dev@woodstock.java.net

Re: themes and css and look and feel etc

From: Bob Yennaco <Bob.Yennaco_at_Sun.COM>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:17:30 -0400
You seem to have 2 complaints here:  1) inability to create your own page layout, and 2) you can't easily swap in a customized theme.

There are no restrictions on page layout.  You can position the components anywhere you want.

As for 2):  You're at a disadvantage at not knowing the long history behind the components, which was an effort to enforce a specific look-and-feel (theme) to a specific target of web application developers.  It was NOT targetted as a general toolkit for the vast audience of "high-powered" developers.  As the components became more widely accepted over time, requirements started coming in to make the theme more easily editable, or to allow people to create their own themes from scratch.  But that's a hugely disruptive change to make while still trying to support the original charter and not de-stabilize the components.  It is what it is at this time and the fact that the components went open-source doesn't change any of this.

BillR wrote:
I am leery about this whole theme business.  Is there anyway to totally ditch the themes and just construct stuff using my own CSS?   I am staying away from Netbeans visual web since it seems to difficult to make things look the way I want them to using established technology and using divs etc a la CSS Zen Garden.

I would be much happier if you provided a mechanism to create bare bones web pages with the cool components, allowing me to create my own layouts.  It is a shame that back end and component developers keep insisting on forcing people to design their web pages according to their look and feel and not allow them to lay things out with established technology and is something they are comfortable with....   Please stop complicating things and needlessly forcing us to learn new cumbersome tools to do things we already can do more simply. 

Some of the goals of good web design are to separate the presentation from the application code.  You are putting them back together.  STOP IT.  :-/  Please.  Let me remind you of the first section of your theme documentation on your wiki: 

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"This document will try to introduce the features and capabilities of the Woodstock Theme implementation. The expectation is that the developer will be able to perform the following tasks with the help of this document. But this document is not intended to be the only resource needed to successfully perform these tasks. For example creating a component jar with theme support or creating a theme will most likely require more intimate knowledge of the theme implementation including reading java documentation and source code.
  1. Modify theme characteristics at the application level.
  2. Understand how theme properties for components can be defined and delivered in a jar file or application
  3. Understand how to create a new theme distinct from webui-jsf-suntheme.jar. This is a very difficult task and this document cannot guarantee that a successful alternate theme can be created that drastically alters the theme implementation from the standard webui-jsf-suntheme.jar implementation."
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and this:
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" Creating a theme is a very difficult and time consuming task. There are a large number of CSS selectors, images, Javascript files, and HTML templates that are all interrelated. A change to one can have undesirable effects on another. For example a CSS selector definition and Javascript may be dependent on the HTML used to represent a component."
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A shame.  I have learned in life that if I have a question, many others in the room likely do too.  Similarly, if I don't want to use this or any other visual web tool because of you make it too difficult for me to create my own look and page design, then for sure there are many others who feel the same way.

Good luck, but I think I will look elsewhere.

Cheers.