TWiki Skins

Skins overlay regular templates to give different looks and feels to TWiki screens.

Overview

TWiki uses TWikiTemplates files as the basis of all the screens it uses to interact with users. Each screen has an associated template file that contains the basic layout of the screen. This is then filled in by the code to generate what you see in the browser.

TWiki ships with a default set of template files that give a basic look-and-feel. TWiki also includes support for skins that can be selected to give different, more sophisticated, look and feels. A default TWiki installation will usually start up with the PatternSkin already selected. Skins may also be defined by third parties and loaded into a TWiki installation to give more options. To see how TWiki looks when no skin is selected, view this topic with a non-existant skin.

Topic text is not affected by the choice of skin, though a skin can be defined to use a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), which can sometimes give a radically different appearance to the text.

Changing the default TWiki skin

TWiki default ships with the skin PatternSkin activated. If you want to modify the layout, colors or even the templates to suit your own needs, have a look first at the topics PatternSkinCustomization and PatternSkinCssCookbook.

Defining Skins

You may want to define your own skin, for example to comply with corporate web guidelines, or because you have a aesthetic vision that you want to share.

Note:

The following template files are used for TWiki screens, and are referenced in the TWiki core code. If a skin doesn't define its own version of a template file, then TWiki will fall back to the next skin in the skin path, or finally, to the default version of the template file.

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

• addform - used to select a new form for a topic
• attachagain - used when refreshing an existing attachment
• attachnew - used when attaching a new file to a topic
• attachtables - defines the format of attachments at the bottom of the standard topic view
  • ATTACH:files:footer, ATTACH:files:header, ATTACH:files:row, ATTACH:versions:footer, ATTACH:versions:header, ATTACH:versions:row
• changeform - used to change the form in a topic
• changes - used by the changes script
• edit - used for the edit screen
• form
• formtables - used to defined the format of forms
  • FORM:display:footer, FORM:display:header, FORM:display:row
• login - used for loggin in when using the TemplateLoginManager
  • LOG_IN, LOG_IN_BANNER, LOG_OUT, LOGGED_IN_BANNER, NEW_USER_NOTE, UNRECOGNISED_USER
• moveattachment - used when moving an attachment
• oopsaccessdenied - used to format Access Denied messages
  • no_such_topic, no_such_web, only_group, topic_access
• oopsattention - used to format Attention messages
  • already_exists, bad_email, bad_ver_code, bad_wikiname, base_web_missing, confirm, created_web, delete_err, 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, upload_name_changed, web_creation_error, web_exists, web_missing, wrong_password, zero_size_upload
• oopschangelanguage - used to prompt for a new language when internationalisation is enabled

• oopslanguagechanged - used to confirm a new language when internationalisation is enabled
• oopsleaseconflict - used to format lease Conflict messages
  • lease_active, lease_old
• preview - used for previewing edited topics before saving
• rdiff - used for viewing topic differences
• registernotify - used by the user registration system
• registernotifyadmin - used by the user registration system
• rename - used when renaming a topic
• renameconfirm - used when renaming a topic
• renamedelete - used when renaming a topic
• renameweb - used when renaming a web
• renamewebconfirm - used when renaming a web
• renamewebdelete - used when renaming a web
• searchbookview - used to format inline search results in book view
• searchformat - used to format inline search results
• search - used by the search CGI script
• settings
• view - used by the view CGI script

Variables in Skins

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

<style type='text/css' media='all'>@import url('%PUBURLPATH%/%TWIKIWEB%/MySkin/mystyle.css');</style>

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 attachtables.tmpl template using the %TMPL:DEF macro syntax described in TWikiTemplates. These macros are:

The format of tables of file versions in the Upload screen can also be changed, using the macros:

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

Packaging and Publishing Skins

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

Browsing Installed Skins

You can try out all installed skins in the 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 a SKIN setting:

• Set SKIN = catskin, bearskin

• Set COVER = ruskin

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: TWikiSkinBrowser, AdminDocumentationCategory, DeveloperDocumentationCategory, TWiki:TWiki.TWikiSkinsSupplement

-- Contributors: TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny, TWiki:Main.MikeMannix, TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie