Joomla Template kit 2.5 Beta Progress Report 3

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Joomla Template kit 2.5 Beta Progress Report 3

I’m still working hard on the extension making a lot of progress on the CSS portions.

Here are a few screen shot’s for you hungry Joomla Template Kit Designers.

The first screenshot is of the CSS panel in DW 8.0.2 on XP SP2



The way I have set up the style sheets should make it a lot easier to work
inside DW CSS editor but if you use DW 6 it still easier then looking a one long sheet of code.

Our new CSS system for Joomla 1.5 Beta is broken down into many parts
But first I’ll start with the two top level files

template.css and template_rtl.css

The template.css file is a master style for Joomla 1.5 by default.
This file in the past was one large style that once you started adding special styles and suffixes for special module formatting you could get lost very quickly.

With that in mind and one other large issue now Joomla 1.5 has right to left language support or RTL. Which we all should take our hat’s off to the Joomla Dev team this is not easy to do I feel I should do my best Al Pacino voice from the Movie Heat and say “This Crew is Good”

A link AL’s bio not like he needs it.
Al Pacino

Heat Movie Link
Heat (1995)

Sorry but I’m big fan.

Back to Css the next top level style is the template_rtl.css
This style basically would be a mirror of the template.css.

Now Joomla 1.5 beta has a few lines of php code that checks for a condition to see which language to use if its English Joomla will use the template.css. If its Hebrew or Arabic or any other right to left languages Joomla uses the template_rtl.css.

Now can you imagine having to make not one but two large style sheets and not breaking the styles down into part’s. I can’t so here we are. Now just to get this out of the way most of you will not need to make both LTR RTL styles but if your going to sale in a very international market.
I would suggest doing so just in case.

Our new CSS system works as follows.
In most cases Template.css is the style sheet going to be used.
If this was a RTL language site the template_rtl.css would be used.
Now I’m just going to talk about the template.css the only difference between template_rtl.css and template.css is the you will find a Css property called direction: rtl; inside the template_rtl.css styles.


Template.css
Will hold the Master Global formatting

layouts.css
Will hold the layout formatting

components.css
Will hold the Content and Component formatting

modules.css
Will hold the Module formatting

navigation.css
Will hold the Navigation formatting

editor.css
Will hold the editor formatting

forms.css
Will hold the form formatting

misc.css
Will hold the miscellaneous formatting

systemmessage.css
Will hold the system message formatting

browserhacks.css
Will hold browser hacks
There is a typo in the images for browser hacks css It's fixed in the extension styles.

Now in this example you can see the screenshot two of a drilldown in DW 8 CSS panel editor for the components.css style sheet.




Now in this example you can see the screenshot three of a drilldown in DW 8 CSS panel editor for the components_rtl.css style sheet.






As you see the are both mirrors of each other the flow is the same so it easy to design multiple language templates with the Joomla Template kit 2.5


So now in Dreamweaver 8 you will have an explore like drill down to edit your style sheets and a easy way to also add formatting to RTL language templates in Dreamweaver.

Lower versions of Dreamweaver would have to use the file panel and open the style sheets in DW or another editor still this is going to be a lot easier to edit and organize then one large style sheet.


Lastly just a quick look at the extension buttons on the Joomla Template Kit 2.5 Tool Bar.



And yes-yes its coming soon.

Outstanding:
1.I’d like to add one or two more JTemplate PHP Condition logic on the extension.
2.Finish up a flexible base CSS styles
3.Start writing doc system and docs
4.Film some of the Videos for a quick start


For those of you who have left testimonials at the Joomla Extension Directory Thank you for your support.



And for those that have not when you have time please leave just a short one it would be great.

Working hard to make it easy
Brian Diaz
Media 65