[pmwiki-users] It's time to change pmwiki default skin!

[kirpi at kirpi.it]

I'm far from a tech guy, but having the standard skin with a fixed
width (which seems to be a great request by many) should be not much
more than enclosing it all into a
<div style="width:800px;margin:0 auto;"> (sort of)
or a similar thing with tables.
(Actually, it needs a slightly better effort, but my example still holds true)
I mean: as long as it is clearly noted in the html/css, I think it
should not be a revolution, and would be fine to try it.
A good enhancement, probably.

As far as tables are concerned, I'm sorry to confirm: they are not
dead. There is still need of them in day-to-day life. Too many reasons
for this.
A pure css skin is doable of course (there is already a pure css
standard pmwiki skin, unless I'm wrong), yet it is neither necessarily
better nor (mind) easier to write and maintain.
I wouldn't be too religious about it.

Having logo, search, and other parts of the structure, be included as
separate pages, would probably also be a sensible choice today. Would
it be a problem? Would it increase much the server load for every page
load?

SideBar is a special beast. It is nice to have it ready on the page.
But I remember (am I wrong?) that there were issues (it doesn't run
javascript, or it loads very very early not allowing some handling of
page data, or something the like).
That could be a key problem, in order to make the standard skin more
flexible and usable by writers.

All in all I like the standard skin as it is now, and would just make
those changes that make it *better* for the writers.

Leaving the "impact factor" to other/alternative skins, a specially
designed splash screen, or some tasty choices of
fonts/colors/sizes/pictures.

Luigi