What should CSS's role be for users in TW?

[Mat]

Problem:

Yes, you can make almost anything with TW - it is made for hacking! What's that? - sidebar on left side? ... ehm.. that's a bit beyond of TW itself.... you must know CSS.

I think we all agree that a TW user should ideally not have to learn CSS to shape TW into what he wants. How can we get away from this? Or does it have to be this way?

Another problem, even when you know CSS:

There is a big "workflow differences" between wikitext / html and css - Wikitext and html is where the user is ...but CSS is somewhere else:

If you want to modify wikitext/html, you "click edit and then edit". CSS is often way more intricate. You must figure out where the style is defined, open that stylesheet and then often the most difficult part to locate the place(s!) what it is defined. And then go back - i.e if you don't want to overwrite the stylesheet, you must copy-paste by creating a new stylesheet, tag it, type it, close the original stylesheet. Et cetera. 

With html we have (some) wikitext "elements" presumably so the user won't have to know html. E.g pipe for tables and several of the widgets. With CSS we  have some predefined classes but as someone pointed out; the more properties a class has the less reusable it is!

How can TW deal with this problem in a good way? How much CSS should a TW user need to know? Maybe even: Who does TW cater for and therefore who does the CSS solution cater for? 

P.S Worthwhile article on CSS and Scalability.

<:-)

[TonyM]

Mat,

As you know I started this thread CSS and TiddlyWiki - Open discussion from a different perspective. I support you raising this here.

To respond to this thread;

• There are some cases where css has answers not found in wikitext or widgets, and some cases where html is a superior method thus css becomes useful to style that html.
• If css is the best or only way to do something perhaps this flags a gap in tiddlywiki features, that could be addressed.
• Also Tiddlywiki uses css for its own interface and I believe when doing so we should have a reference work so people can tweek tiddlywiki with css if they wish. This includes documenting where/what existing classes are used in tiddlywiki's User interface. Inspect is not a novices tool.
• css provides a powerful way to overlay and switch ui elements, as a result I believe we should avoid compromising its use (ie do not make decisions that limit the power of CSS over a wiki as much as we can, but I do not think it should be the main avenue for user interface manipulation. Tiddlywiki already provides rich interface settings.
• I think we should document or provide some instructions or primitives that need css, and how to make use of it.
• In some special cases some plugins or tiddlywiki.com documentation that leverage css to achieve things that are harder elsewhere should be done.
• Helping pagination when printing tiddlers
• Some numbering situations
• Perhaps even sortable tables
• Building nice html/css layouts within tiddlers.
• Publishing static tiddlers with better styles and layouts
• The trick to get in tiddler anchors
• I have discovered the simple act of using html tables and the `<thead><tfoot><tbody>` html tags and css to control break avoidance in a row etc..  allows pagination of tables when printing (open in new window and Print). This is a helpful thing to know and need not have any additional coding associated with it, but it does need to be documented, since tiddlywiki is by its very nature good at lists and tables this is an essential feature.

In summary the community needs to curate good solutions for users whatever the technology we use, keeping it as accessible to novices as possible, and do our best not to compromise the use of those technologies for others to extend tiddlywiki ie javascript, html and css.

Regards

Tony

[Jeremy Ruston]

I'd certainly favour making the default theme much more tweakable by end users without knowing CSS. For example, sliders to alter the tightness of margins, more options for the positioning of elements like the sidebar and story river etc.

Best wishes

Jeremy

--

Jeremy Ruston

jer...@jermolene.com

https://jermolene.com

On 27 Aug 2019, at 01:48, TonyM <anthony...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Thomas Elmiger]

Maybe not more tweaks to the default theme, but more different themes to choose from, each with only a limited set of tweaks? Theme demos or a theme library where users can easily find a starting point they already like and just need to tweak a little bit to make it their own ...

Just dreamin'

Thomas

[@TiddlyTweeter]

What should CSS's role be for users in TW?

It is not a "role" as such. Why? Because it is not optional. All designs come with it.

This is not a TW issue per se. 

But WHAT are the specific TW aspects of CSS that may be of concern?

Simply the monolith of the default is quite difficult to read.

Thomas' Bricks work is excellent in breaking it down a lot.

I'm NOT sure we need more frameworks.

My biggest issue has been simply understanding what we have.

Best wishes, TT