Manual:Gallery of user styles/Victoria

Download version 0.0.1a: here

• Based on: (not specified)
• Author: FreedomFighterSparrow, Kol-Zchut Ltd.
• Compatible with MediaWiki version(s): 1.17
• Last updated: (unknown)
• Description: A skin focused on readers, not editors, in soothing hues of blue

Please note: this skin cannot be used out of the box - see #Caveats. For now it is a demonstration only, with the hopes it could be useful. Stay tuned ;-)

Background

Victoria started out as Victor, a fork of MediaWiki's default skin, Vector. It was a crude hack that didn't improve much (or at all) on the original, and mainly removed elements that we did not need. In time, we came to realize we have completely different needs from those that Vector was designed to meet, and therefore Victor had to become the much prettier Victoria.

What's different about this skin?

Vector (and our derivative, Victor) was designed with editors and editing in mind. However, unlike Wikipedia, Kol-Zchut is a closed wiki, working with a limited number of editors; as such, the interface should be mostly reader-oriented, which means hiding, well, almost everything.

Structure/Design

Victoria's screen is divided thus:

1. header, fixed in place, sub-divided into:
   1. Actual header, with logo, slogan, search and other site-wide controls
   2. Article heading, with article-specific controls (change request, facebook like, watch).
2. Main content area.
3. Footer, showing readers links for about, contact, license, etc, while also showing additional links only to editors:
   1. Page-specific (linked pages, linked changes, etc.)
   2. User-specific: user page, preferences, watchlist
4. Editor toolbar, displayed only to editors, obviously, fixed to the bottom of the screen – this holds all the editing functions – edit, delete, move, protect, etc...

Victoria has no sidebar; instead, search is located in the header, while interlanguage links are located in-page (using another extension, WRLanguageLinks).

Caveats

The current code is quite messy and still very much Kol-Zchut specific; we've begun the process of decoupling and also simply removed some of our specific code from this release, but it's just a start. For now it is provided as-is, as an example of a different skin, along with our sincere hopes of being able to clean it up for the general public someday. Current issues:

1. There are no configuration switches for easy customization
2. It still requires some small hacks in MediaWiki core (resources/Resources.php). This will be cleared up soon, hopefully, as I have been pointed at the right direction by user:Dantman and User:Jack_Phoenix.
3. This skin does not completely conform to current MediaWiki skin conventions, and therefore might not play nicely with extensions or future MediaWiki upgrades – for example, some relied-upon HTML containers might be missing.
4. Victoria was primarily developed with Hebrew (an RTL language) in mind. While we do have an English environment, and the entire skin is translated and tested, some glitches definitely could have slipped through the cracks in LTR.
5. Not modular at all; Has several widgets that cannot be turned off without actually editing the file, and no configuration option to add others. This will probably be cleaned up later, with configuration switches and a proper hook:
   1. Font-resizing widget
   2. Facebook Like Button (for the current page, not for a Facebook page)
6. It has skin-specific messages; for now, these reside in another extension, which must be installed as well.
7. JavaScript issues (Victoria.js, collapsetables.js):
   1. It is assumed that all editors belong to the (non-default) "editor" user group. This should be changed to a UserCan( 'edit' ) call, if available in JS, or else allowed to be customized
   2. Currently using collapsetables.js. This is not needed with MW1.18, where a jQuery plugin (jQuery.makeCollapsible) exists, using classes "mw-collapsible" and "mw-collapsed" and "mw-collapsible-content" (see Manual:Collapsible_elements). If you are using mw1.18, you can remove this dependency (in Resources.php) and delete collapsetables.js.

Download

• Skin: ZIP file on Mediafire.com, or source on GitHub.com
• Accompanying messages extension (required): ZIP file on Mediafire.com, or source on GitHub.com

Installation

1. Download Victoria skin and extension
2. Extract the skin to skins/
3. Extract the extension to extensions/
4. Add the following line to LocalSettings.php: require_once( "$IP/extensions/Victoria/Victoria.php" );
5. Enter the following code into resources/Resources.php, right after the 'skins.vector' array:

	/* WR 14-07-2011: Must register skin:Victoria modules with ResourceLoader.
	 * FIXME: Ugly hack. Should be declared inside Victoria.php
	 */
	'skins.victoria' => array(
		'scripts' => array( 'victoria/victoria.js', 'victoria/collapsetables.js' ),
		'styles' => array( 'victoria/screen.css' => array( 'media' => 'screen' ),
				   'victoria/print.css' => array( 'media' => 'print' ) ),
		'dependencies' => array( 'jquery.cookie', 'jquery.client' ),
		'messages' => array( 'wr-browser-is-ancient' ),
		'remoteBasePath' => $GLOBALS['wgStylePath'],
		'localBasePath' => $GLOBALS['wgStyleDirectory'],
	),

6. Replace skins/victoria/newimages/logo.png with your own logo.
7. Hold your breath and hope it works.

License

Being a fork of Vector and generally using MediaWiki code, Victoria is available under the same license, GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). Images specific to this skin (under the newimages directory) are licensed CC BY-SA, version 2.5 or later, ported or not, with attribution to "Kol-Zchut Ltd. (www.kolzchut.org.il)". We'd very much appreciate an attribution for the skin itself, but that's up to you :-)