I'm getting really close on getting the SkinBrowser fully
working now. It's able to load the available skins from the package
repository based on the package key (for instance "blog4umbraco")
and it's done through AJAX with help from the wonderful jQuery.load
method (can you remember how frustrating these things could be
prior to that?!?). While the current UI needs a good deal of polish
the most important thing is that it works. You can click a skin and
it'll save the reference to the skin as the property.
The idea is to then fetch the skin zip-file from the package
repository when you save through an event handler. It'll then
download and unzip the skin as well as create a new stylesheet in
Umbraco and then finally store a reference to the stylesheet path
as the value of the SkinBrowser property. This means that it can be
fetched in our template using a very simple recursive call such
as:
<umbraco:Item runat="server" id="skin" Field="css"
recursive="true />
Cool - now we just need real data. We need your
help!
So now that the functionality is in place it's time for some
data and I've requested some help both on Twitter and Our.
Basically all the nice thumbnails above are just bogus in the way
that their actual skin zip file is the same - doh. And if you're a
html/css ninja with spare time before Christmas it's time to ask
yourself "How can I not spend a couple of late night hours
converting a Wordpress theme" - and the answer is of course "YES".
Go find a sweet a nice WP theme with an open source license or if
you have the talent and time create your own design. Make it
compatible with the blog4umbraco markup, produce a skin file and
upload it to the skin service (details).
Remember that an blog4umbraco skin is css and images only.
Before you begin making a skin:
- I've just been told that we're polishing the markup on
blog4umbraco to match the K2 theme markup. So wait until later
Thursday (the 17th after 12.00 GMT+1) to begin as we'll post the
updated markup samples here
- To ensure that people don't work on the same skins, leave
a comment with what skin you're creating and when it'll be
ready.
As I'm known for being ridiculous optimistic, I'm hoping that
Friday the 18th will reveal a blog4umbraco build with a completely
done and polished SkinBrowser as well as the first couple of skins
available. Let's see if I was too optimistic this time ;-)
Get skin support for your package
If you're producing a public package and like to get skin
support then get in
touch and we'll be happy to provide the Skinbrowser datatype as
well as the skin hosting service for free.