Modest Wiki Proposal

Note: this page is historic, having been outdated by UserStyles and WikiStyleExamples.

I'm a big fan of Wiki's simplicity. At the same time, I find it visually unpleasant to read long lines of black text on a white background. CascadingStyleSheets allow me as a user to modify this without requiring a design change to Wiki (see WikiStyle). It seems that making Wiki more CascadingStyleSheets friendly would not compromise WikiNature. In that spirit, I propose the following modifications to the HTML that is generated by WikiBase:

Remove the hardcoded colors (and any other GUI styles that override user preferences both in the browser preferences and in CSS) from the generated HTML (particularly the text & bgcolor attributes from the BODY tag)
Add a class attribute (perhaps class="wiki") to all generated HTML tags. This allows me, the user, to specify styles in a CascadingStyleSheet? that only apply to Wiki HTML tags.

-- KenRawlings

This sounds like a very good idea in principle, but it assumes that no one is going to use 'class="wiki"' elsewhere, which is a bit of a dangerous gamble. If all large sites thought like this, it might cause compatibility problems. It would have been better if (X)HTML allowed URIs values or QNames in class attributes, because they're decentralized.

However, we need a solution. User Agents should make it quite easy for one to turn on and off the user style sheets, so you could simply have your WikiStyle turned off when not browsing Wiki. Perhaps class="wiki" *would* be a good enough interim solution though (I'd still like to see a profile attribute or something set). -- SeanPalmer

Rather than peppering 'class="wiki"' throughout a page, give Wiki's page template a CSS signature: add a unique "id" attribute to the <body> tag. Then we can use user styles sheets to define styles that apply only to the WikiWikiWeb, like so:

 #c2-com-wikiwikiweb H1 { font-family: gill sans, sans-serif; }

Cost: one change to Wiki's page template.

How about this: since the system can already set a cookie for the user so the edits are attributed in RecentChanges, why not extend the feature by adding one form field that allows the user to input a URL (http or file) that points to a specific CSS file? Then when the page is rendered, if the cookie is set it adds <link rel="stylesheet" href="{cookie-value}"/> to the head and poof like magic the page is rendered in my stylesheet.

That way I can specify a CSS file I want for this wiki, without creating a default stylesheet that will apply to all sites. And whenever I want to change it I just update the cookie through the site (or just edit it manually, of course)...

-- DaveCantrell

That's technically sound, but Ward would take some convincing about a relatively minor benefit.

OddMuseWiki already does this. -- BjornLindstrom?

See WikiStyle for a nice style sheet.

CategoryWiki