Difference between revisions of "Nuvola Skin"

Revision as of 04:38, 12 July 2009

In the summer of 2009, I created the Nuvola skin for MediaWiki. I had originally started it in the summer of 2006 (less than a year after I had gotten my website.) It is based off of the Nuvola icon set for KDE 3 by David Vignoni and the MediaWiki homepage design draft I adopted for my homepage. It is based off of the Monobook skin, which is the MediaWiki default. I kept the content area and layout, because I liked it. I wanted to create a new skin because all of the MediaWiki skins suck. With Wordpress, everyone installs a new skin, and every site looks unique. With MediaWiki, almost no one uses a new skin.

I did not get much done in 2006, except some new file icons and a start to the CSS. I did do a full design on paper which I can not find anymore. In 2009, I decided to finish the skin. The skin is comprised of 3 main elements: far better drop downs, a new sidebar, and a new footer.

Drop Downs

The drop downs for MediaWiki were the first things I ever really coded with CSS. They were ugly and never really fit in with the site design. In addition, they did not work well in all browsers (although I can not conclusively determine that the new ones work better or if the browser manufactures changed their code). Lastly, the HTML code appeared before the content. On a text based browser, you had to scroll though the drop down menus everytime, and it was not the best for search engines. The new skin puts the drop downs at the bottom of the HTML code and the CSS makes it display at the top.

Sidebar