[Plone-UI] [hello world] and [idea]wire theme

Silvestre Marcelo Huens s.huens at gmail.com
Tue Sep 23 05:15:13 UTC 2008


Hi people:
My name is Silvestre Huens (aka Quimera), I work with plone since
almost 2 years now, (the major part in skinning).

I'm looking for feedback of the community about and idea (wire theme)...

for me, skinning a theme is something enjoyable, (not at the beginning
:P) , and i'm searching a way to improve the speed of the task, from
there come the idea of make a "wire theme".

Plone by default carries a considerable amount of CSS code. Most of it
is intended to provide the style for the Plone default theme.
The typical approach when developing custom themes have been to
overwrite the default styles.

This approach carries one problem (or maybe more):
it generates redundant code that is anyway served to the browser
(default code + overwriting code). Even for visually simple
designs, the amount of overwriting needed is exceedingly high.

The other approach is to reset or disable all default Plone styles;
the amount of work resetting all the elements is prohibitive; Plone
also has many elements that surface only under certain conditions, and
the testing needed to ensure all style is in place would be far longer
than the normal time for a skin development.

the "wire theme":
a CSS structure that lays out only the typical and/or most used styles.

This CSS structure would provide a simple, clean base for customized
skin development, as it would take in charge of the most common used
styles needed, but allowing a free theme development from there. No
overwritings should be needed, or at least in no such extension as
with the current default Plone CSS.

This base CSS would be, well, basic. No colors, no specific visuals
just the basics, "the wires". All needed for a site look like a site,
but not like a Plone theme!
this foundation could improve skin development efficiency by avoiding
unnecessary overwriting of the code, and providing a more useful base
for visually similar elements, instead of having several style
declarations with the same or almost same styles.


what are your thoughts about the idea?
Is it worth it to invest time?


Regards...
Q.
-- 
www.menttes.com




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