I've now had the opportunity to create over 20 skins and can say that I am extremely comfortable with the styling and template system. And let me also start by saying this the best damn system ever made for skinning a software. A web developers paradise. And trust me I've pretty much tried them all (mainstream at least). That said, I had a few suggestions that I felt would make theme development much much easier.
1. Font-family variables: If we stored all the font-families in variables, we could easily change the fonts everywhere in seconds:
Hex or RGBa values:
We could even add @tooltipBackground and @inlineMod and such, but I felt that these should just have a regular style property and not be included in the color pallet as rarely would you need to call on such values outside of the inlineMod and tooltip elements.
I know this looks like a somewhat limiting and simple list. But I feel that the default should be extremely simple and I am confident that I would be able to convert the current default skin using these variables with ease and would not be limiting myself in any way.
Another point: vBulletin, in 3.X, used the classes alt1 and alt2 as well as an extremely basic and simple skinning interface. There were only a handful of elements that could be customized built-in and while this seems limiting to some, it actually gave the designer free reign. This allowed for an extremely consistent design and led to an unbelievable amount of designers able to make a lot of consistent advanced skins in next to no time at all.
And really the sheer awesomeness of the entire system easily overshadows these issues that I've outlined, so feel free to disregard. I am just sharing my personal experience with skinning for XenForo.
Thanks for considering,
Mike
1. Font-family variables: If we stored all the font-families in variables, we could easily change the fonts everywhere in seconds:
- @fontFamily_primary = 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif
- @fontFamily_secondary = Arial,Helvetica,Clean,Sans-serif
- @fontFamily_tertiary = Georgia,"Times New Roman",Times,serif
- @fontFamily_quarternary = Consolas,'Courier New',Courier,monospace
Hex or RGBa values:
- @primaryBg (body)
- @secondaryBg (#content)
- @ctrlText (control form elements text color)
- @ctrlBg (control form elements background color)
- @bttnTxt (button text color)
- @bttnBg (button background color)
- @primaryRow (main color used for node backgrounds, sidebar widgets, posts, almost everything)
- @secondaryRow (secondary color used for discussion list elements, bb code, avatar/stats columns, etc.)
- @primaryBorder
- @secondaryBorder
- @primaryText (primary text color)
- @secondaryText (secondary text color)
- @dimmedText
@faintedText
@mutedText
- @primaryTextShadow (ex, 1px 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,.4)
- @secondaryTextShadow (ex, 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,.2)
- @primaryBoxShadow (ex, 1px 2px 2px rgba(255,255,255,.4)
- @secondaryBoxShadow (ex, 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,.2)
- @primaryBorderRadius (6px)
- @secondaryBorderRadius (3px)
We could even add @tooltipBackground and @inlineMod and such, but I felt that these should just have a regular style property and not be included in the color pallet as rarely would you need to call on such values outside of the inlineMod and tooltip elements.
I know this looks like a somewhat limiting and simple list. But I feel that the default should be extremely simple and I am confident that I would be able to convert the current default skin using these variables with ease and would not be limiting myself in any way.
Another point: vBulletin, in 3.X, used the classes alt1 and alt2 as well as an extremely basic and simple skinning interface. There were only a handful of elements that could be customized built-in and while this seems limiting to some, it actually gave the designer free reign. This allowed for an extremely consistent design and led to an unbelievable amount of designers able to make a lot of consistent advanced skins in next to no time at all.
And really the sheer awesomeness of the entire system easily overshadows these issues that I've outlined, so feel free to disregard. I am just sharing my personal experience with skinning for XenForo.
Thanks for considering,
Mike
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