I finally got around to organizing my Skinning system page and cleaning
out the ideas sitting there that I actually dropped or replaced.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Dantman/Skinning_system
Some notable things:
- A template system is planned. The idea is slowly stabilizing.
- I plan to replace things like bodytext, newtalk, sitenotice, catlinks,
dataAfterContent, etc... with a 'regions' system that lets skins define
their own areas with certain parameters, extensions define things they
want in certain types of areas, and MediaWiki figures out what to put where.
- I have an idea on how to eliminate content_{actions,navigation},
personal_urls, toolbox, language_urls, etc... in favour of a more
flexible system:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Dantman/Skinning_system/Link_lists_rewr…
- I've dropped the idea of controlling the SEARCH/LANGUAGES/TOOLBOX from
the navigation editing interface and perhaps even the skins defining the
navigation blocks themselves. Instead I'm thinking of users being able
to define navigation blocks of different types. Drop those in for use in
different skins. And the sidebar would become a widgetized sidebar setup
where from a separate interface you can drop navigation lists as widgets
into the sidebar, alongside the default search/etc..., raw blocks of
wikitext, and extensions will be able to implement alternative widgets
like donation buttons, advertisement blocks, etc... also extensions may
be able to implement context-sensitive types of navigation that can be
dropped in. eg: To make something like what Blender's Wiki tried to do
possible.
An example of a possible way the Vector skin might be built with this
system:
https://gist.github.com/1239039
--
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [
http://daniel.friesen.name]