[Cuis] Better Themes

[Casey ransberger]

Hello all,

Juan and I did what we could to make the look of Cuis fluid to the industrious user. Since we're all talking about Cuis on this list now, I thought I'd say: those themes aren't set in stone, and I'm not totally thrilled with most of them. I think the best we have is the one Juan did, which is the current default.

The default is (I hope!) entirely represented by class Theme in Cuis. All other themes are subclasses of Theme (IIRC) but there are some other things which are possible. Nothing stops you from subclassing a subclass of Theme, and on and on. I was also able to do some really wild stuff with DNU hacks! But alas, we don't like those much in the core of the system:) so we didn't use that (though there's nothing stopping an external package from doing so.)

Theme is (as has been pointed out) more limited than what Polymorph did. Polymorph, though, is huuuuuge and not in the spirit of Cuis, which is why I got the idea to write Theme in the first place. OTOH, Theme is *one class.* Given that it affects the whole UI in pretty deep ways, though, I think it's okay for it to be a largish class, as long as we are vigilant about protocoling our methods responsibly.

Here's where I'm going. If you do play around with the skinning system, please let the list know when you find something you wish it did but doesn't currently. I can help with that, Juan can help with that, and if you can help with that: thank you!

Most of the current non-default themes have been provided as examples of how to do it. I don't love them: we should make them awesome better.

We're small, but we're damned good-looking, and looking better all the time.

--C