make it blue from
> > > WITHIN MediaWiki, rather than hand coding a new *.css!
>
> You seem to be confusing two issues: the ability to edit styles from
> within MediaWiki, and the ability to do it without technical know-how.
>  We have the former: you can do a tremendous amount with
> MediaWiki:Monobook.css, even though no projects that I know of have
> done more than tiny tweaks.

Although no project has adopted a major css skin change, that is not
to say they don't exist. Take for example the datrio+mrm skin on the
english wikinews (view->page style->Datrio+MrM in firefox and Opera,
[[n:wikinews:Skins]] for other browsers) or the egyptian skin from the
user skin gallery on meta. They are extremely different from the
default monobook css.


>
> The second issue is the knowledge of CSS required to do all this.
> That part is substantial.  If someone wants to design a simple
> special-page extension that will generate a pretty interface to the
> CSS, perhaps the Foundation would be interested in enabling it on its
> wikis.  Then again, perhaps not, if it prefers uniformity among its
> own projects (and I think you can make a strong argument for that --
> although all things being equal, I'd guess the Foundation would let
> its wikis style things however the community wants them).  Either way,
> I'm personally not interested in coding such a thing, but if someone
> else wants to, they can go ahead.
>
> > This idea is very interesting, I can already imagine what this could
> > look like - I am forwarding this to the wikitech-l mailing list so
> > that the people involved in that can also add their ideas. No doubt
> > this would require some nifty JavaScript though.
>
> It wouldn't require JavaScript unless you wanted to get really fancy,
> like letting people drag around interface elements.  A simple form
> allowing entry of various colors, borders, background images, etc.
> would suffice, with some extra options for moving around stuff like
> the logo and parts of the sidebar.

I think most people who are willing to put the necessary effort into
designing something well, would probably be willing to experiment with
css. most people are able to figure out what a rule like "body
{background-color: white;}" does. but that is just my uninformed
opinion (which is probably wrong).

-bawolff