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Re: New admin-side theme
The Hive theme has been updated to beta7, this was a major rewrite of all aspects of the theme based on issues I had using the theme for a number of months and some user comments in this thread.
Notable changes are…
- Completely reworked layout structure – now has liquid widths (as much as the inbuilt table structure of Textpattern allows) down to 768px.
- All body fonts have been increased in size, as many users requested it.
- Header and navigation areas have been combined to save more screen estate.
- Many layout display fixes/re-jigs.
- Plugin and diagnostic content fields now have a default height assigned.
- CSS has been optimised more and labelled a bit better.
- Incorrect display of empty
<ul>tag on login pages has been fixed (thanks Stef). - Removed some plugin styling from custom.css as it’s fixed in main CSS file now.
More plugin custom style will be added over time if major inconsistencies are discovered.
Due to the extensive rewrite I’ll need some brave beta testers to give me feedback on any broken pages, and any major/popular plugins that have serious display issues – in particular IE8 issues since I can’t do any testing in that browser until late next week. One thing to note is I’m not really supporting IE7 due to some modern CSS techniques being used in the theme – I may look at workarounds for that browser if I get enough requests but it will never look as nice as in a modern browser. IE6 is totally unsupported.
I plan to send this to textgarden.org next weekend or soon after once any major issues reported are fixed.
Cheers, Phil
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Re: New admin-side theme
Thanks, Phil. Just installed the latest, and it is very pleasant to work with.
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Re: New admin-side theme
Another version, beta8 is now available. Changes are…
- Plugin help page now has a fixed width to prevent long text linage.
- Added more padding to page bottom to allow for Chrome/Firefox/IE9 dynamic status bar.
- Made write page recent articles list decimal.
- Added subtle shadow around img on image content pages, so they stand out better.
- Fixed link to view site for multi-site installs.
- Fixed unwanted bold text on login page (IE7).
- Fixed z-index of nav menus falling behind txp-body (IE7).
I’ve tested the theme on a number of browsers now, and there will be additional fixes incoming soon for issues on IE7 and to a lesser extent IE8. Not tested on Opera yet.
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Re: New admin-side theme
Version 1.0 is available – I’m also sending to textgarden.org so hopefully it will be hosted there too. I’ve tested extensively in most major browsers and even got IE7 to display well enough (though a more modern browser is preferred).
Latest changes…
- Fixed incorrect length of a selects on image list page.
- Hovering on a label now changes cursor to pointer (because labels are clickable).
- Now includes selectivzr.js to allow advanced CSS3 selectors in older IE – resolves many rendering issues for those browsers now (IE7, IE8).
- Fixed display of lever popup help icons on form page (IE7, IE8).
- Fixed excessive padding of text fields and radio/checkboxes (IE7, IE8).
- Fixed wonky multi-edit fields formatting on list tfoot (IE7).
- Added hacks to workaround lack of box-sizing support (IE7).
- Fixed lack of bottom-margin on ‘popuphelp’ and ‘edit’ links in labels (IE7).
No doubt there will be some plugins that need extra styling, and I’ll investigate any those if I get reports from users that they are particular badly rendering in the theme.
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Re: New admin-side theme
v1.01 is available. Just some minor tweaks really – main feature being an option to remove the tagbuilder column in pages/forms now (instructions on how to do that are in the readme.txt)…
- Added a few CSS transition effects for capable browsers.
- There is now an option in custom.css to remove the tag builder columns on forms and pages sections, thus giving much more room for the code edit textarea.
- Added a separate changelog.txt and now made the readme.txt instructions on theme.
- Make clickable on list column selectors more obvious.
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Re: New admin-side theme
Another update, v1.1. Changes are:
- You can now choose between 3 different colourschemes: default, green and blue. To change the colourscheme amend URL of line 7 in the ‘custom.css’ file – see the ‘readme.txt’ for full info. More colours will be added in future updates or you can easily create your own by modifying one of the css files within the ‘color’ directory.
- Added minor styling for ‘rah_external_output’ plugin.
The theme is also now available over at Textgarden.org (currently v1.01 but this newer version will be there soon).
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Re: New admin-side theme
Yet another one, v1.2. Now fully tested and fixed for use on an iPad (and probably Android tablets though I don’t have one of those).
Changes:
- Dropdown menu now works on touchscreen devices.
- Added tap highlight colour for mobile webkit browsers.
- Added responsive CSS for detecting 768px portait screen orientation and adjust page width accordingly.
- Reset CSS moved to an external @import, since we need that to load before all other CSS files (otherwise it could override colourscheme rules).
That wil be the last update for at least of couple of weeks – but let me know if you come across any problems/glitches that need fixing.
My future plan is to find a some way of scaling this theme right down to even an iPhone portrait size (so one theme can be used to cover every device) – some of the legacy table structure of Textpattern will have to be thought around properly and I’d imagine portions will need to be hidden via CSS – so a sort of cut-down feature version for small devices, full feature version for tablets and larger screens. That kind of makes sense because people would not really use a small screen for extensive admin tasks, but might like to make quick edits or write a quick blog that way.
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Re: New admin-side theme
And another one v1.2.2.
Changelog:
- Change to more standard version labelling and use Textgarden.org download link.
- The dropdown menu code has been rewritten to be more usable on touchscreen devices without compromising the desktop version. For example you can now close active dropdown menus on touchscreen devices nicely, and top navigation buttons are now links again like they were in v1.1.
- Tidy up of code in ‘hive.php’ to make editing/customising easier.
- Added styling for the tru_tags plugin in ‘custom.css’, thanks to Stuart Butcher.
- Form preview button is now removed and other fields on the form page inlined to save some screen estate, thanks to Stuart Butcher.
- CSS cleanup: make ‘outline:none’ now ‘outline:0’ and ‘border:none’ now ‘border:0’.
- Amend language uploader area CSS, as structure changed slightly in TXP v4.4.1.
- Fixed a major display bug when using both glz_custom_fields and bot_wtc plugins.
- Style up the wet_quicklink plugin text ‘Insert Link’ as a button.
It will also be available on Textgarden.org soon.
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Re: New admin-side theme
Just a quick very minor to the theme v1.2.3.
The !important class on textareas to override inline styling on glz_custom_field elements was stopping users from manually resizing any of their textareas within the theme (in those browsers that support textarea resizing). A better compromise has been devised now.
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Re: New admin-side theme
The next release of my Hive admin theme will also be optimised for small screens (such as an iPhone), it will effectively run as an ‘admin area lite’ on one of those devices – just the content tab pages will be available (I did have the presentation tab on there too but felt that nobody is really going to be making page/form/style changes on such a small screen).
It’s probably a couple of weeks from being ready release but here is a sneaky peak of the theme running on an iPhone…
Last edited by philwareham (2011-12-16 11:17:38)
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Re: New admin-side theme
Thank you so very much, Phil. I’m sure that legions of TXP users are as excited and grateful as me for your work on the ‘Hive’ scheme.
Joe
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Re: New admin-side theme
Finally got round to trying it out, Phil. Great deal of work you’ve put into it, thanks.
While it’s not my favourite theme ever (just… can’t… seem to… get Vitraux… off my dev box) it has some nice elements to it — the menus are nice, and they feel really robust (gotta get used to the fact they’re off-centre, which does my head in!) and the twisties look cool. I do, however, find the solid blocks of colour distracting — they draw my eye away from the content textareas to the surrounding paraphernalia when I really should be focusing inwards. But maybe that’s just me.
With regards plugins, I notice you have a few rules scattered about for specific plugins like rss_admin_db_manager and wet_quicklink in your stylesheets. Unfortunately, things like the wet_quicklink button and jmd_img_selector show up sandwiched between the Textile and Advanced Options (due to the position of the callback) but they’re not rendered uniformly because they’re not ‘twisty’ blocks.
This looks a little bizarre, so my question here is three-pronged:
- what should/could theme designers do to help plugins render UI elements as seamlessly as possible?
- what do we — with my plugin author hat on — need to do so that our plugins work well with this, and other, themes?
- aside from the obvious removal of crufty tables where they don’t belong, what could we — with my dev hat on — do to the admin-side markup to help both theme designers and plugin authors co-exist more happily?
I test my plugins in a variety of themes — primarily Vitraux, Classic2, Sand space, Emporclo Cool, Inspired, Slim Orange, and Din, along with the core themes — and a plugin like smd_featured renders passably in all of them. But in both Hive and Prometheus (by Zander), the control panel and Edit step render as a bit of a train wreck with boxes separated from their labels, stuff centred and/or floated where it shouldn’t be, the form left justified with the browser viewport, etc. I can’t fathom why it should work in all those other themes and not in yours/Zanders.
Clearly the answer is not that theme authors should put rules in for specific plugins, although I know some do for various reasons. Doing that bloats themes and creates extra work for everyone due to the rapid development cycle of most plugins. I altered code alongside Stuart during development of some of his themes: when he found stupid things I’d done in plugins, or CSS rules I’d embedded that made the theme’s job harder he pointed them out and I fixed them so the plugins would play nicely in a wider variety of themes. This usually involved very light positioning, re-using core class names wherever possible, and next to no colours so the theme’s ambience could shine through. I’m almost there with the back catalogue.
Is there anything else I should be doing to help your theme render my plugins better? Or are perhaps some of your CSS rules too specific and are not detecting my markup because I’ve wrapped my plugin content in, say, a fieldset/legend instead of the div (etc) you expected?
Just trying to figure out the best way to work in harmony here, and with all the work you’ve done you’re probably in an excellent position to shed some light on this area.
In short, though, keep up the good work. TXP is better for people like you.
Last edited by Bloke (2011-06-28 21:40:42)
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