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Contao 3 → see contao/contao for Contao 4
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BE Themes Improvements - Navigation & Templates #5526

Open brandbrilliance opened 11 years ago

brandbrilliance commented 11 years ago

I've now developed a theme for the BE and it's quite frustrating. The following recommendations, if implemented, would greatly improve development of new BE themes and easy switching between them.

  1. Make the Entire Navigation into a template, not just the inner elements, but also the groups, e.g. the entire
      section for the navigation. This will allow developers to remove the current nav and completely replace it. Reason: Rendering the NAV with two UL pairs where groups are seperate from elements, make CSS hovering (pop-up menus) impossible, and only possible using JS.
    • Make the TOP icons also templateable, so people can add new top-level icons/functions.
    • Make all Icons replaceable with theme constants, so icons can be switched dynamically
    • Perhaps extend the templates even further and make be_top, be_header, be_mainnav (as point 1), be_left, be_right, be_footer. Then people can develop a really completely new framework, especially when trying to develop a completely responsive theme for the BE
    • Add the ability to override BE templates via a new theme folder, e.g. add a templates folder to the BE themes location: system/themes/default/template/ and search that first, then search /templates and if that fails fall back onto the core BE template files.
    • Clear CSS/JS caches when switching themes, as this will clear the old theme CSS files, currently I have to use a extension to allow switching to clear it.

Hope that helps developers create a new fantastic BE theme for Contao, because the current one is quite old and looks aged compared to modern styling.

NinaG commented 11 years ago

+1

It would be great if you could make sure, that you add icons primarly via CSS or at least add really individual classes to all elements with icons. That way we can overwrite icons with other icons in backend-themes.

bekanntmacher commented 11 years ago

+1 And my "Tenisarm" would be verry happy if you could implement a flyout-navigation (or the like). ;-) BE

brandbrilliance commented 11 years ago

Some of these contao-arm can be relieved with my favorites extension. I will release a version 3.x update with additional templates soon. Then you can add sub-items to a main menu called Favorites, allowing you to directly go to style sheets, without having to go through the menu.

may17 commented 11 years ago

@thyon i like your ideas very much and give them a huge +1.

Your favourites extension sounds a little bit simular like the poc/pull request from @Toflar https://github.com/contao/core/pull/5150

qzminski commented 11 years ago

+1 both hands

It is time for Contao to provide the better backend interface. It would be also very nice to provide the mobile interface for backend. People will love the possibility to access their systems from an iPhone/iPad.

rumpelsepp commented 11 years ago

It is time for Contao to provide the better backend interface. It would be also very nice to provide the mobile interface for backend. People will love the possibility to access their systems from an iPhone/iPad.

:+1:

xchs commented 11 years ago

People will love the possibility to access their systems from an iPhone/iPad.

Not only from an iPhone/iPad (since there are plenty of other mobile devices)! ;)

qzminski commented 11 years ago

Hehe, right ;-)

Anke commented 11 years ago

I think being able to tend the backend with mobile devices isn't a matter of 'love', but rather becoming a necessity ...

brandbrilliance commented 11 years ago

Also the more you work on BE interfaces like Wordpress, you realise that we need a much better interface, mobile ready and drag and drop everywhere, not just moving items up an down.