Skinning & Invision Community Suite 4

[wimg]

We have probably all read that it will be easier to de any skinning for the upcoming new suite release.

I would like to express here a request I have for set-up of CSS files and templates, just in case ;).

I have been converting a complex skin from 3.1.4 to 3.4.4, and I find that a few areas are virtually unaccessible from the templates, let alone from CSS. Examples are parts of the sideblocks, and the hovercard, such as closing and opening activities on sideblocks and sidebars, and buttons and links in the hovercard.

Things which used to work fine in 3.1.x, can no longer be implemented in 3.4.x other than rewriting parts of the actual php and/or javascript code. This is not an option for me, and likely not for many other skinners out there either. Personally, I wouldn't know how I could distribute such a skin to a non-technical user, and I couldn't write the code to do so either - I am a beginner at php and javascript, even though I do understand development well enough, and was a competent enough developer a bunch of years ago.

As a skinner I want to be able to determine exactly how a structural interface items looks and works, and unfortunately I can't now, as I don't have enough fine-grained control over these items. There is the simple set-up of badges (ipsBadge) for example: I can make them look pretty nifty when accessible from a template, as I would have to add a few tags and some css here and there, but this is really impossible with e.g. hovercards. Similarly with open and close "buttons" in the sideblocks - those are x-es and ellipsises now, and the way they are controlled, it is virtually impossible to have one's own set of controls - it even appears impossible to make them go away to just replace them with a single graphical element.

It looks to me as if a minimalistic approach was taken here, which in itself Is fine if one likes such an approach, but if one doesn't, it should be possible to override them, and I certainly personally just can't right now (3.4.x).

I would therefore like to urgently request that all and every single UI elements can be made user definable in templates and CSS, to the degree that an override can always be created, f.e., to create multi-element graphical buttons, and similar type structures.

Anyway, I do hope the development team will be able to take this into account.

Kindest regards, Wim

[bfarber]

While our intention is to make the interface as customizable as possible out of the box, if you find any areas once you get your hands on 4.0 that are not customizable enough please do feel free to point them out. During development, however, we won't be hardcoding items in the source code and things of that nature, however.

[wimg]

Thank you, Brandon, your reply is much appreciated, and takes away my concerns as well!

Warm regards, Wim