21
vamptrix
Re: The future of XOOPS?
  • 2015/5/18 9:21

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


The really big issue is that the work isn't only on the theme front, but mainly on the modules. Almost all of them have hard coded HTML, as Bleekk mentioned, and that needs to be removed to get everything working smoothly. That means all frequently used modules need to be rewritten in terms of layout, which is a huge task.

How can the theme designers be involved more into the development of 2.6? I've tried to get it to run on both my local PC and my remote developement server, but it won't run on either one (strangely).



22
vamptrix
Re: The future of XOOPS?
  • 2015/5/11 19:00

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


The big issue with XOOPS theming is that it's very complex to do so.
What do I mean with that? XOOPS is burdened with the past, a lot of modules that are used often are quite old and are built years ago, and present all of their data and layout into table structures. However, since more than 10 years ago, designers have moved away from tables and more into div's and fluid layouts.
Tables are great for displaying data, but for layouts they're really the worst thing you can imagine. And that's a huge issue if you want to design for XOOPS: you have to keep in mind that almost everything is tabular, and if you want to work around that, you're basicly forced to write custom templates for every module, and there are a lot of those around.
The big issue with this is that in many themes, many modules render badly or are very hard to customize. Another thing which hurts us is that there isn't a "straight coding guide/style guide", every module developer has his own style and way of working. What this means is that every module looks different and is hard to style.
On WordPress, you don't have this issue: it's a blog by nature but can be used as a CMS, and in general plugins style themselves to look "okay" or "good". We don't have that here. A module can be shown awesomely in 1 theme, but look horrible in another one. We basicly need 1 or 2 theme frameworks to which all modules are written, but it will be a huge task to rewrite everything to that new standard/framework. A lot of work has been done in xBootstrap, but there's still a lot to do there. I've been working for weeks on a port of Foundation to XOOPS and it's really staggering how much work you need to do to get things to look right. You can port it over to XOOPS easily, but making it look Okay is very hard.

Currently, for me, the biggest issue in theming is not that it is too hard, but that it is way too much work to support all of the modules. We need to port those over to Bootstrap (not in the themes, but in the modules themselves!), and should push for new modules to be based on bootstrap themselves too. That way it's going to be a lot easier to theme stuff: if module developers design their modules using default Bootstrap elements, we just need to modify those default elements. Right now every module does things their own way, which is bloody hard to override.

As for documentation and the status of that, I'm working with Mamba (Michael) to get things done there too, but the wiki on XOOPS has quite a few issues and doesn't allow image uploads so that's blocking our progress. We're looking into a solution for that now.
The idea that I have is to have a wiki that everybody can edit, but only focussing on English and to have a basic article ready about everything and expand later. But first, a good foundation to work on and we're ready to go a long way.

I'm also a fan of a redesign of the XOOPS website (the current design dates from 2009! already, it can use a few updates). But once again, the modules underneath need the real update... :P If you want to know what hard is, try to theme the forums. It's a big pain to do so!



23
vamptrix
Re: xBootstrap XOOPS Theme - Development
  • 2015/4/21 13:57

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


I've been working for a while on a project of mine, and during that I gazed through the obituaries templates of xBootstrap.

What I noticed is that there is a lot of directly applied/inline styling that has been applied, making it impossible to override it with CSS files. An example of this can be found on https://github.com/angelorocha/xbootstrap/blob/master/modules/obituaries/obituaries_users.html.

Here you can see several things:
* Inline the following rules are being made, which should be removed (.heyula shouldn't be there, should be something like .obituaries):
<style type="text/css"> .heyula { list-stylenonemargin0padding0; } .heyula li {width10%; floatleft;}  </style>

* Onhttps://github.com/angelorocha/xbootstrap/blob/master/modules/obituaries/obituaries_user.html there is an extreme lot of direct inline styling.

I'll try to submit an update for this once I find the time (I'm currently moving, so really busy time for me). :)



24
vamptrix
Re: if someone with excellent XOOPS knowledge has some time to check
  • 2015/3/6 19:31

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


It looks absolutely gorgeous and stunning chco2!
Nice job!



25
vamptrix
Re: The future of XOOPS?
  • 2015/3/6 17:10

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


It's actually an image from the Guild Wars 2 website, taken from their wallpapers. I'm quite a fan of the game, and I often tend to go there for placeholder images.
The image used is this one:https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/wallpapers/5bdc80318_BfLA-A-1920x1080.jpg.
The image, and the text I've written with it both reflect to Lion's Arch (what you see is the ruins of Lion's Arch and the lion statue in it). Lion's Arch has been attacked several times in the past in the game (first time by the Mad King, who destroyed the statue, but the statue was rebuilt after a few months). It has been attacked later on by the Karka, who destroyed the oldest building in the city, the Lighthouse. After that, Scarlet invaded Lion's Arch and destroyed it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2S5siA_ML4). It's still destroyed in game, even after a year, but slowly, you see things coming back to it. The text I wrote reflects on that, not XOOPS. :). I hate using Lorem Ipsum.
The second image in the slider is also from Guild Wars 2, and I've uploaded an image of that as well (specially for you xoobaru): Resized Image
.

It's really not needed to search a conspiracy behind my post, I simply started writing a post, and this thread grew out of it. A personal outcry, perhaps. But there is nothing more behind it.
I'm not creating a problem either, as what I did was posting my personal opinion. Everybody is entitled to that.
I haven't done nothing either: since my last post I've starting updating the wiki (currently waiting on a reply from Michael for some information I need, concering the Basic Module Pack), starting building templates on it and recording video's.
I'm also working on both the Newoni theme (which is the theme that I've posted the screenshots for) and xFoundation.
xFoundation is my alternative for xBootstrap (as I'm used to working with Foundation, working with Bootstrap is really slow/hard for me. Foundation is kind of rusted in).

Foundation is, just like Bootstrap, a CSS framework, but made by ZURB. It does more or less the same than what Bootstrap does, but it does so in another way.

xFoundation is however quite different from xBootstrap, as it's more a blank base theme rather than an actual theme. I'm adding nothing to xFoundation in terms of styling. It's just a port of Foundation to XOOPS.

And, as for what I've ment with my first post, you have just confirmed it: it has been a long time since you've been on this site. So first of all, welcome back. I've checked your latests posts, which date from 2013, and you seem like you have been a really helpful member. So why were you gone? People like you can be used here :).

I also support all of the people behind XOOPS, those that are working hard. I've got all my respects for Michael (Mamba), Bitcero, Geekwright, Bleekk, chco2, AngeloRocha and many others (I've forgotten a ton of people, but I can't mention all the members here ofcourse).
But that doesn't mean we don't have to look critical at what we have now, at what needs to be done. And that's what this post is all about: not about breaking things, but pointing out things and start working on fixing them. Because that's the way to go forward, not ignoring them and wait, but pointing them out and change them.
It's small things that go a long way. An example that I've pointed out, but I'm waiting for feedback on, is the module repository. I've suggested (and worked out) making a wiki page (https://xoops.org/modules/mediawiki/index.php?title=Basic_Module_Pack) which lists all the modules we recommend using right now. The problem is that I myself had issues locating which modules are in that pack and what the latest versions are, so that I have to wait until confirmed that those are indeed the latest versions. Once that page is ready, we can put a block on the module repository pointing to that page. That way people will be able to locate the most recent versions of the modules in the pack.

Now that I'm going, another thing that I've suggested is that on the download page (where you go when you click the orange get XOOPS button) there's a link to instructions about how to translate XOOPS, but it links through to a really outdated post with instructions that aren't correct anymore (XOOPS is now translated using Transifex). We should update that (and I can't do that).

If we can fix those little issues, and point them out, someone with the rights to modify them can actually change those. And that will help us all in the long term.

So, I'm asking you xoobaru, please help me with finding those small things, become active in the XOOPS community again. That will help us forward. I'm not here to break things, insult people or god knows what.
I'm trying to change things around ;)

Kevin



26
vamptrix
Re: Where do you include your JS?
  • 2015/2/25 23:33

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


I prefer to use it in the header, but footer is better for loading times.
All in all, I think it comes down to personal choice.



27
vamptrix
Re: The future of XOOPS?
  • 2015/2/25 22:57

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


I'm doing my best to contribute, Bleekk, but everything takes time :P
I've started yesterday to modify the wiki, started making templates, writing articles and more.

I've also started working on a new theme, which is coming together quite nicely for the few hours that I've been working on it. It still needs a ton of work, as I'm likely going to modify all of the templates to make sure everything looks and reacts like I want to, but in general I'm glad with the result!
It's based on xBootstrap, which in my opinion is the best base theme you can get.
Here's an image of how it's looking right now Resized Image
(click for full image).

Feedback is welcome :)



28
vamptrix
Re: The future of XOOPS?
  • 2015/2/24 23:54

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


Michael, I'm not here to bash XOOPS, but I've noted things that stopped me before from helping. I'd like to help, starting immediately, with several things:
* Documentation. It's the thing that we need most of all. The problem that I have with Gitbook is stated in a post above, namingly no global search (which is really needed). We don't need a collection of ebooks, we need a central place of information that is easily searchable.
While I'm typing this I was trying to figure out if I can do something with the current wiki in place, but it's hard to find a starting point.

* Cleaning up the repository/theme gallery/forums. I'd like to help with this too, but right now I can't. Is there an easy to find list with updated modules right now? We should put a notice on top of the module repository that points to that list.

If you can point me the right way with this, I'll help instantly as much as I can.



29
vamptrix
Re: The future of XOOPS?
  • 2015/2/24 23:44

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


Something which should also (in my opinion) be deleted is the Xoops Forge (http://dev.xoops.org/). It hasn't been used in ages and is kind of useless right now.

I suggest we create 1 central pool of documentation instead of the multiple sources we have right now: Xoops Forge, the XOOPS wiki on this site, the FAQ, Gitbook. It's simply spread in way too many locations.

An example of a system with great documentation is CodeIgniter (http://www.codeigniter.com/userguide3/), this is what all documentation should be: simple and easy to find the information with clear information.
In my opinion, Gitbook isn't really the solution we need because it has 1 huge disadvantage: search. Everything is separated in several different books, which means that you can only search in 1 book at a time. This is a huge disadvantage!

In my opinion a simple Wiki-approach might be best, but it looks to me that it would be better to use a seperate script for this. If we use a XOOPS module for that we risk that the module won't be updated which is really not what we want (and look at the MediaWiki module, it isn't updated often at all).

A seperate wiki has everything we need:
* Multiple users can work on it
* Everybody can contribute to it
* It is easy, everybody can do it
* Global search
* There are tons of good wiki's that show off that this is a good system
* History is kept and can be rolled back (abuse can be repaired)
* Not dependent on a third party service. Gitbook might be here now, but I've seen enough third party services shut down on a short notice to not trust them with something like documentation.

I'd like to hear the meaning of others about this though.



30
vamptrix
Re: The future of XOOPS?
  • 2015/2/24 17:59

  • vamptrix

  • Theme Designer

  • Posts: 424

  • Since: 2008/5/3 1


Quote:

Bleekk wrote:
Vamptrix, you are speaking right of my soul.

The situation right now is really a mess.
Behind closed doors I have already spoken to mamba and asked for changes that needs to be done.

What I think should happen:

- get the 2.5.x core boostrap ready
- take the main 10 - 12 Modules and make bootstrap templates
- only support bootstrap theme / template development, which means break dependencies with old themes
- put all old themes and modules in a archive. offer only the main modules for download
- get the main modules to the final version
- set up one place for the module / core development (GitHub)
- with xoops 2.6 we should break all dependecies with the old core! let us start from 0. with a new core, new features without losing time with old stuff.

Right now I am setting up a new german xoops website, with which I am trying to meet all the above named points. I have to say that this is really really hard job.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Right now we are working on testing / getting the main modules to the final version. Also there is effort to get all modules to the github where the development will be supported.
Everyone is welcome to test the mymenus RC version which is published in the forums. New modules will be published for testing.
But I have no hope that all this points will be done very fast.


I fully agree with you that breaking with the past might be the best thing to do.
With the update to Smarty 3.1 and so much changes, it might be better to throw everything overboard. Most of what we have, with some exceptions, is severely outdated.
In this case I feel it's better to start anew rather than trying to update everything. That's just something with no end in this case.




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