[pmwiki-users] Proposition for a new PmWiki Skin

[Eric Forgeot]

Hello,

To continue on the http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PITS/01265

I've worked further on the theme found at
http://paulgiacherio.kodingen.com/pmwiki/pmwiki-2.2.30/

There is a sample there:
http://anamnese.online.fr/pmwiki-efo/index.php/PmWiki/PmWiki (password
is pmwiki)

It can be downloaded from this project page (literature skin):
http://code.google.com/p/pmwiki-efo/downloads/list

Features:

- The content is written with a darker and bigger font than the menu,
because it helps to focus more on the text.

- The content is using a serif font (more readable). The letters are
maybe too big. I'll probably update this with a smaller text size in the
future.

- For the CSS, I tried to use as many "em" I could, instead of "px". I
don't know if it's really a good thing: because of inheritance, it makes
it really tricky to customise the font size.

- It should be quite simple to switch for left to a right menu.

- There is a logo div, and a title div. There is also a background
picture ready to customise, because it's probably what people need to
use on their website. At the moment, it's just plain blue, to match the
link color. It looks a bit big and empty as it is, but with a real
picture it's ok in my opinion.


- For the links, I tried to follow the previous recommandations: blue,
with a different color for followed links (yet I must admit the
difference is not very noticable)


- There are some CSS3 effects. Not visible in internet explorer, but it
doesn't look bad either (the theme on http://paulgiacherio.kodingen.com
doesn't render well in IE)


- There is an extra menu, editable from /Site/SiteNav . I think many
websites need 2 menus: one for general informations, one other for
special infos. Even the pmwiki.org website is using a pseudo 2nd menu
with the "Recent Changes, Search...". And a third with the view, edit,
history...

Contao, textpattern and wordpress are all using a side menu, and a top
menu in addition.

I think this should be considered for the official pmwiki skin / website.


- For my own website, I don't think it's good to display the "edit,
history, attach" menu for everyone. Obviously, not everyone will need or
be able to edit a website, even if it's based on a wiki. Why displaying
this menu for 99,99% of the visitors, when only a reduced staff will
need this?
At the moment it still displays the "login / print" button, but in a
later release I'll probably hide this as well, replacing this with a
login page.

But for the pmwiki website, this edit bar should probably need to stay,
because it's a real wiki after all.



I realise this skin is not perfect, but it's just an example of what
could be done for the official pmwiki website. If it pleases the staff,
it should be reviewed by people more experted than I am on this matter.