Skin developed for Unreal Developer Network

Well, I was pretty proud of the way this skin turned out, so I thought I'd share it with everyone, as I could probably fairly easily convert it into a general purpose skin if there was a desire for it. To be quite honest, the default TWiki skin has been a pretty big turn-off. I couldn't discuss the benefits of wiki for the site, because people couldn't get past how ugly the default skin is. Had to wait until I had finished the whole skin, in silence and secrecy.

The design itself was created by Walter Costinak of 2 Design ( http://www.2design.org/ ). After I decided to make the move to wiki, I took great liberties with his layouts to make all the functionality fit, without requiring Javascript popups or dropdowns. Text menus were used wherever possible, to ensure the greatest possible usability across the most systems. It renders correctly in Mozilla, IE4/5/6, Konq, and Opera, as well as Netscape 4 (although the forms are too small, due to NS4's accursed font rendering). NS3 probably works okay, too, possibly except for the decorative borders. IE3 should work decently as well.

(large version, taken from the live site)

I simplified the templates a bit in doing this, and added a couple new standard pages and variables.

The wikiweblist is a graphical bar across the top, and changes in each web so the current web can be highlighted. It's a pain, but it's worth it for the overall look and feel.

The web-level functions are placed in a box on the left, standardized across all webs, links to webhome, webchanges, webnotify, websearch, and webindex. Below that, like the TigerSkin, is a WebContents page with the TOC for the web (the first standard page added). It's been prettified using &nbsp; and <BR> tags, and is to be manually updated to keep it spiralling out of control, as initial tests with just a raw listing of topics did. At the bottom of the TOC is is a "Contribute!" section, with links to a WebCreate page (the other page added), with a quick overview of creating wiki page, as well as the "Create" text input form. There are also links to edit the WebContents page, and the WebHome page.

Topic level functions are also standardized in a matching box on the right. Buttons and notes in pages like attach are here, too. For view, there are links to the printable skin, edit this page, attach files, referenced by or revisions, the revision bar, and more functions.

All the topics have a standard template that includes a %TOC%, which makes things nice. The revision detail info is at the bottom, right above the footer.

The site itself was implemented for Epic Games, makers of the "Unreal" and "Unreal Tournament" video games, and developers of the "Unreal" real-time 3D game engine used in many other popular games. It's an extranet for licensees of Epic's technology, called the Unreal Developer Network. This site will replace the current site, which can be found at http://udn.epicgames.com/.

Editing functions will be limited to registered users only (licensees). The public areas of the site will be generated using (probably) a modified version of GenHTMLAddon, and the main site will likely be secured using SSL.

I think that's about it. Questions? Comments? Desires for a public template version of this?

-- VitoMiliano - 14 Jan 2002

I think it looks pretty good. Of course the particular graphics that name the site may not be for everyone :). I would say generalize it and package it up as a skin.

-- JohnRouillard - 18 Jan 2002

I agree. We had the same problem at a big firm I used to work for. We modified the TigerSkin to create the OrangeSkinPlugIn to make it fit their corporate colours.

-- MartinCleaver - 18 Jan 2002

I like the skin, please package it up. Im very anxious to see your packaged version as I am about to deploy a wiki site within my group but I would prefer to base it off of your skin (as opposed to the TigerSkin)

One question though. Is the "bar" at the top navigable, ie. can I click on one of the other webs and move to that one??

-- JohnCavanaugh - 19 Jan 2002

Yeah, the bar at the topic is a normal wikiweblist variable, using double-bracketed links to icons attached to each web's webpreferences page, as suggested in the twiki docs. In order to make the bar's "highlight" change (just a different image) on each page, each web has to have it's own custom wikiweblist variable. But the tradeoff was worth it for the aesthetic appeal.

In the packaged version (which I want to do for myself now, as well, to deploy a completely unrelated site), it'll probably be replaced with normal text links, but I'll include an example in the documentation for it.

No idea when I'll get to this. Hopefully sometime soon, though. Thanks!

-- VitoMiliano - 22 Jan 2002

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Most excellent work! Please package this up and make it available. I'm quite confident you'd make many people very happy. Thank you.

-- AdamFoxson - 26 Jan 2002

I too would like to see this packaged up. I'm trying to introduce a Wiki at work. I must have version control, so I'm using TWiki. I would prefer something simpler to use, so that the tool does not get in the way of the work. Depending on how long this takes I might not be able to wait for it, but hopefully.... Thanks for offering, I hope it becomes a priority soon!

-- DougPhilips - 02 Feb 2002

Its been a while since any traffic on this topic, is it dead?? I hope not, I was looking forward to seeing the udnskin packaged up for distribution.

-- JohnCavanaugh - 25 Mar 2002

Is there any place where I can download this skin's code? I like it a lot, and it seems to be the only skin around that does not let a user edit pages if he isn't logged in.

-- AlainPenders - 10 Apr 2002

I cannot comment on where this skin is available. Should be at UdnSkin, but page is missing. But you are wrong (or I am misunderstood your question) about editing pages - user authorisation is basic TWiki feature, independent from skins, see TWikiUserAuthentication.

-- Unsigned

Just putting in another vote to have this fine skin packaged for distribution (and to keep this topic alive).

-- LynnwoodBrown - 18 Apr 2002

Me, too. What's the plan for publishing? The UDN site looks great!

-- DavisWFrank - 07 Jun 2002

Its still a fabulous looking site and contributing this skin to the community wold be a great lift in the acceptance of TWiki in many settings.

-- AntonAylward - 28 Jun 2005