Refactoring Proposal: apply PatternSkin Style to static pages

Motivation

to create a consistent experience for the user, documents outside of TWiki topics should use a similar layout and style via similar css code

Description

this patch updates the /twiki/index.html and twiki/bin/testenv with css styles similar to the default styles used in PatternSkin per request by ArthurClemens.

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

Examples

index.html example and
testenv example

Implementation

just apply the .diff patch (attached below)

Discussion

ArthurClemens, is this what you had in mind?

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

Nice work. A couple of things:

• Why don't you include the 2 styles (files) instead of writing the style inline?
• The hr is not so nice (not styled,but should be ok when you import the stylesheets)
• but the hrs have no function because the h2 already have a horizontal bar to divide the page sections
• I think you should add <div class="twikiTopic"> around the text.
• Put the title inside the twikiTopic div.

-- ArthurClemens - 29 Apr 2005

im not including the styles to index or testenv because of their use during the install process, IE we don't know for sure the pub/ directory will be readable; so rather than duplicate the style.css files i just decided to copy the needed portions directly into the code.

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

Wouldn't it be more flexible to copy the files to some other place than to update the style in the html?

-- ArthurClemens - 29 Apr 2005

agreed, it would be much more flexible to put a style in the root twiki/ directory itself but I don't know how core team would feel about cluttering up the root with such things. It seems to me that if we put it anywhere other than the twiki/ directory we are defeating the origional purpous of not just linking to the one in the pub/ directory in the first place. because, again if we do that we don't know for certain that it will resolve because permissions may not yet be set (these are install related documents).

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

if i could spell it would help :P

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

im getting a w3c complaint on your style.css from DEVELOP

Line: 181 Context : .twikiNewLink a:link sup , .twikiNewLink a:visited sup 

Invalid number : background-color pink is not a color value : pink

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

I dont need it for the index.html but since i noticed it i thought i should bring it up

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

Perhaps there is also a way to generate these kinds of documents from TWiki topics, with publish addon or something similar.

-- ArthurClemens - 29 Apr 2005

we cant use twiki to generate testenv or the index because those are installation related (read critical) areas that must work even if twiki is quite broken. when twiki breaks it would be impossible to use testenv to see what is broken if testenv is depending on the now broken twiki to generate it. both pages must remain as robust as possible which means we shouldn't depend upon anything more than required to make it operate correctly. Infact I was even somewhat against the idea of using CGI in testenv to render some of the html incase it were somehow broken as well.

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005

I meant to use TWiki to publish the html, then add the html file to the installation. So nothing dynamic.

-- ArthurClemens - 29 Apr 2005

with that said, you are far more experienced with twiki in general than I am, feel free to pick it up where I have left it and try anything you like, my only goal here was to style up the pages a bit because the old versions were quite dull as compared to the new pattern skin, and, I should like to say thanks to you once again for the work you have done in that area. I can't stress enough how much I think TWiki needed it.

-- TravisBarker - 29 Apr 2005