general purpose classes are certainly useful.. and I've always used them..
contextual css which specyfies an attribute for a given object it's really useful (like the general cursive class applied to a div with 'tablist' class...<div class="tablist cursive">)

in a theme may be you can have from five to ten general purpose classes.. but I've never see such a huge amount of classes specyfing the border width, the colors , twenty types of different width ecc ecc..
my opinion it's that we just have css language.. what exactly is the benefit of creating almost another language making the learning curve wider for new users/developers??
because I'm sure 100% of any theme designer know how to create a class for having a dotted border.. but no one knows and I can't understand why someone should learn it..

last but not least css it's not a markup language.. it has to be used for presentation semantics.. so if you apply an id/class or more than one to every single line of the html.. well css loses its function and there's almost no difference from writing inline style or html attributes

@kris
the question of aitor was related to hiding left/right columns on the Cssified default Xoops theme which I posted some days ago... which is a full css theme based on the work of Mathew James Taylor.. one of you proposed link..

the first two snippet of code you sent are related to central positioning of the block you say.. even if this is not related to this post this is to me the occasion to ask you what exactly that code should be used for.. you can explain to me if you want in another post..

I understand clearly the second snippet...
ok I did not use the $xoBlocks.canvasxxx new smarty variable..
but you are telling me that creating a smarty filter, assigning a smarty var, which apply a class to main page wrapper..
it's much simplier than this code in the head of theme.html??

I onestly don't think so... if you consider that the code above works in a full css, table less theme..
and also you think your code can work out of the xxxgenesis world?


the llink you sent in the end are interesting I know them.. but which is the relation with the topic?


@aitor
that module looks great.. please keep me updated about development..

@ghia, @mamba
than you for your support,
hope more people will join the discussion!
and in a few I'll post here a more detailed program

@aitor
I guess your post it's more about the theme I posted recently.. so I've answered you in another discussion wich you can find herehttps://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=72618&post_id=333466#forumpost333466

Ian

In answer to some requests I open this thread about the css version of the default Xoops theme. All the info at:https://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5679

@aitor
for hiding left/right blocks simply look at the code in the three style sheets named style-noCol.css, style-noLcol.css, style-noRcol.css.. they show you how to put left/right col or both width to zero, by simply changing values of four classes
In the head of theme.html you have a smarty filter which import the right css as setted up in blocks admin.

Size of columns depends from two main values:
*Left column > 'left' px value in #colmid
*Right column > 'margin-left' negative px value in #colright, but pay attention that this value is the total of left col width + right col width, so if you want a left column of 120px and a right column of 200px here is the code:



all the other values in #col1pad, #col2, #col3 should change accordingly to the values above.
Remember that #col1pad it the div that gives you the padding (distance) of the center content form side bar.

Hope this help you as a start
Ian

ps the real crashy thing could be having the possibility to use something like smarty variables in the css.. so setting up values could be really automatic..

Hi there Xoops users and developers,
in the last weeks I have spent some time in testing on the next to come Xoops version (2.5) and I was really delighted by the large improvements/add on in the admin side.
Talking about theming and templating as much as I was delighted by admin side I was equally frustrated by the user side, which is the same (more or less) which I ran into six years ago when I started playing with Xoops..
Something has been done surely.. but I feel to say clearly guys that Xoops is still a large step back from other cms and probably from real world theming...
From Xoops 2.5 I was expecting a change in this situation or at least a change in the general approach, for example a new more stylish css default theme (able to attract new user) or more clean templates..
This did not happen and by some point of view things seems to get even worse...
The problems I point out are mainly:
1) default theme/ system templates are still table based and sometimes kind of buggy or don't output a good/accessible layout
2) css is approached and structured in a unnecessary complex way

First point it's something we see from many years in Xoops.. you start with the default theme with a border with no padding around text (awful), you have unneeded tables in profile visualization and still you can't have an ordered/readable list of user activity in profile.. and much much else... everyone knows that if you want to do a good/stylish site with xoops you need to put some efforts in giving system templates a smarter look..

Second problem it’s just a matter of choosing what css should be used for..
The xoops.css style sheet in 2.5rc2 it’s 16kb large file (almost a jscript framework!) attached to every page and setting up a myriad of classes that should be used as standard in theming and templating..
so following that line if I want to style I div in my theme/module I should write something like:

Because almost every css attribute now has a class representing it for example:

… but guys this is not what css should be used for, it’s reverting back to inline style, because styling a div that way it’s the same of writing html attributes in the markup..
You have same approach in templates.. system_userinfo.html for example has a class (or more than one) for almost every html tag in the page.. it seems that has been forgotten that with css you can style directly html tag and that id/classes should be semantic (describe and style what the element contain) not merely contextual.
This way of organizing css make harder the work for a theme developer which for simply styling the user profile now have to deal with a large number of applied classes and should also know not only normal css language but also the ‘language’ imposed by the xoops.css file.
Well my opinion (and I guess I’m not the only one..) is that this complex and ‘non-standard’ way of approaching css and templating it’s not taking Xoops on a good road and it’s not helping the general growth which we all see in the project.. because we all know that people choose a cms also for the visual impression it receive from it at first test.. and people choose to develope for a cms when it sees solid and clean structure in code (and this apply to html/css also)

Now I want to be positive and propose possible solutions..
For point one I’ve ported a solid tableless, full css theme in Xoops environment transforming it in the default Xoops theme we all know, all te info are herehttps://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5679
For point two I’ve started ‘redrawing’ system templates in a more clean and also accessible way..
So on my test site you can see how things could be done looking at the source of the table showing infos about user, rewritten applying three simple class..http://xoopsing.isgreat.org/userinfo.php?uid=1
I’m planning to rewrite all the system templates following this line (and where possible avoiding tables..)

I don’t think mine it’s the best markup/style in the web, these are only one of the possible solution for a simpler, standard and accessible approach to theming/templating that a great project like Xoops should have.
Hope that this too much long post will open a constructive discussion and may be some of you guys would like to join me in building a solid theming project for Xoops able to set solid foundations and rules for theme and module developers.. later on I’ll write about this

Thank for your attention
Ian

Hi there,
Italian UTF-8 package, complete and tested for xoops version 2.4.5.

Download and support:http://www.xoopsitalia.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13117

Credits: Xoops Italia Staff

ps please let me know how to send the package in the sourceforge repository

Ian

as suggested by sailjapan the solutions to your problem is this I guess
https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=296801#forumpost296801

I advise you also that the code you quoted it's not right because of wrong comment filter, it should look like:

and it should solve blocks breaking when aligning some images to left/right

Ian

thanx for the appreciation guys..
really in a few I'll release a final version,
with more easy configs and some fixes...

Ian

some months ago I've developed a kind of little basic theme (usable also as a framework) calledd Minimalist wich reached the version 2 stage and I hope to release as final in a few..
- it is full css
- three/two/one column flexible
- crossbrowser
- has some blocks rewritten for accessibility/usability
- special zoom and accessible layout
.. look in the docs folder for documentation

you can download it here
http://www.xoopsitalia.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=796
and you can see it in action at the second link in my signature

Ian

@ghia
I think here they've simply copied the code from the main menu into some custom block.. generating the error...

anyway the id repetition comes with the cloning of main menu and user menu blocks.. for preventing this error the use of a class is the better as suggested..

@vamptrix
how can you say that ask for standard code means 'force' theme devolpers? html standards are used from ten years almost, if a theme writer dont' know how to use theme efficently it's a problem of the developer not of people asking for it.
I'm not a real developer and if I build some html/xhtml it'n not a big effort to put it in standards, considering also that many editors now give easy automatization on code compliance.. it's just a question of starting and setting your work on general xhtml+css rules, and the validator won't take more than one hour to be satisfied.

Ian