FlexibleSkinDev Discussion: Page for developer collaboration, enhancement requests, patches and improved versions on FlexibleSkin contributed by the TWikiCommunity.
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Antonio: congratulations on a job well done.

Overall impressions:

• Really nice and clean, easy to understand and implement. Would benefit greatly by having some example CSS classes defined already for those who are new to stylesheets.
• Given the simplicity of the skin design I think one could do away with tables altogether and use CSS declarations for positioning.
• using IDs with descendant selectors rather than classes gives better long term flexibility, see environmental styles at realworldstyle.com
• I think you could safely drop the FlexibleSkin prefix from all the class names and just use TopBar, BottomBar, etc.
• Is there a particular reason you define the bars in each individual template files (view, preview, etc.) rather than just once in the master template (flexible.tmpl)?

messages.flexible.tmpl

• what a good, simple and effective idea.

flexible.tmpl

• Should have a DOCTYPE declaration at the top (must be first line). Without it browsers revert to "quirks mode" when interpreting the css and can result in some inadvertant sideffects. This would require moving the include messages declaration to the end of the doc (which shouldn't make any difference at all to how the page renders in the browser). See the right Doctype at alistapart.com

• the title of the page would be better as % TOPIC% - % WEBTITLE% otherwise every page of that web will have the same title

• Consider making the <style> declaration a link rather than embedded. Doing this means the browser only has to load the stylesheet once rather than with every page read. Saves on individual page size and can make a big difference to the amount of bandwidth the server chews up. .... Nevermind, I just realized that you can't link to a twiki include...too bad. I thought you'd just solved one of my problems. : -)

edit.flexible.tmpl

• doesn't exist, is this on purpose?

preview.flexible.tmpl

• since this skin is based on CSS you might as well change <font color="red"> to <span class="warn"> , <b> to <strong> ,etc. to be consistant.

-- MattWilkie - 19 Sep 2002

Thanks, Matt.

About these CSS stuff, I'm not myself a CSS expert, and I didn't worried about them. I'll consider this on a next release, after I study more on CSS(I hope it will come soon ).

Yes, we don't need to define the bars at every template file. I'll fix this. That classes names thing is true, I'll drop the 'FlexibleSkin' prefix.

messages.flexible.tmpl

I need to encourage TWiki using between people that doesn't speak english, so a simple message translation method was one of the first things I thought about. Thank you.

flexible.tmpl

I included the DOCTYPE, the same one that TWiki uses. Is it sufficient?

About the topic title, one can make it by setting in WebPreferences something like this:

   * Set WEBTITLE = %TOPIC% - Some nice web title

edit.flexible.tmpl

Yes, it doesn't exist. The main goal was make possible to create a nice "view look". I didn't think about a different Edit screen. Maybe could be interesting adding some "tools" to Edit. Suggestions?

preview.flexible.tmpl

Yeah, class='warn' would be more ellegant.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 19 Sep 2002

How about a screenshot of the skin??

-- JohnCavanaugh - 20 Sep 2002

Learning CSS: start with http://realworldstyle.com/ and http://alistapart.com/ then peruse the css-discuss list archives for gory details. There is a css-discuss wiki in the works at http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ but it's still in private beta mode. Should be public in week or two. (not twiki I'm afraid. It was decided that the wiki should be css'd and twiki just isn't there yet without a lot of work up front)

DOCTYPE: yes I believe xhtml transitional is fine, but I'm not an expert on which is the best choice. I just know that it is better to specify a doctype than not when using stylesheets. Note you'll probably want generalise the html ... xml:lang="en" lang="en" line so that language type is loaded from the messages.tmpl file.

edit suggestions: yeah I have suggestions: use KoalaSkin's savemulti (soon to be in core) to take advantage of the checkpoint save option (my favourite addition). And add AccessKeys which are very addictive.

screenshots: in lieu of a publicly accessible live version, yes please!

-- MattWilkie - 20 Sep 2002

screenshots: I'll post some screenshots soon(at FlexibleSkin's topic), but at now you can see it in action at these URL's, that are hosted on twiki.im.ufba.br (the both are in portuguese):

• http://www.enec.org.br - Brazilian National Computer Science Students Association
• http://dacomp.im.ufba.br - My University's Computer Science Students Association (it have earned some bugs in some browsers after I added the DOCTYPE, but it will be fixed as fast as possible )

next steps:

• Adjustments to more ellegant sollutions in some places;
• better advantage of CSS possibilities;
• some CSS samples, attached to FlexibleSkin's topic;
• some cool "editing tools".

-- AntonioTerceiro - 20 Sep 2002

MattWilkie suggested: drop the FlexibleSkin prefix ... and just use TopBar, BottomBar,

Maybe it is too much to grab this many pagenames. But we already have Web prefix to system pages like WebNotify, so if you use WebTopBar, WebBottomBar, you will be more consistent, IMHO.

Your skin looks like nice idea. Any pictures?

-- PeterMasiar - 20 Sep 2002

Yes, I think a Web prefix would be more consistent. I didn't got pictures yet, but you can see FlexibleSkin in action at the adresses above, live!

-- AntonioTerceiro - 21 Sep 2002

I'm having a problem creating a FlexibleSkinBottomBar with an 'edit' button. Right now I'm basically copying in the default template stuff and making minor changes (CSS stuff, mostly). However, it's absolutely not expanding the Edit I copied in; as best I can tell, the view program is supposed to do this, only it's not. Any ideas of how to get it to work, short of just sticking in the direct URL and hoping it'll always be valid?

-- JenniferSmith - 01 Oct 2002

I've used this in place of Edit without (apparent) problems:

<a href="%SCRIPTURLPATH%/edit%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%WEB%/%TOPIC%?t=%GMTIME{"$year$month$day$hours$minutes$seconds"}%" title="Edit this topic">Edit</a>

-- MattWilkie - 02 Oct 2002

I thought that was working, until I discovered I must be doing something horribly wrong. I have the above code in the topic FlexibleSkinBottomBar, however every single page I view under this skin happily has all the variables expanded out to that page, NOT the page I'm currently viewing. I feel I'm just missing something fundamental here...

Some attached examples of working FlexibleSkin*Bar topics would be nice.

-- JenniferSmith - 03 Oct 2002

You must use %INCLUDINGTOPIC% instead of %TOPIC% (see FlexibleSkin#Special_topics). Follwing MattWilkie's example, the working form would be:

<a href="%SCRIPTURLPATH%/edit%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%WEB%/%INCLUDINGTOPIC%?t=%GMTIME{"$year$month$day$hours$minutes$seconds"}%" title="Edit this topic">Edit</a>

-- AntonioTerceiro - 04 Oct 2002

Very nice ! But I do not yet understand the working together of templates and variables and skins ...

Why does a %TOC% not work in e.g. FlexibleSkinLeftBar ?

I tried also %TOC{ %INCLUDINGTOPIC% }% in both cases I get TOC: No TOC in web.myTopic but there is one !

-- SvenTissot - 15 Oct 2002

A skin is basically a set of templates, one for each of the desired "actions" that will be implemented by the skin(edit,view,rdiff, etc). Some variables have scope only at template processing time(they would be "template variables") and doesn't have scope at topic processing time, like the %REVISIONS% variable (note: I haven't "scaped" it just before...).

About the %TOC% stuff, it's really strange. I tried to tell explicitly the name of the topic whose TOC must be taken, there is a TOC there, and I've got the FlexibleSkinLeftBar? topic's TOC. I don't know why.

When I work on next release of FlexibleSkin, I'll try to research about that.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 17 Oct 2002

I am having trouble putting the revision data at the top of the content page. With %REVISION% nothing shows up (except for "%REVISION%"). % DATE% seems to work, but it only shows the current date, not the date of the document. If I put the HTML code in flexible.tmpl, it all works fine, but this is a bit against the idea of having the content 'dynamically' set in the FlexibleSkin topic pages.

-- ArthurClemens - 20 Oct 2002

Yes, it happens because the variable %REVISION% - like others - does not have scope when a topic is being processed. In this case, we do lost aby variable that can only be acessed at template processing time. It's the same problem that causes problems when rendering TOC's in FlexibleSkin's special topics.

As a general rule, the only variables that work on FlexibleSkin's special topics are that shown in TWikiVariables .

-- AntonioTerceiro - 21 Oct 2002

Antonio,

Any chance we could get an update, perhaps with the same styles already defined on your reference sites above??

I like the concept of this skin in its model for how the pieces top/left/main/right/bottom come together and I would like to model a skin of my own based on it.

-- JohnCavanaugh - 27 Nov 2002

I have implemented the FlexibleSkin on my homepage, if somebody needs an example for CSS see
http://www.tissot.de/cgi-local/view/Tissot/FlexibleSkinStyleSheet

-- SvenTissot - 27 Nov 2002

John,

The styles are at:

• http://twiki.im.ufba.br/bin/view/DACOMP/FlexibleSkinStyleSheet
• http://twiki.im.ufba.br/bin/view/ENEC/FlexibleSkinStyleSheet

Both define green/bold links, a nice font, at a nice size (12px).

About an update, we really need it, I'll try to upload one the faster I can . I think in adding some predefined "themes", like 'Green', 'Red', etc.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 27 Nov 2002

Antonio, it might be useful to have a flexible skin implementation of the default twiki skin. That way people can begin to explore adding sidebars using the familiar look & feel.

For those of us that want substantially enhanced capabilities Im very excited about what can be done building on the flexible skin base. Personally Im going to attempt to add several leftbar "boxes" to expose functionality like, parents lineage & child topics, refs to current topic & refs from current topic (1 degree of separation thing), etc.

-- JohnCavanaugh - 28 Nov 2002

John, a flexible skin implementation of the default twiki skin is a great idea! But to do this, one would have to copy some topics to the web directory, what require shell access to the server (this was one of my motivations on writing FlexibleSkin: to make possible change the layout without having to 'hack' the template files at the server filesystem). But no problem, some friendship with the server's administrator will solve this problem.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 28 Nov 2002

Another item you might want to consider adding is if the skin uses a per web config, or if it can use one default across all webs. Given the number of topics you have to maintain it would be a pain in the rear to alter the skin for multiple webs simulutaneously without this type of option.

-- JohnCavanaugh - 30 Nov 2002

Can someone help this person? Support.ChangeDefaultFont

-- GrantBow - 02 Feb 2003

So that the skin can be configured on a per web or per site basis you could make the topics included to be variables. The variables can then be set in TWikiPreferences to be Topics per web or per site i.e FlexibleSkin / TWiki.FlexibleSkin? and even if you have a per site setting you can still override it in individual webs by changing the variable in WebPreferences (i.e. in the Test web for testing).

This is what I've done in our custom skin for a left hand Web Menu (firewalled so I can't demonstrate).

-- SamHasler - 06 Feb 2003

How do I get the 'More' link to function?

-- KarstynMcCoy - 19 Feb 2003

You can generate the URL for the "more" feature with something like this:

%SCRIPTURLPATH%/oops/%BASEWEB%/%BASETOPIC%?template=oopsmore

-- AntonioTerceiro - 20 Feb 2003

Hi all,

I've finished a second version of FlexibleSkin, based on your suggestions and in my experience with it. The main s are:

• FlexibleSkin can be made local to one web or global to all TWiki webs;
• I've dropped the "FlexibleSkin" prefix for the CSS classes, changing to a "Web" prefix;
• Some fixes in some places, basically based on suggestions.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 21 Feb 2003

Greetings,

I may be speaking totally off the wall, but...

MattWilkie suggested making the <style> declaration a link rather than embedded, but then pulled back because an include can't be referenced by a link. Could this be worked around by producing/using a "plain" template/skin that would add nothing to the file. I think that I've seen a skin somewhere that had that effect (but not designed for this purpose).

-- BrianMilby - 24 Feb 2003

Am I missing something, or is the 2nd release of FlexibleSkin really a mix of confusion? The .tmpl files seem to contain references to FlexibleSkinTopBar, etc, and WebTopBar, etc. All the FlexibleSkin related Wiki .txt pages are prefixed with FlexibleSkin - none with Web.

globalFlexible.tmpl INCLUDEs flexible-skeleton.tmpl, yet the archive doesn't contain this file - it does contain skeleton.flexible.tmpl though.

Similarly, skeleton.flexible.tmpl refers to CSS classes Web???, but FlexibleSkinStyleSheet.txt defines FlexibleSkin??? classes - no definition of any Web??? CSS classes anywhere.

Antonio, it seems you only half finished the job of migrating from FlexibleSkin named topics and CSS classes to Web named topics and CSS classes. Is this right, or am I the confused one?

-- RonKellam - 25 Feb 2003

Oops, it was a big mistake! I really haven't finished the migration, but it's already fixed. Five minutes was sufficient, these problems with the templates that you mention was fixed. Now it looks fine, I've already uploaded the FlexibleSkin package over the older one.

About FlexibleSkin??? or Web???, it was intentional. I thought about it, and I've left the topics named FlexibleSkin??? -- because they are specific for FlexibleSkin's definitions -- and the CSS classes named Web???, because since they are defined in FlexibleSkinStyleSheet? , a FlexibleSkin??? name would be redundant. What do you think about this?

The CSS class name at TWiki.FlexibleSkinStyleSheet was really wrong, I've fixed it.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 26 Feb 2003

Is anybody else having problems with the default (TWiki-default-like) top bar? My problem (using Mozilla 1.2.1) is that typing ENTER in the Go box does not do a submit. If I wrap form tags around the input in WEBTOPICLIST, it works but creates verticle whitespace around the input which is not good.

-- StevenLumos - 03 Apr 2003

Wrap the content of the TWiki.FlexibleSkinTopBar topic with <form action="%TOPIC%"> and </form> . It's a bug, it should be already there.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 04 Apr 2003

I've uploaded a version (2.1) with this correction, and some corrections in the skeleton (but nothing that needs to be changed in your current data).

-- AntonioTerceiro - 04 Apr 2003

I like your skin even more than before. I am in no way expert in CSS, but when read realworldstyle.com link suggested above, especially http://www.realworldstyle.com/nn4_3col_header.html, I was impressed what is possible with CSS. Way to go!

However, I've noticed one difference between your design and http://www.realworldstyle.com suggested above: your links are not underlined. IMHO non-underlined links is really a BadThing(tm), because user are trained to click on underlined words, and your design has color, not underline. realworldstyle.com changes link background color on mouse-over - this is JavaScript, right? Maybe makes sense to do it like pros are doing it?

My final goal will be to make Twiki skin which looks like scoop, http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/. If I cannot, I have to switch to scoop - this is what my team like. And I like (the view of it) better than Twiki, too! They do not care about additional functionality. And I am almost sure it can be done - and then you can make your skin themable, with different color combinations, background etc. And Twiki will finaly look like loved child and not an orphan!

BTW, website with examples of live site is down, no pictures here, and I do not exactly remember how you solved action links (links to edit/print/more). But I found another nice design derived from GnuSkin: http://csci.mrs.umn.edu/twiki/view/Dungeon/UmmWikiSkin. I like action links on both top and bottom.

-- PeterMasiar - 04 Apr 2003

I haven't undertood what "your design" you are talking about, but it is a personal choice. CSS permits that you do everything with your layout. If you want to make black links in brown background, it's up to you.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 07 Apr 2003

Sorry for not being clear enough. I am aware that if I know how, I can do it. I don't know how (yet). My proposal to you was to consider changing CSS in FlexibleSkin to make links underlined, because IMHO this is what most users will expect. This is what http://www.useit.com recommends. I bought a book about CSS and promise to learn some.

Antonio, is your skin now production/stable? I was thinking about SimplerDefaultTemplates for SimplerTWikiDistribution for coming release.

-- PeterMasiar - 08 Apr 2003

I'm sorry for taking so long to answer, It seems that I've lost some WebNotify e-mail.

About the links, there is nothing to do: FlexibleSkin defines no CSS style for links by default, and -- I think -- that the default behavior of browsers is to underline the links. Defining the layout style is left to the final user of FlexibleSkin.

Yes, I think that FlexibleSkin is pretty stable. I've been used it in many places.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 28 Apr 2003

Today (5 May) links at http://twiki.im.ufba.br/bin/view/DACOMP are underlined. But I swear they were not when I was looking last time. Great job. Thanks.

I was browsing a little at site abowe, and found that you use text buttons at http://twiki.im.ufba.br/bin/view/GNUPIA/WebHome instead of icons with tooltips. Is it the same skin? Can you have this kind of slight diffrences per web? Pretty cool! Now If I only understand more spanish/portugese.

-- PeterMasiar - 05 May 2003

What happens is that users change the CSS definitions, so underlining the links or not is their choice.

About the text buttons, I wasn't involved with them: a user coded these buttons (in HTML) at the FlexibleSkinBottomBar? topic, and made some CSS definitions in the FlexibleSkinStyleSheet? topic.

Since the layout can be defined by users, those who know CSS (or even HTML) can make very pretty stuff. It takes a loat of load off the TWiki admin.

You would need only portuguese , we are under .br. Brazil is a island speaking portuguese, among almost all other contries that speak spanish in South America.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 06 May 2003

copied here from SkinPackagingHowTo by MattWilkie

I am new to Twiki and so need more direction than this. After spending several hours I still have not suceeded in installing FlexibleSkin-2.1.

• What is my installation directory?
• After the download and unzip do I FTP the FlexibleSkin-2.1 folder to pub/TWiki/FlexibleSkin-2.1?
• Do I remove the 2.1 so it is just FlexibleSkin?
• How specifically do I check the <name>Skin topic to see if the installation is successful? If I type FlexibleSkin into the Go Box it takes me to the FlexibleSkin topic. Does that mean I have installed the skin and just don't know it?

-- GaryMilczarek - 07 Jun 2003

>If I type FlexibleSkin into the Go Box it takes me to the FlexibleSkin topic. Does that mean I have installed the skin and just don't know it?

Yes. Try adding the text ?skin=fexible to the URL in the address bar (does not work with all skins as some need to set more variables to work properly).

Most likely you have not yet set the SKIN preference. Preferences are set in WebPreferences of each individual web (e.g. Main, TWiki, Sandbox, Know, Plugins) and only affect that web. Global preferences which affect all webs are set in TWiki.TWikiPreferences. Go to Sandbox.WebPreferences on your twiki and add the line:

6 spaces then * Set SKIN = flexible

and see what that does.

• Note : Changed the example line above so as not to define a SKIN variable here -- OlivierBerger - 24 Feb 2005

-- MattWilkie - 08 Jun 2003

Note that tha folders inside the zip file are structured in a way similar to original TWiki directory structure. You need only unzip it inside TWiki's installation directory. For example, if TWiki is installed in /opt/TWiki directory, unzipping FlexibleSkin-X.Y.zip inside it will put the FlexibleSkin topic in /opt/TWiki/data/TWiki/FlexibleSkin.txt .

-- AntonioTerceiro - 08 Jun 2003

Small bug: each page title says

%WEBTITLE%

.

-- ArthurClemens - 09 Jun 2003

It's not a bug, but an unconfigured feature. You must define the

%WEBTITLE%

variable in WebPreferences so FlexibleSkin can show a custom title. See FlexibleSkin#Variables.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 10 Jun 2003

You should name your variable FLEXSKINWEBTITLE so it will be obvious where it is defined - and will not overwritten by somebody else deciding WEBTITLE is nice name for something else.

Plugins are chaos and anarchy...

-- PeterMasiar - 10 Jun 2003

Yes, you're right. FLEXSKINWEBTITLE would be better than WEBTITLE.

Chaos is beatiful. I hope that everyone knows the meaning of 'anarchy' (not the common sense meaning) ...

-- AntonioTerceiro - 11 Jun 2003

Antonio, again congratulation for this impressive work.

I am trying to integrate it. First example at: http://www.2010virtual.com/twiki/bin/view/Sandbox/NewTopic?skin=flexible Imho, it lacks only 2 pages to be real complete: edit.common.flexible.tmpl attach.common.flexible.tmpl I saw (but I have no password access) edit and attach option on some of your examples. I tried to create those pages using your principles but somehow after too many hours, I gave up. You are the expert.

Thanks in advance. Later on during my project I will contribute a French translation of the messages.

-- MaloGirodDeLAin - 04 Aug 2003

Malo: sorry for the delay in responding, I was out of home for 21th Brazilian National Computer Science Student Meeting, was I participated as member of event organization.

FlexibleSkin does not have edit and attach templates, and TWiki uses the default ones for these actions. The examples use these functions, but they don't care about these templates.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 10 Aug 2003

The top bar and bottom bar span the width of the page and the left and right bars begin at the lower edge of the top bar and end at the top edge of the bottom bar. The layout is assembled in that way. The Topic Header and Topic Footer go at begin and end of web content area, like this:

+----------------------------------------+
|                                        |
|           WebTopBar                    |
|                                        |
+------+---------------------------+-----+
|      |  WebTopicHeader           |     |
|  W   +---------------------------+  W  |
|  e   |                           |  e  |
|  b   |                           |  b  |
|  L   |                           |  R  |
|  e   |       WebContent          |  i  |
|  f   |                           |  g  |
|  t   |                           |  h  |
|  B   |                           |  t  |
|  a   |                           |  B  |
|  r   |                           |  a  |
|      +---------------------------+  r  |
|      |  WebTopicFooter           |     |
+------+---------------------------+-----+
|                                        |
|          WebBottomBar                  |
|                                        |
+----------------------------------------+

A "footer" is part of the template. It shows the current topic's parents (and won't do this, if there are no parents). If you want to remove this, you must alter the .tmpl file (do a grep looking for "META" in the FlexibleSkin .tmpl files).

-- AntonioTerceiro - 19 Aug 2003

After an earlier post, I just finalised my Wiki: an open space to discuss the years 2010 using your skins. Thanks again. You are welcome to visit: http://www.2010virtual.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome

I have a question regarding using 2 languages English and French. Have you come accross the same need to have different interfaces for different webs or even inside the same web?

• Any possibility using a variable to switch from one to the other?
• How to save the various skin parts? Different names? Create a globalflexibleFr and duplicate all?

Do you have any suggestions? Thanks.

-- MaloGirodDeLAin - 05 Sep 2003

Antonio - this rocks!!! I'm rolling it out to all of my TWiki driven sites at work and home. It's exactly what we need to be able to address the entire spectrum of 'usability' needs in TWiki site designs. Can I add to the vote for including Edit and Attach header/footer flexibility? I would really love to be able to implement a customized edit similar to that provided in GnuSkin and am considering trying to patch it myself if need be - which tells you how much I want it!!

-- LanceWeber - 08 Sep 2003

Antonio,

1. if I use FlexibleSkin globally with ?skin=globalflexible, and I have only one set of FlexibleSkinBottomBar, FlexibleSkinPrintingFooter, etc., the style sheet topic is not included in other webs than TWiki. Does that mean that I need a version of FlexibleSkinStyleSheet in each web?
2. performance could significantly be increased if the style sheet is not included in each topic (increasing the file size) but by linking to it using import, something like:

<style type="text/css" media="all">
    @import url("/twiki/data/TWiki/FlexibleSkinStyleSheet.txt");
</style>

.. the import url should come from a variable of course. This method also has the benefit that it is ignored by older browsers that are not really capable of rendering CSS.

-- ArthurClemens - 21 Sep 2003

Hello all,

Sorry for the huge delay in answering you. Please read the begin of this topic.

Malo: FlexibleSkin wasn't designe with these questions in mind. So, one possibility is duplicating FlexibleSkin (like FlexibleSkin for default, and FlexibleSkinFr for french. This is also valid for creating more than one layout to one web, allowing the user to set his/her %SKIN% personal variable to use the layout he/she wants.

Lance: You could put everything you want in FlexibleSkin topics. Therefore, it's easy to add custom behaviors to actions, even adapting functionalities from other skins.

Arthur:

1. "Global" in FlexibleSkin means define once in the TWiki web, use in every other web you want. If you want to customize the look for each web, you must set up local FlexibleSkin topics for them. Or you could change FlexibleSkin templates to do what you want, it's free.
   • But does it mean that I must define a style sheet topic in each web, although I want to use it globally? -- ArthurClemens - 03 Oct 2003
     • It means that if you set a web with SKIN = globalFlexible, it will use bars and stylesheet from the TWiki web. If you use SKIN = flexible, it will use bars and stylesheet from the local web. I haven't thought about mixing them, e.g., taking global bars from TWiki web and local stylesheet. It's interesting, but currently it does not work this way. -- AntonioTerceiro - 06 Oct 2003
2. I've thought about it, but the browser can't reach tha /data/ subdir of regular TWiki installations. only /bin/* and /pub/* are avaliable from the web.
   • In that case it would be useful to put the external style sheet in the pub directory. You can't edit it directly then, but you can upload a topic attachment - that will be put in the pub directory. -- ArthurClemens - 03 Oct 2003
     • Yes, it's true. But it breaks one requirement I've took for FlexibleSkin: all layout setup should be done by editing topics, using only TWiki. -- AntonioTerceiro - 06 Oct 2003
     • Antonio -- that's exactly my META question from above. It appears that you have included four META variables in the template itself rather than a FlexibleSkin topic. I'm not sure I understand the scope reference you make and I haven't tried each of them. I did include INCLUDINGWEB - META{"parent" prefix="Up: > " in my own site within FlexibleSkinTopBar and it seems to work well. (see http://cebadams.sdf1.org) -- BobAdams - 06 Oct 2003
       • Ok, ok!
         I haven't realized it. The fact is that when you use META variables in regular topics they don't get expanded, because META only works on templates. But as FlexibleSkin special topics are included from templates, The META works. When we /view/ the special topic the META's aren't expanded, but when called from templates, they get!
         Thank you, Bob, I'll try to update FlexibleSkin with this as soon as I can.
         -- AntonioTerceiro - 07 Oct 2003

Arthur:

For my install I wanted a single stylesheet that spanned the entire site so I chose Global; i.e., SKIN = globalFlexible. For each web within the site, though, I wanted local content. To achieve this I created a topic in each web and included it where needed. An example of this from my site is the left bar menu. In each web I have a topic named WebMenuList which contains the menu items unique to each particular web. Then, in my TWiki.FlexibleSkinLeftBar, I insert the following line :

%INCLUDE{"%INCLUDINGWEB%.WebMenuList"}%

This gives me global control over the look and feel of the site via the FlexibleSkin topics in the TWiki web yet allows me to include web specific topics in headers and menus as needed.

Antonio:

These lines are part of view.common.flexible.tmpl:

%META{"form"}%
%META{"attachments"}%
%META{"moved"}%
%META{"parent" prefix="<hr> Up: &gt; "}%

Try moving these four META variables from view.common.flexible.tmpl and adding them to FlexibleSkinTopicFooter. Everything should work as before and the desired separation of presentation from content will have been preserved.

-- BobAdams - 07 Oct 2003

Has anyone had any luck adding the same stylings to the EDIT and ATTACH functions? If not, which files would need to be edited to make this possible?

Would be good if we had FlexibleSkinEditTopBar, FlexibleSkinEditBottomBar, FlexibleSkinAttachTopBar and FlexibleSkinAttachBottomBar.

How would one go about implementing this? I am guessing that the files look something like edit.common.flexible.tmpl and attach.common.flexible.tmpl ??

-- TomDowden - 08 Jan 2004

(As also asked in ConsolidateFunctionalityFromSkins)
Can anyone shed a light on performance issues using the FlexibleSkin approach of dynamically including page elements?

-- ArthurClemens - 09 Jan 2004

Tom: You need to "create" an edit.flexible.tmpl for creating an edit template, and attach.flexible.tmpl for an attach one. The <action>.common.flexible.tmpl templates are for better organization of code, you can create some like them if you need.

Arthur: No, I have no benchmarks or anything else about performance issues using the FlexibleSkin approach.

-- AntonioTerceiro - 12 Jan 2004

I have a number of Webs that use FlexibleSkin. I just set a few of them to be viewable only by specific groups. With just this permissions change the viewing reverts back to the default skin!

Any ideas on why, or better yet how to correct this?

-- KarstynMcCoy - 30 Jan 2004

Karstyn -- sounds like you didn't set up FlexibleSkin as a global skin. See here for instructions: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/FlexibleSkin#Using_FlexibleSkin_globally_with

-- BobAdams - 02 Feb 2004

Antonio,

I like FlexibleSkin. On my site I added a page FlexibleSkinJavaScript? to be included in the HEAD of the page. Might be an idea for you? See http://pma-developer.org/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/FlexibleSkin

-- RobLaLau - 07 Jul 2005