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Here's one last rev of the CSS plan. It reduces directory structure
complexity by moving CSS files back to skins/standard/ (i.e.
skins/standard/<page>.css) instead of a page-specific
subdirectory (i.e. skins/standard/<page>/<page>.css). For
pages with images and other, related files, we'll still store those
files in a page-specific subdirectory, but the CSS files themselves
will live in the root directory, making them easier to manage.<br>
<br>
<hr size="2" width="100%"><br>
We move the Bugzilla stylesheets, which
currently live in css/, to skins/standard/, and we call them the
standard skin. We style all Bugzilla pages
with skins/standard/global.css, and we style pages needing special
styling with page-specific files (f.e.
skins/standard/buglist.css). Images and related files go into a
page-specific subdirectory (f.e.
skins/standard/buglist/image.png).<br>
<br>
[We're moving from css/ to skins/ because modern style often includes
images, and we need to store them somewhere, and it'll be easier to
install a third-party skin into a single directory, and "css" is
misleading if we're storing images there too.]<br>
<br>
Custom styles live in skins/custom/. Standard
stylesheets
tell customizers to hack equivalent files in
skins/custom/ instead. They also mention that customizers can put all
rules, including page-specific rules, into skins/custom/global.css for
file
management simplicity, but they note
the selector complexity and performance cost of this approach.<br>
<br>
checksetup.pl creates skins/custom/ and a set of subdirectories/empty
stylesheets equivalent to the files in skins/standard/.
skins/.cvsignore tells CVS to ignore skins/custom/.<br>
<br>
[skins/custom/ shouldn't be managed by CVS so it doesn't complicate the
output of "cvs diff" and installations can store it in local CVS. It
should be global (i.e. affect all skins) so installations can use it to
make changes that apply regardless of the user's choice of skin.]<br>
<br>
Installation admins can install third-party skins by adding them to the
skins/ directory and then adding their name to the "skins" parameter.
Skins can be either single CSS files (skins/<name>.css) or
directories of files (skins/<name>/) with the same
directory/file structure as the default skin. Multiple skins show up
as alternate stylesheets, and users can switch to them via their
browser's standard mechanism for switching between alternate
stylesheets.<br>
<br>
Bugzilla uses the standard skin by default. Admins can make Bugzilla
use a third-party skin by default via the "default_skin" parameter.
Multiple skins appear to the user as alternate stylesheets. Bugzilla
populates the list of alternate stylesheets with the contents of the
"skins" parameter, excluding the current default skin.<br>
<br>
header.html.tmpl generates persistent stylesheet tags for
customizations, preferred stylesheet tags for the default skin, and
alternate stylesheet tags for other skins. Pages thus take on the
default
style, as modified by custom styles, until the user selects an
alternate style, whereupon they take on the alternate style, as
modified by custom styles.<br>
<br>
More on persistent, preferred, and alternate stylesheets:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/styles.html#h-14.3.1">http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/styles.html#h-14.3.1</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/">http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/</a><br>
<br>
We classify rather than identify pages by installation (i.e. we move
the installation-specific value of body tags' "id" attributes to their
"class" attributes). We additionally classify pages by CGI. We give
pages unique IDs where appropriate. For example, a show_bug.cgi page
may be identified by the bug number it displays.<br>
<br>
Implementation of this proposal will happen in stages. In the first
stage, we move existing files to their new locations, make
checksetup.pl create the custom directory/file hierarchy, make
header.html.tmpl include custom stylesheets, and classify pages by
installation and CGI.<br>
<br>
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-myk<br>
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