63403 - Update Theme Documentation for Mozilla 1.0/Netscape 7.0

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Developer Documentation Graveyard :: General, defect)

Comment 1

[Rafael Ebron (:rebron)]

Reassigning to Ian.  

Comment 2

[Edmundo Gonzalez]

There will be some updated documentation available on the "6.1" Theme Park.  
Probably not much of anything new for 6.1 beta, however.

Comment 3

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

I am putting together an outline of some new theme documentation, which I ought
to have ready in a couple of weeks. I will borrow as much as I can from the
"brownhen" theme doc that's sitting now at the Theme Park, but really most of
that is too old and too NS6 specific to be useful, and I'd rather start over
with something more practical and concise.

I'll be working with german next week on this. I'd like the retire the brownhen
doc once we have this new doc up there.

Comment 4

[hangas]

Might want to include some text in that documentation that explains that skins
will only work with a single release of the browser.  Each new release requires
updates in the theme to allow it to work with that release.

Comment 5

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

Thanks, Paul
Will this continue to be true? I thought that with these most recent updates, we
were more confident that themes would stay the way they are.

Comment 6

[hangas]

Not exactly.  The ongoing efforts to improve the product will break skins for
every release.  I think this is OK so long as we understand and communicate this
information.  Currently there are changes checked in that convert some trees
with images to outliner; these will break the existing themes.  There are more
changes like this coming before we have the next release.  We also expect to see
updates to XUL which will cause us to modify the skins.  It would be possible
for a vendor to do work on a branch to avoid such skin bustage for a minor
release, but all major releases will break the skin in some way.

There was work done to improve the situation, and we even hoped that we would
get to a point where themes would not break between releases.  This just is not
possible.  The themes are now in a state where they are easy to maintain and
easier to turn into a new theme, but the product will always be changing
underneath the themes so the themes will need to follow.

Comment 7

[Edmundo Gonzalez]

Ian, let me know when you've got the documentation updated so I can make any
changes to the site as necessary.

Comment 8

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

Will do, Edmundo. I am making good progress, so I ought to have something ready
pretty soon.

Maintaing the document in the meantime at (internal link):
http://jazz/users/oeschger/publish/themes/index.html

Comment 9

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

I am maintaining updates in the aforementioned publish/ directory. Also handed
over a zip to rafael for publication (whenever he can) on the
home.netscape.com/themes/ site *in place of* those existing docs, all of which
should probably be retired.

I will work on a second document that describes how to do what's in this first
doc but without ThemeWrap or other tools. Might be more like an addendum to the
first doc.

Comment 10

[Matt Chaput]

I realize this is developers talking conservatively about the nature of software
, but I hope the official party line is a little more optimistic about the
ability to maintain themes across releases (as in, no or at most aesthetic
breakage across point releases, and conversion tool for major releases). Because
this sounds like the old Mozilla stereotype of putting internal code concerns
ahead of users' concerns.

I was thinking about developing a theme, but there's no point if it and the
theme building tools are just going to break every few months. I seriously doubt
the few themes that have been developed so far will be updated anytime soon
either. It sounds like a Sisyphean task with no support or sympathy from the
developers.

BTW, when converting one-off trees to the outliner, shouldn't themes already
have general outliner gfx included? If not, can't the app include general gfx
that can be overridden by the theme? Why would that break the theme? Pardon my
ignorance about the internal issues. But I hope in addition to the other
improvements you're making that necessitate changing themes, you can include
improvements that make themes less fragile.

Comment 11

[David Hallowell]

I'm assuming Netscape is not working on the 6.1 docs anymore saying that 6.2 is
now out. Perhaps this should now be a tracking bug for documentation for themes
for the MachV/Moz1.0 release (if so update summary to avoid someone filing a dup). 

Comment 12

[James Cox]

accepting QA for mozilla developer docs.

some of these bugs have been around for a _long_ time. Reporters, would you
please review the bugs, see if the issues have been resolved, and close bugs
appropriately.

I will do a full review of all bugs not touched in one week (8th April). 

Thanks.

</spam>

Comment 13

[Ian Oeschger (gone)]

moving stuff over to an outside-the-firewall email for the time being, looking
for people to pick these Help and doc bugs up for me.

Comment 14

[R.J. Keller]

Ian Oeschger is no longer working on mozilla. This needs to be reassigned to
someone else or resolved.

Comment 15

[Daniel Wang]

-> nobody. add helpwanted

Comment 16

[Robert Morris]

Taking, as I think I might be able to do this--but no guarantees.

Just two questions. Is it OK to use this Netscape guide as the base and update
as needed, or would that create copyright problems? Also, where would the final
document be hosted, since we all know what happened with Netscape?

Comment 17

[Daniel Wang]

*** Bug 170192 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Anne (:annevk)]

What is that status here?

Comment 19

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

The status is that the odds of anyone writing theme documentation for Mozilla 1.0 at this point is vanishingly small, and if they want to, we've got plenty of wikis where they can just do it.