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I was doing some more theme development a while back. It turned out
that a new feature was added somewhere in the site HTML which the
Azure theme had updated and of course mine hadn’t yet, which made the
site look extremely bad for a moment.
One thing that would be neat in themes is if we had some simple way
to inherit from other themes.
For instance, I might want to use Azure but replace the images and
colours, or just change some fonts. However, I don’t necessarily
want to edit the Azure theme myself because then new changes might
not merge in as expected. Normally, I would do this sort of thing by
having my own theme’s CSS include from the appropriate other theme’s
CSS. However, the way the URL is currently laid out, there is no
path to the stylesheets or images stored in the other themes.
If themes then started to structure their stylesheets (which most
should, but not many do), it would then be possible to use the layout
of one theme, the colour scheme of a second theme, and fonts from a
completely separate theme again, all without having to hack apart
someone else’s CSS files. 
TX
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On 14 Apr 2006, at 15:17, Trejkaz wrote:
For instance, I might want to use Azure but replace the images and
colours, or just change some fonts. However, I don’t necessarily
want to edit the Azure theme myself because then new changes might
not merge in as expected. Normally, I would do this sort of thing by
having my own theme’s CSS include from the appropriate other theme’s
CSS. However, the way the URL is currently laid out, there is no
path to the stylesheets or images stored in the other themes.
It’s seriously easier to just copy the Azure folder, rename it and
hack it yourself.
If themes then started to structure their stylesheets (which most
should, but not many do), it would then be possible to use the layout
of one theme, the colour scheme of a second theme, and fonts from a
completely separate theme again, all without having to hack apart
someone else’s CSS files. 
There’s no way a theme designer is going to put the extra effort in
to restructure their CSS just so you can cherry pick from it. I’m
not a designer and I wouldn’t.
You can hook in other stylesheets using the public/stylesheets/user-
styles.css which is loaded after azure.css allowing you to
override/modify
the styling it includes. I don’t think this is ideal either I was just
pointing it out
On 15 Apr 2006, at 03:06, Trejkaz wrote:
On Saturday 15 April 2006 00:35, Gary S. wrote:
No it’s not. Copying is a hassle. As soon as Azure updates
something, I
would have to figure out what changed and merge those changes in.
However, if all I did was include Azure and then change the fonts,
any changes
to other things would follow through.
But like I said Terjkaz, people aren’t going to structure themes just
to save you hassle … they’d be very, very nice people if they did
but designers tend to be … ‘protective’ of their work (only right
as well). Nobody is going to put in the extra work required just to
save somebody else hassle.
It truly is easier in the long run to work out what’s happening and
make the changes yourself. Painful and frustrating at times, but
easier in the long run.
Gary
On Saturday 15 April 2006 00:35, Gary S. wrote:
hack it yourself.
No it’s not. Copying is a hassle. As soon as Azure updates something,
I
would have to figure out what changed and merge those changes in.
However, if all I did was include Azure and then change the fonts, any
changes
to other things would follow through.
TX
On Saturday 15 April 2006 20:32, Gary S. wrote:
But like I said Terjkaz, people aren’t going to structure themes just
to save you hassle … they’d be very, very nice people if they did
but designers tend to be … ‘protective’ of their work (only right
as well). Nobody is going to put in the extra work required just to
save somebody else hassle.
If the designer is following good code layout for their CSS in the first
place
(i.e. layout in one file, fonts in another file, colours and images in
another file) then they wouldn’t need to put any further effort in. As
I
frequently say during my day job, a web designer who doesn’t lay things
out
in a maintainable fashion is not a designer, but a mere artist.
It truly is easier in the long run to work out what’s happening and
make the changes yourself. Painful and frustrating at times, but
easier in the long run.
Disagreed. Anything which requires constant attention in the long run
can’t
possibly be easier than something which doesn’t.
TX
On 15 Apr 2006, at 12:30, Trejkaz wrote:
If the designer is following good code layout for their CSS in the
first place
(i.e. layout in one file, fonts in another file, colours and images in
another file) then they wouldn’t need to put any further effort
in. As I
frequently say during my day job, a web designer who doesn’t lay
things out
in a maintainable fashion is not a designer, but a mere artist.
An admirable standard to set yourself, but a lot don’t. That’s not
going to change anytime soon. Everybody has their own way of doing
things.
Disagreed. Anything which requires constant attention in the long
run can’t
possibly be easier than something which doesn’t.
I put in the work to understand what my theme does. A poor example -
when Piers posted the sidebar solution it took me two seconds to
replace it. If I couldn’t be bothered to have done that initial work
to understand what was going on, and relied on other people to put
the work in then I wouldn’t have a clue and it would have took me
ages to try and fix the issue or ask someone else to do it.
Which is where your idea comes in.
But.
Bottom line is that people aren’t going to comply to your prospective
standard just to make your life easier. Can’t see it happening.
On Saturday 15 April 2006 22:01, Gary S. wrote:
Bottom line is that people aren’t going to comply to your prospective
standard just to make your life easier. Can’t see it happening.
Let’s take a simple example which has happened in the past. Typo goes
and
adds a new sidebar which requires some new style.
Two things could happen here. Either:
-
Every theme becomes broken because they haven’t yet added any code
to
explicitly handle this new sidebar. Or:
-
Every theme still works because they’re all inheriting from the
base
theme which at least has a sensible default style.
It doesn’t take a degree in astrophysics to see which of these two
scenarios
is better, and it would take a pretty narrow mind to think that this is
“just
making my life easier.” The fact of the matter is, it would make life
easier
for every theme designer, not to mention every end user.
TX
On Sunday 16 April 2006 13:52, Kevin B. wrote:
That example is flawed. Sidebars define their own default layout,
which themes can override if they want.
That’s not how I remember it being back when the tag sidebar was added
and I
needed to go and add a bunch of CSS to make it work.
TX
That example is flawed. Sidebars define their own default layout,
which themes can override if they want.
