TWiki Skins

Skins overlay regular templates with alternate header/footer layouts; topic text is not affected

Overview

Skins are customized TWikiTemplates files. You can use skins to change the look of a TWiki topic, for example, the layout of the header and footer. Rendered text between header and footer does not change. You can also use skins to define an alternate view, like a view optimized for printing.

Defining Skins

Skin files are located in the twiki/templates directory and are named with the syntax: <scriptname>.<skin>.tmpl. For example, the Printable skin for the view template is view.print.tmpl. Skin files may also be defined in TWiki topics - see TWikiTemplates for details.

Use the existing TWikiTemplates (like view.tmpl) or skin files as a base for your own skin, name it for example view.myskin.tmpl.

Note: Two skin names have reserved meanings; text skin, and skin names starting with rss have hard-coded meanings.

The following template files are referenced in the TWiki core code, and must be defined in the templates directory for a skin to work. Remember that if a skin doesn't define a template, then TWiki will fall back to the default version of the file.

Certain template files are expected to provide certain TMPL:DEFs - these are listed in sub-bullets.

• addform
• attachagain
• attachnew
• attachtables
  • ATTACH:files:footer, ATTACH:files:header, ATTACH:files:row, ATTACH:versions:footer, ATTACH:versions:header, ATTACH:versions:row
• changeform
• changes
• edit
• form
• formtables
  • FORM:display:footer, FORM:display:header, FORM:display:row
• login
  • LOG_IN, LOG_IN_BANNER, LOG_OUT, LOGGED_IN_BANNER, NEW_USER_NOTE, UNRECOGNISED_USER
• mirrorlink
• mirrornote
• moveattachment
• oopsaccessdenied
  • no_such_topic, no_such_web, only_group, topic_access
• oopsattention
  • already_exists, bad_email, bad_ver_code, bad_wikiname, base_web_missing, confirm, created_web, delete_err, illegally_named_upload, invalid_web_color, invalid_web_name, in_a_group, mandatory_field, merge_notice, missing_action, missing_fields, move_err, missing_action, no_form_def, no_users_to_reset, notwikiuser, oversized_upload, password_changed, password_mismatch, problem_adding, remove_user_done, rename_err, rename_not_wikiword, rename_topic_exists, rename_web_err, rename_web_exists, rename_web_prerequisites, reset_bad, reset_ok, save_error, send_mail_error, thanks, topic_exists, unrecognized_action, web_creation_error, web_exists, web_missing, wrong_password, zero_size_upload
• oopsleaseconflict
  • active, old
• oopsmirror
• oopssaveerr
• preview
• rdiff
• registernotify
• registernotifyadmin
• rename
• renameconfirm
• renamedelete
• renameweb
• renamewebconfirm
• renamewebdelete
• searchbookview
• searchformat
• search
• settings
• view

Variables in Skins

You can use template variables, TWikiVariables, and other predefined variables to compose your skins. Some commonly used variables in skins:

The "Go" Box and Navigation Box

The %WEBTOPICLIST% includes a "Go" box, also called "Jump" box, to jump to a topic. The box also understands URLs, e.g. you can type http://www.google.com/ to jump to an external web site. The feature is handy if you build a skin that has a select box of frequently used links, like Intranet home, employee database, sales database and such. A little JavaScript gets into action on the onSelect method of the select tag to fill the selected URL into the "Go" box field, then submits the form.

Here is an example form that has a select box and the "Go" box for illustration purposes. You need to have JavaScript enabled for this to work:

Using Cascading Style Sheets

Although work is underway at TWiki:Codev.CssClassNames, the regular templates files currently do not use style sheets. Many skin developers, however, choose to use them; it helps in separating style from content.

Example: To use a style sheet for the broadcast message, add this to view.myskin.tmpl:

<style type="text/css">
.broadcastmessage {
    background: yellow; display:block;
    border-style:solid;border-width: 2px;border-color:red;
}
.broadcastmessage strong {color: red}
</style>

Then add a div tag to the %BROADCASTMESSAGE% variable located after the #PageTop anchor or after the opening form tag:

<div class="broadcastmessage"> %BROADCASTMESSAGE% </div>

Attachment Tables

The format of standard attachment tables is defined through the use of special TWiki template macros which by default are defined in the templates/twiki.tmpl template using the %TMPL:DEF macro syntax described in TWikiTemplates. These macros are:

The ATTACH:row macros are expanded for each file in the attachment table, using the following special tags:

Note: it is easy to change the look and feel for an entire site by editing the twiki.tmpl template file. However, to simplify upgrading, you should avoid doing this. Instead, write a skin-specific template file e.g. attach.myskin.tmpl and use %TMPL:INCLUDE{attach.myskin.tmpl}% to include it in each of your skin files. As long as it is included after twiki.tmpl, your macro definitions will override the defaults defined there.

Packaging and Publishing Skins

See TWiki:Plugins/SkinPackagingHowTo and TWiki:Plugins/SkinDeveloperFAQ

Browsing Installed Skins

You can try all installed skins in TWikiSkinBrowser.

Activating Skins

TWiki uses a skin search path, which lets you combine skins additively. The skin path is defined using a combination of TWikiVariables and URL parameters.

TWiki works by asking for a template for a particular function - for example, 'view'. The detail of how templates are searched for is described in TWikiTemplates, but in summary, the templates directory is searched for a file called view.skin.tmpl, where skin is the name of the skin e.g. pattern. If no template is found, then the fallback is to use view.tmpl. Each skin on the path is searched for in turn. For example, if you have set the skin path to local,pattern then view.local.tmpl will be searched for first, then view.pattern.tmpl and finally view.tmpl.

The basic skin is defined by setting the %SKIN% TWiki Variable:

• Set SKIN = catskin, bearskin

You can also add a parameter to the URL, such as ?skin=catskin, bearskin. Example activation of PlainSkin that removes all page decoration:

• /bin/view/TWiki/TWikiSkins?skin=plain

Setting %SKIN% (or the ?skin parameter in the URL) replaces the existing skin path setting. You can also extend the existing skin path as well, using covers.

• Set COVER = ruskin

This pushes a different skin to the front of the skin search path (so for our example above, that final skin path will be ruskin, catskin, bearskin). There is also an equivalent cover URL parameter.

The full skin path is built up as follows: %SKIN% (or ?skin if it is set), then %COVER% is added, then ?cover.

Hard Coded Skins

The text skin is reserved for TWiki internal use.

Skin names starting with rss also have a special meaning; if one or more of the skins in the skin path starts with 'rss' then 8-bit characters will be encoded as XML entities in the output, and the content-type header will be forced to text/xml.

Related Topics: AdminDocumentationCategory, DeveloperDocumentationCategory

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