Topic on Talk:New skins system

I don't think we really need most of this part. Focused son-generic (ie: Non-Wikipedia-like) skins should not be packaged with the tarball. There are many different categories of focused skins and they will all be useful to only some groups of wikis. So we shouldn't be packaging things not generically useful into the tarball. Those skins should all be installed normally.

Btw, we also don't need to try including so many skins by default. Even WordPress — what appears to be the aim of a lot of these paragraphs – only bundles one single skin. So MonoBook/Vector/Modern are quite enough for the standard tarball.

My intended outcome of the "review" was indeed that we would package MonoBook in the tarball for all, and everyone could then pick others later. But this is still a decision/review - even if it's just you and me deciding.

My overview on our current skins:

• Nostalgia and Standard / Classic: These are ancient legacy skins. The legacy code necessitated by how they lay things out completely differently than how SkinTemplate does it actively interferes with skin development and adding new features and extensions that happen to add something as simple as a link somewhere in the UI. Hence these two should be completely purged.
• Cologne Blue: This one was a legacy skin. Though it's being fixed up so it no longer is one. However even though it's fixed doing so is necessarily done with the use of hacks. The design is outdated and not very fitting for a standard skin. And the inflexibility and incorrect use of core UI also make it not a fit standard skin. So my recommendation is to package this up into a standalone skin and offer it for download by anyone who wants it.
• MonoBook: MonoBook is out of date. The techniques it's based on have improved since back then. It is a usability burden because it still does things in ways we know are not friendly to readers (eg: Search bars should never be part of the sidebar like that). I wish people would stop using it on their wikis, period. Unfortunately there is probably still too much weight on MonoBook for us to turn it into a standalone skin so it'll probably stay.
• Modern: I'm unsure about this one. Some users seem to like it. It's attempt at being a MonoBook replacement was a failure though. I'm not sure if we could get away with turning it into a standalone skin.
• Vector: This one is our current default skin so naturally it says.
• MySkin: This one should just go. The idea of trying to create a custom skin this way is a failure. There is no base css included, so you have to re-implement things you should not be reimplementing. And it's based on MonoBook which is out of date and should no longer be the basis of any new design. And besides this MySkin is an act of hostility towards the user. Anyone curious enough to try enabling MySkin just to try it out will be met with a completely un-intuitive view and will struggle to return things to normal. So this should disappear asap.
• Chick: Chick is basically the only non-legacy vertical-only design. However it's not the best way to do that kind of theme and it is potentially confusing for the curious user who tries it out. I believe that Chick was introduced as a skin users could switch to when they use mobile browsers. However for that we are working on MobileFrontend. So I think Chick should become a standalone skin for whoever actually wants it.
• Simple: This one was introduced by some users who personally didn't want any skin clutter. Mostly under the pretense of it speeding things up. However with ResourceLoader's optimization and the fact that piles of JS are still loaded by default in skin this position is frankly highly debatable. And the desire to have no actual theme is a narrow power-user request. So I think this skin should no longer be included in the tarball and made standalone, but still installed in WMF wikis for those users obsessed with that pov.

The problem with killing off the older skins is that people well respond by tying formatting and templates far more tightly into whatever the current skin is. By supporting older skins you maintain an advocacy group (thats been around long enough to have some influence) for keeping such things at least vaguely skin independent.Geni (talk) 04:47, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

We still have at least 3 different standard skins. There is still plenty of skin variance to take into account. And even without it the advocating users aren't going to simply disappear, they don't exist just because we have other skins.