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Abstract

Themeing Theming and Styling need still needs to be improved, especially the legacy stylesheets are still quite a mess messy as of 5.0-alpha2. Project structure needs to be reviewed to properly modularize styling and widgets, so that apps/views can be properly extendedalpha3. We expect this concept to lead to proper themeing and styling guidelinessecond iteration of the concept to give the magnolia theme a broader scope, as well as reorganizing and cleaning up to tackle the reorganization and clean-up of the stylesheets.

This concept also still belongs to the following user story.

1.

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Theming

Problem

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• • If I add a TextField and a Button in my app, they should also have the Magnolia style
  Stylesheets are still a real mess (legacy admincentraltheme)
  
  • They're not properly modularized
  • Some rules don't belong to the right stylesheet
  • Widget styles and app styles are also mixed up inside these stylesheetsSome style rules are simply duplicated across several stylesheets (forms vs. dialogs)
• All vaadin standard UI components should look visually integrated into magnolia
• Styling could still be applied in a more light-weight way
• Any module should be able to add Sass compilation at build time

Proposal

• We have a MagnoliaThemeUI demo vaadin application that features UI components from vaadin, for theme development
  
  • either we put it in an external sandbox, with a dependency to magnolia-ui-theme
  • either we start getting theme outside magnolia_ui, because it has no dep here and can be built upstream
    
    • widgets can also make the move in a second step
• Then we try to give proper Magnolia themeing to other standard vaadin widgets, e.g. error messages, loading indicators
  
  • Maybe we can cleanup our widgets a bit

Decision

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• But we can add @include SASS rules to use themes as mixins

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• We inherit the base theme
• We start with standard vaadin fields

• complete theming for basic vaadin fields
  

  • Jira
    server Magnolia key MGNLUI-710

• We then tackle other subtasks in

  Jira
  server Magnolia key MGNLUI-704

• We could have Sass compilation in any vaadin-enabled UI module
  • For 3rd party modules, build-time Sass compilation could ultimately move to the bundle (same as widgetset)

Decision

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2. Project structure and Widgetset

Problem

• It is hard to relate widget java classes - where style names are set - to their actual CSS rulesAll stylesheets even for widgets are in the theme directory, which is not necessarly bad but should be reviewed
  We want these styles to remain dynamically loaded (not processed at GWT compilation time) so that it's easy to develop them
• We need to review the pattern for applying desktop vs. tablet styles as well
• Package structure of the common-widgets project could be clearer
• Naming of widget classes is inconsistent
  
  • Reevaluate usage of "v-" prefix in style names for magnolia widgets, this is not consistent right now
• As Sasha pointed out, there may also be room for Optimizing the WidgetSet
• There is always only one widgetset. It can aggregate as many other widgetsets (e.g. addons) but ultimately results into one compilation unit
  
  • This  This is a critical issue because we need to recompile the whole widgetset after installing any module that comes with a custom widget (e.g. dam media editor)

Proposal

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• We try to draw a meaningful separation for "shell-only" widgets
• Investigate a possibility to compile the widgetset during runtime. e.g during startup.
  
  • Need to investigate if it is possible to place compiled resources into a location that can be served

Decision

• We align on vaadin7 package structure (client/server/shared)
• We align naming of widget classes
  
  • we try to use *Widget / *Connector consistently
  • we drop client-side naming *View / *ViewImpl
  • we leave the v- prefix for standard vaadin component style names, we use m- prefix for magnolia widget styles
  • we don't use any prefix for application views
• We take the widgetset project to the bundle

3. Extensibility

Problem

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• It is not clearly specified clear how an app developer would add adds a custom widget to her app
• There is no guideline either on It is not clear how an app developer would add adds her own icons for her app and its actions

Proposal

• We cannot use @Theme annotation for third party apps because theme is set on admincentral
• We use CSSInject to dynamically load an @import rule which references a CSS stylesheet
  
  • optionally we try to reference a SASS one
• Create custom annotation @ThemedApp to mark theme
  

  • Code Block
    language java
    @ThemedApp("myapp") public class MyApp extends ContentApp {

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Decision

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Suggestion box

• The magnolia theme application could ultimately switch between expected screenshot and actual fields, to help on browser support
• Structure:
  
  • magnolia-ui-admincentral
    
    • @Theme("admincentral") AdmincentralUI
    • themes/admincentral includes magnolia
    magnolia-ui-vaadin-theme
    
    • themes/magnolia includes base, commonbase, shellbase
  • magnolia-ui-vaadin-theme-sampler
    
    • @Theme("themesampler") ThemeSamplerUI
    • themes/themesampler includes magnolia
    magnolia-ui-vaadin-widgets-common
    
    • themes/commonbase
  • magnolia-ui-vaadin-widgets-editor
    
    • themes/pageeditor
  • magnolia-ui-vaadin-widgets-shell
    
    • themes/shellbase
      
  Use CSSInject add-on to support third-party app styles https://vaadin.com/directory#addon/cssinject
  
  • Inserts styles into <head><style>...</
  • Can load external stylesheets in this manner:  new CSSInject(getUI()).setStyles("@import url('http://theme files/styles.css');");
  • Set this at App level, eventually processing it in BaseApp
• Enable SASS for STK themes

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