This is a work in progress

Just to let people know what Ive been working on here.

This skin/plugin is my attempt at blending the xp style ui with a combination of both the tiger & flexible skin packages. Im working on this a couple days a week so I hope to get it done in a few weeks. Maybe Ill try to target having it done (or at least have the code posted here) by my birthday 02/09.

Before anyone gets too excited about this, its really really raw at this moment. The html/css stuff is horrendous because I basically dont know what Im doing and just sort of winging it. When I do post this, I really could use an html/css expert to help clean things up.

• First look at whats been done thus far...:
  

-- JohnCavanaugh - 21 Jan 2003

Interesting stuff, if a bit scary... 02/09 sounds like a long way away (Sept 9th), at least to European ears

My main comment is that you should not really use the Windows logo as that might get you into trouble with Microsoft - it's bound to be trademarked. Emulating the rest of the UI is probably OK, as MS doesn't tend to sue for look-and-feel cloning (unlike Apple in the old days...)

-- RichardDonkin - 23 Jan 2003

Good point on the windows logo. Ill change that to the small twiki icon from the hires logo set. It will take a bit of work on the photoshop side, but I guess I can figure it out.. Or I might just nuke the whole green 'twiki' start icon thing as it really doesnt provide any meaningful value.

-- JohnCavanaugh - 23 Jan 2003

Nice job. Lot of same ideas as in SimplerDefaultTemplates. IMHO green Twiki start button is at most sites used to custom company/organization logo, linking to "Welcome at ..." homepage. So they san see it as first part on each page, reminding them where they are. Most cultures start reading at upper left corner (but some of them continue down, not right ).

On my desing, Simple skin, from HelpSkinDev, I used TWiki's HighResolutionLogos as icon, because it really is Twiki's help system, and not customer's web (or zone). Same with Main zone, (which should've been named User zone), I have "User" icon for it. They are system zones, and should look differently from zones with pages users care about. If something is used differently, should look (little) differently.

This is not a critique - it's me feedback about how to (IMHO only) improve usability and intuitiveness (is there a word like that?) of your skin design.

-- PeterMasiar - 24 Jan 2003

Peter, thanks for the suggestions. Ill keep the Green Start button in the skin but Ill change it so that it is not a graphic text, but instead the user could easily type in the text they wish to see there. Im probably though still going to change the icon to the hires version, to me the icon is representative of the system not help.

As for usability I stand by one statment. "Despite the fact that everyone that uses a computer thinks they are a usability expert, there are in reality, very very very few usability experts, Ive only met one in my life, and no it isnt me..."

Thus that leaves us with opinions that will vary, but hopefully the dialogue improves everyones knowledge on the subject...

-- JohnCavanaugh - 24 Jan 2003

Well Ive made some progress towards completing this skin. I have attached what is complete thus far. It assumes you have SessionPlugin installed. Consider this an alpha, only the view stuff works, no skinning for edit etc yet.

-- JohnCavanaugh - 03 Feb 2003

Ha! This is a bit scary for ANY open source project, but if it's a plugin the legal issues are minimal for the project as a whole. This is the kind of thing that could get slashdotted. I am amused and excited to see the work, John. Thanks for your efforts!

-- GrantBow - 03 Feb 2003