The recent updates to Pattern Skin are horrible.

The grey band around is a total waste of monitor space.

The changing colours of the top bar is not compatible with any company logos including ours.

The update in Internet Explorer is not a terrible flicker when navigating from page to page.

And most important Pattern Skin in Dakar is now so far from what is was in Cairo that it is no longer Pattern skin at all. This means that when you upgrade from Cairo to Dakar in an enterprice environment normal users will be confused. The 1000s of topic - many with graphics that have been made to fit a normal monitor or a projector no longer fits.

This is terrible.

Please make a Pattern Skin which is as close to Cairo as possible and feasible and do the eye candy experiments on a new skin that people can choose if they want it. Otherwise upgrading will be a nightmare.

-- KennethLavrsen

Agreed. Please, let's undo this change.

-- TW

Agree to all the points, but the grey band is by far the most annoying.

-- AJA

I'm ambivalent on the colour scheme, but I do care that the page:

• http://develop.twiki.org/~develop/cgi-bin/view/Bugs/WebChanges

Is now cut off on the right margin

-- MC

Agreed on restoring the look of earlier pattern skin. I think it is up to Arthur to decide if to roll back to the previous skin version or if to tweak the new skin to look more like the previous one.

Contstraint: Not to delay the release of Dakar.

-- PTh

Yes, "not to delay ...." is the important thing. The skin has been weaked and tweaked.

"Perfect" is the enemy of "good"

"There comes a time in the life of every project when it's time to shoot the engineers and ship the product."

Not to delay the release of Dakar. - Never Dakar has been waiting for layout updates.

Agreed on restoring the look of earlier pattern skin. - Agreed by whom? On what grounds? The bugs are a pain in the ass of course. And I am actively working on them. I am prepared to discuss what layout should be shipped when things are running normally. So far I have met a frightening void of substance in the discussion, but I have met words like "HATE", "terrible", "horrible" that have been targeted to me.

For now I will copy the message I've sent to the develop mailing list:

This update is not pure about eye candy. What's in there now:
- centering the page is possible, while remaining a flexible left bar.
- changing the height of the top bar without having to set the top of the left bar.
- the left bar runs visually to the bottom, like a table td, but without using tables! And the left bar still loads after the main content.
- after popular request: return of WEBBGCOLOR (in the top bar). But it took a lot of scripting to get the white gradient go. From what I hear this may be a cause of bugs (flickering)
- theoretically it would be easy to make the left bar a right bar

In all this is a lot easier to change the style than the previous pattern skin version. I would say it is now almost ready to have a style switcher a la NatSkin.

-- AC

And I copy what I sent to twiki-dev:

TWiki is an open source project where people devote their time and energy to contribute content to the TWiki community at large. Some of us spend considerable time and energy. Healthy and constructive discussions are necessary to move the project along quickly. But please watch your language. Ask yourself if what you are writing brings the topic at hand forward, and rephrase it if not.

Thanks for listening,
Peter

Arthur spent a lot of time on the skin, the doc graphics and the T-logo. It can be demoralizing to see ones work trashed like this. Please help in bringing issues forward in a constructive manner.

-- PTh

I have removed the gradient code to improve page loading performance. SVN 7410.

Also the content is now inside a table. This does not work optimal on Win IE as that browser draws the left bar too wide. I am considering alternatives, but I am a bit reluctant now - the former css code I lent appeared not to be fullproof. I think for now (Dakar) this is the best solution.

Indeed a product is ready once it ships.

Please report new bugs in separate entries, and describe what you see and what should happen in verbose and objective wording. Just to set it straight.

The question what default values Dakar / Pattern Skin should ship with, and how it should be running on twiki.org is worth another lengthy topic.

AC