You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to dev@roller.apache.org by Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> on 2007/03/02 03:04:40 UTC
Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations without
having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and instead
provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which overrides the
default styles for the theme.
please review and send your comments.
-- Allen
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by James M Snell <ja...@gmail.com>.
I'm definitely interested in helping with this. Once we get our updated
internal environment deployed, I plan to turn some attention to the
customization problem. Specifically, because of our rather strict
intranet UI guidelines, we actually want to be able to lock down full
template customizations and instead give users the ability to
essentially drag and drop widgets onto their sidebar or to make
relatively minor changes to their blog page headers / entry listings.
What is of particular importance to us, due to a variety of security
concerns, is the ability to restrict the catalog of available widgets
that can be placed on the sidebar.
Another thought: as part of the "about" page... we are very interested
in finding a way of allowing Roller to integrate well with external
"profile" services (e.g. an LDAP directory) such that extended
information about a blog owner or contributor can be pulled in
server-side from a remote source other than just the roller_users table.
As an example, in Lotus Connections, we have a profiles component that
is used as the primary repository of user info that would fit very
naturally into an "About" page.
I'll go back and review all of the 4.0 proposals.
- James
Allen Gilliland wrote:
>
>
> James M Snell wrote:
>> While I definitely agree that there needs to be an easier way of
>> customizing templates (I've got a couple of thousand users who would
>> *strongly* agree that there needs to be an easier way of customizing
>> templates) I'd be wary of addressing it piece by piece. I (and I
>> believe my users) would be much happier if the total customization
>> experience was addressed all at once).
>
> I would love to do it all at once and I am actually trying to do that to
> the best of my abilities with these proposals for 4.0. Basically all of
> the things I am aiming for are features to help improve the usability
> aspect of weblog customization *and* i had actually started grouping all
> of my proposals under that banner ...
>
> http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Easier+Weblog+Design+Customization
>
>
> I have 2 more proposals which I plan to add to that ...
>
> 1. The proposal for making an icon and "about" section standard
> attributes of a weblog. This was already discussed as being part of 3.2
> but I've deferred it and plan to do it together with the other proposals
> I listed.
>
> 2. A proposal for doing widgets, similar to what other blog systems
> have. This is the really big piece and the one that users will most
> likely get the most mileage out of.
>
> All together that would make 5 proposals all pretty much centered on
> making the blog customization process easier. Ideally, once all these
> features are designed and the proposals are agreed upon I could get some
> level of help from other folks who are interested in these things to
> make sure we can get them done in time for 4.0. It's quite a bit of
> work for 1 person to do and if I have to fly solo then that would be the
> reason why we wouldn't introduce all these things at the same time.
>
> -- Allen
>
>
>>
>> - James
>>
>>
>> Allen Gilliland wrote:
>>> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
>>>
>>> http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations without
>>> having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and instead
>>> provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which overrides the
>>> default styles for the theme.
>>>
>>> please review and send your comments.
>>>
>>> -- Allen
>>>
>
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com>.
James M Snell wrote:
> While I definitely agree that there needs to be an easier way of
> customizing templates (I've got a couple of thousand users who would
> *strongly* agree that there needs to be an easier way of customizing
> templates) I'd be wary of addressing it piece by piece. I (and I
> believe my users) would be much happier if the total customization
> experience was addressed all at once).
I would love to do it all at once and I am actually trying to do that to
the best of my abilities with these proposals for 4.0. Basically all of
the things I am aiming for are features to help improve the usability
aspect of weblog customization *and* i had actually started grouping all
of my proposals under that banner ...
http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Easier+Weblog+Design+Customization
I have 2 more proposals which I plan to add to that ...
1. The proposal for making an icon and "about" section standard
attributes of a weblog. This was already discussed as being part of 3.2
but I've deferred it and plan to do it together with the other proposals
I listed.
2. A proposal for doing widgets, similar to what other blog systems
have. This is the really big piece and the one that users will most
likely get the most mileage out of.
All together that would make 5 proposals all pretty much centered on
making the blog customization process easier. Ideally, once all these
features are designed and the proposals are agreed upon I could get some
level of help from other folks who are interested in these things to
make sure we can get them done in time for 4.0. It's quite a bit of
work for 1 person to do and if I have to fly solo then that would be the
reason why we wouldn't introduce all these things at the same time.
-- Allen
>
> - James
>
>
> Allen Gilliland wrote:
>> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
>>
>> http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>>
>>
>> basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations without
>> having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and instead
>> provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which overrides the
>> default styles for the theme.
>>
>> please review and send your comments.
>>
>> -- Allen
>>
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by James M Snell <ja...@gmail.com>.
While I definitely agree that there needs to be an easier way of
customizing templates (I've got a couple of thousand users who would
*strongly* agree that there needs to be an easier way of customizing
templates) I'd be wary of addressing it piece by piece. I (and I
believe my users) would be much happier if the total customization
experience was addressed all at once).
- James
Allen Gilliland wrote:
> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
>
> http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>
>
> basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations without
> having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and instead
> provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which overrides the
> default styles for the theme.
>
> please review and send your comments.
>
> -- Allen
>
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by Dave Levy <Da...@Sun.COM>.
This seems fine.
I'm not sure how many users would migrate and when, but its a good way
of doing it.
The big problem I see is that there is no versioning in the theme
editing process (or UNIX). A a user can't go back to where they started
once they've saved an edit, but its not a relevant comment to to this
proposal except that one could develop a new custom file beside the old
one and switch between old and new in the weblog file.
Allen Gilliland wrote:
> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
>
> http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>
>
> basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations
> without having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and
> instead provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which
> overrides the default styles for the theme.
>
> please review and send your comments.
>
> -- Allen
--
Dave
*David Levy *
*Principal Engineer*
*Sun Microsystems Ltd.*
55, King William St.,
London EC4R 9ND
United Kingdom
Phone +44 (0) 20 7469 9908/x18308
Mobile +44 (0) 7710-360922
Blog http://blogs.sun.com/DaveLevy
Email David.Levy@Sun.COM
Sun Proprietary & Confidential . This e-mail message is for the sole use
of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and priviliged
information. Any unauthorised review, use, disclosure or distribution is
prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the
sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by James M Snell <ja...@gmail.com>.
As I've stated a couple of times before, I'm going through the process
of creating a new theme for IBM's updated internal blogging environment.
For a variety of reasons (e.g. security, accessibility standards,
branding, etc), we intend to lock down a users ability to reskin their
blog template and instead focus on the selection of customizations from
a preselected catalog. Users would be able to select a module, set some
customization parameters specific to that module, then deploy it. The
users should never have to mess with HTML or CSS unless they are
designing a module for inclusion in the catalog.
- James
Dave wrote:
> On 3/1/07, Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> wrote:
>> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
> http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>
>>
>> basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations without
>> having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and instead
>> provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which overrides the
>> default styles for the theme.
>>
>> please review and send your comments.
>
> -1 on this proposal as written.
>
> I don't think editing a CSS style sheet is the UI we want to enabling
> theme customization. We can't expect users to know CSS. And there is
> no standard set of CSS styles for each theme, so users will have to
> examine HTML to figure out what styles can be set.
>
> - Dave
>
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com>.
Dave wrote:
> On 3/6/07, Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> wrote:
>> Dave wrote:
>> > On 3/1/07, Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> wrote:
>> >> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs
>> ...http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>>
>> >
>> > -1 on this proposal as written.
>> > I don't think editing a CSS style sheet is the UI we want to enabling
>> > theme customization. We can't expect users to know CSS. And there is
>> > no standard set of CSS styles for each theme, so users will have to
>> > examine HTML to figure out what styles can be set.
>>
>> Okay, that's a valid point and on some level I agree that we can't
>> expect users to be CSS wizards, but lets step back for a second and at
>> least agree that we need some sort of strategy for allowing styling
>> customizations of themes. And by styling customizations I mainly mean
>> choosing a different color palette and possibly some font changes.
>>
>> "We can't expect users to know CSS."
>>
>> To be honest I don't think that is true, and to an even larger degree I
>> don't think that users will need to know CSS. First off, in my mind
>> this is a proven approach when you consider that very large and popular
>> sites like WordPress and even MySpace allow custom styling in this exact
>> way, so if it works for them then I think it can work for us. Second,
>> and like the WordPress and MySpace examples, users wouldn't necessarily
>> have to code CSS themselves, they could share it, and that's a large
>> part of the benefit.
>>
>> In fact, we have this exact use case in development right now. Some
>> members of the sun.com design team have offered to develop some new
>> themes for Roller and we specifically took the approach that each theme
>> would have a default design and then provide various alternate versions
>> simply by plugging in a new stylesheet. This was much more useful than
>> actually creating XX themes which are effectively the same but with
>> different styling. It would then be very easy to have users simply copy
>> and paste the alternate stylesheets into their custom stylesheet to
>> allow them to change to a new palette if they wanted.
>
> Good points and I agree that with cut-and-paste sharing among users
> the requirement to know CSS is lessened.
>
>
>> "there is no standard set of CSS styles for each theme"
>>
>> True, but this is just a ramification of the way that Roller is
>> designed, we will never be able to enforce something like that in our
>> themes. However, the truth is that anyone running a Roller installation
>> could very easily enforce a standard set of CSS styles on all themes if
>> they wanted to. All you have to do is disable custom themes and then
>> make sure that the themes you provide do conform to any standards you
>> want to set. From James' response to this thread in another email it
>> sounds like he is planning to do this exact thing ...
>>
>> "For a variety of reasons (e.g. security, accessibility standards,
>> branding, etc), we intend to lock down a users ability to reskin their
>> blog template and instead focus on the selection of customizations from
>> a preselected catalog."
>>
>>
>> And finally, I think it is also important to remember that this solution
>> is not mutually exclusive. This can be one part of multiple options the
>> user may have for customizing a shared theme and it does not preclude
>> other options from being present.
>
> Good. My main object that I would not want this to be the one and only
> solution to the ease of blog customization problem.
>
>
>> "-1 on this proposal as written."
>> So based on my response, what is it that you think needs to change in
>> the proposal to make it valid?
>
> You've pretty much convinced me that this is a good thing, but you
> should mention that this approach does not preclude other blog
> customization improvements, such as theme properties and other things.
yep, i can add that to the proposal.
>
> And ome more explanation of how the UI works would be good. You say
> the override is just another page template, so I'm wondering:
> - Can a user set a style override for a non-custom theme?
That is exactly what the proposal is supposed to be addressing, so
either I didn't explain things well in the proposal, or you may have
gotten a different idea of what I meant. In any case, the short answer
is "yes", that's the main purpose for the proposal.
The idea is that as a user I could select a shared theme from the
library, such as the "basic" theme, then modify the styling of that
theme by simply adding my own stylesheet. I wouldn't have to
"customize" the theme the way we do now and effectively copy the theme
templates. Instead I would continue to use the shared theme as usual,
but I would be capable of inserting my own styling decisions via the
stylesheet override. And I am proposing that by standardizing the way
this is done allows us to improve the usability for users by tailoring
the UI.
> - What if theme customization is turned off and the Templates page is
> hidden?
Well, that's not really a scenario I had considered since we don't
provide that as an option right now, but technically there is nothing
that would preclude us from doing that. What I meant by saying that the
override is just another page template was referring more to the
object/data model than to the UI. In the data model this stylesheet
override would be stored and accessed the same way that custom page
templates are done today, via the WeblogTemplate object and webpage
table, so we don't need to do any special work on the backend to support
this feature.
On the UI we can provide an entirely new page/form if we want, but it
would still be storing the custom stylesheet the same way we do with all
templates.
I'll add some more detail to the proposal and try and work up some
mockups of the way the UI could work as well, so there is more to look at.
-- Allen
>
> I do agree with James Snell's comments about looking at the big
> picture, but I guess we'll see that when you complete your other
> proposals.
>
> - Dave
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by Dave <sn...@gmail.com>.
On 3/6/07, Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> wrote:
> Dave wrote:
> > On 3/1/07, Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> wrote:
> >> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
> >
> > -1 on this proposal as written.
> > I don't think editing a CSS style sheet is the UI we want to enabling
> > theme customization. We can't expect users to know CSS. And there is
> > no standard set of CSS styles for each theme, so users will have to
> > examine HTML to figure out what styles can be set.
>
> Okay, that's a valid point and on some level I agree that we can't
> expect users to be CSS wizards, but lets step back for a second and at
> least agree that we need some sort of strategy for allowing styling
> customizations of themes. And by styling customizations I mainly mean
> choosing a different color palette and possibly some font changes.
>
> "We can't expect users to know CSS."
>
> To be honest I don't think that is true, and to an even larger degree I
> don't think that users will need to know CSS. First off, in my mind
> this is a proven approach when you consider that very large and popular
> sites like WordPress and even MySpace allow custom styling in this exact
> way, so if it works for them then I think it can work for us. Second,
> and like the WordPress and MySpace examples, users wouldn't necessarily
> have to code CSS themselves, they could share it, and that's a large
> part of the benefit.
>
> In fact, we have this exact use case in development right now. Some
> members of the sun.com design team have offered to develop some new
> themes for Roller and we specifically took the approach that each theme
> would have a default design and then provide various alternate versions
> simply by plugging in a new stylesheet. This was much more useful than
> actually creating XX themes which are effectively the same but with
> different styling. It would then be very easy to have users simply copy
> and paste the alternate stylesheets into their custom stylesheet to
> allow them to change to a new palette if they wanted.
Good points and I agree that with cut-and-paste sharing among users
the requirement to know CSS is lessened.
> "there is no standard set of CSS styles for each theme"
>
> True, but this is just a ramification of the way that Roller is
> designed, we will never be able to enforce something like that in our
> themes. However, the truth is that anyone running a Roller installation
> could very easily enforce a standard set of CSS styles on all themes if
> they wanted to. All you have to do is disable custom themes and then
> make sure that the themes you provide do conform to any standards you
> want to set. From James' response to this thread in another email it
> sounds like he is planning to do this exact thing ...
>
> "For a variety of reasons (e.g. security, accessibility standards,
> branding, etc), we intend to lock down a users ability to reskin their
> blog template and instead focus on the selection of customizations from
> a preselected catalog."
>
>
> And finally, I think it is also important to remember that this solution
> is not mutually exclusive. This can be one part of multiple options the
> user may have for customizing a shared theme and it does not preclude
> other options from being present.
Good. My main object that I would not want this to be the one and only
solution to the ease of blog customization problem.
> "-1 on this proposal as written."
> So based on my response, what is it that you think needs to change in
> the proposal to make it valid?
You've pretty much convinced me that this is a good thing, but you
should mention that this approach does not preclude other blog
customization improvements, such as theme properties and other things.
And ome more explanation of how the UI works would be good. You say
the override is just another page template, so I'm wondering:
- Can a user set a style override for a non-custom theme?
- What if theme customization is turned off and the Templates page is hidden?
I do agree with James Snell's comments about looking at the big
picture, but I guess we'll see that when you complete your other
proposals.
- Dave
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com>.
Dave wrote:
> On 3/1/07, Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> wrote:
>> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
> http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>
>>
>> basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations without
>> having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and instead
>> provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which overrides the
>> default styles for the theme.
>>
>> please review and send your comments.
>
> -1 on this proposal as written.
>
> I don't think editing a CSS style sheet is the UI we want to enabling
> theme customization. We can't expect users to know CSS. And there is
> no standard set of CSS styles for each theme, so users will have to
> examine HTML to figure out what styles can be set.
Okay, that's a valid point and on some level I agree that we can't
expect users to be CSS wizards, but lets step back for a second and at
least agree that we need some sort of strategy for allowing styling
customizations of themes. And by styling customizations I mainly mean
choosing a different color palette and possibly some font changes.
"We can't expect users to know CSS."
To be honest I don't think that is true, and to an even larger degree I
don't think that users will need to know CSS. First off, in my mind
this is a proven approach when you consider that very large and popular
sites like WordPress and even MySpace allow custom styling in this exact
way, so if it works for them then I think it can work for us. Second,
and like the WordPress and MySpace examples, users wouldn't necessarily
have to code CSS themselves, they could share it, and that's a large
part of the benefit.
In fact, we have this exact use case in development right now. Some
members of the sun.com design team have offered to develop some new
themes for Roller and we specifically took the approach that each theme
would have a default design and then provide various alternate versions
simply by plugging in a new stylesheet. This was much more useful than
actually creating XX themes which are effectively the same but with
different styling. It would then be very easy to have users simply copy
and paste the alternate stylesheets into their custom stylesheet to
allow them to change to a new palette if they wanted.
"there is no standard set of CSS styles for each theme"
True, but this is just a ramification of the way that Roller is
designed, we will never be able to enforce something like that in our
themes. However, the truth is that anyone running a Roller installation
could very easily enforce a standard set of CSS styles on all themes if
they wanted to. All you have to do is disable custom themes and then
make sure that the themes you provide do conform to any standards you
want to set. From James' response to this thread in another email it
sounds like he is planning to do this exact thing ...
"For a variety of reasons (e.g. security, accessibility standards,
branding, etc), we intend to lock down a users ability to reskin their
blog template and instead focus on the selection of customizations from
a preselected catalog."
And finally, I think it is also important to remember that this solution
is not mutually exclusive. This can be one part of multiple options the
user may have for customizing a shared theme and it does not preclude
other options from being present.
"-1 on this proposal as written."
So based on my response, what is it that you think needs to change in
the proposal to make it valid?
-- Allen
>
> - Dave
Re: Proposal: Stylesheet Overrides for Weblogs
Posted by Dave <sn...@gmail.com>.
On 3/1/07, Allen Gilliland <al...@sun.com> wrote:
> new 4.0 proposal to provide stylesheet overrides for weblogs ...
http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Stylesheet+Overrides+for+Weblogs
>
> basically a way to allow weblogs to do stylesheet customizations without
> having to customize their theme and hack the templates, and instead
> provides a way to simple define a stylesheet page which overrides the
> default styles for the theme.
>
> please review and send your comments.
-1 on this proposal as written.
I don't think editing a CSS style sheet is the UI we want to enabling
theme customization. We can't expect users to know CSS. And there is
no standard set of CSS styles for each theme, so users will have to
examine HTML to figure out what styles can be set.
- Dave