Manual talk:Skinning/Archive

Revised, up to date tutorial

This article is outdated. Don't supports the categories. What I must do? Do I must include some template in the article?Eloy 13:03, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

CSS by Category
Is ist possible to change the css by category?

Documentation
Unless you read code, It's difficult to figure out what each does on the page. The documentation is thin. Jump-to links... for the dunce, what are those? And what is site on the side? What if people want to move around elements on the skin, it's hard to figure that out from the skin's documentation. For example, wouldn't it be more constructive to state that the variable personaltools is part of the user tools for login, etc. Then to list content_actions as the variable the usually contains discussion, edit, etc. But right now it's a wall of PHP which is all well and good, but it hardly makes it easy to read if you aren't familiar with the specific mediawiki terms. I still can't find how to move the links that list things like Main Page, Browse Categories, etc around on the layout because the documentation is so thin and the terming may be intuitive for the people writing it, but it's not always that way for the people new to it. So please improve in that direction too. Some people may be able to read just enough code to move elements around... give people that power instead of a long example of how it shows up in one particular skin. Thank you!

No mention of what contents.css is

 * I am working with mediawiki 1.15.1.

Most examples I can find of creating skins suggest copying Monobook.php and removing this line of code in the ...Template class: ... html('csslinks') ?> ... and replacing it with a fat hunk of code: ... /*<![CDATA[*/ @import "text('stylepath') ?>/text('stylename') ?>/main.css?"; @import "text('stylepath') ?>/text('stylename') ?>/contents.css?"; /*]]>*/  data['printable']) ) { ?>media="print" href="text('stylepath') ?>/common/commonPrint.css?" /> text('stylepath') ?>/<?php $this->text('stylename') ?>/handheld.css?<?php echo $GLOBALS['wgStyleVersion'] ?>" /> <?php /*** browser-specific style sheets ***/ ?>

...

However: I have found some examples that do NOT do this, and they seem to possibly relate to the version of MW. I see that the Monobook.php that is delivered with MW 1.15.1 has a different structure than some older versions.

Is the skinning documentation out of date? How far?

My real beef
The above hunk of code suggests adding a reference to a "contents.css" file, but there is NO MENTION OF THIS FILE IN ANY WIKI DOCS (that I can find)  Nothing, nada, zip! What the heck is (or was) this file for?

Thanks,

Tim 8:55am EST, 2010-03-04

Category List Fix
What does this section have to do with the basics of making your own skin? Imho it should be at the bottom of the page under 'cool tweaks' or something. It is a bit distracting where it is. Decora 01:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Historical page
This page has been marked historical, but there doesn't seem to be any advice on where to go for current skinning manuals.
 * http://blog.redwerks.org/2012/02/08/mediawiki-skinning-tutorial/ is better -- it would be a good thing for a volunteer to transfer that information here. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator (talk) 16:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Technically that page is still copyrighted, haven't got the okay to put a license on it and copy a derivative here yet. Daniel Friesen (Dantman) (talk)