[Typo3] Typo3 template repository?

[Dieter Mayer]

Hi listmembers,

seems that there has been an interesting discussion about free
Typo3-Templates in the thread "TYPO3 ready to use web site templates". That
made me musing about extending the Typo3-Repository...

What do you think about this idea:

Goal: building a growing 'ready to run' and 'free to use' template base like
the houndreds of free Mambo templates. Look at
http://www.mambohut.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,73/, then you
know, what I'm talking about. Steps to do:

1) Discussing & defining a spec sheet, what functions and extensions a
standard template should include at minimum (e.g. css styled content, maybe
tt_news etc.).

2) Writing a designer and developer related manual, how a standard template
has to be designed in terms of file structure, mandatory files, constant
settings etc. (maybe Michael Scharkow could help with this 'cause he has
released his fine Urban Nomad template a few days ago).

3) Writing a step by step guide how to install such a template (mostly done
by Michael Scharkow) including a list of mandatory extensions.

4) Everyone can then adapt good free, GPL'd layouts (configuration via
constants) and upload them to TER (possible need to open a new section on
ypo3.org for templates?)

-> look at http://www.oswd.org for example, there are a lot of interesting
layouts to start with.

Greetings,
Dieter

[Dieter Mayer]

Ups, have to correct myself, the UrbanNomad Template was not pubished by
Michael Scharkov, the autors are Ryan Off & Stephane Schitter - where was my
brain today... - sorry 'bout that.

Dieter

Post by Dieter Mayer
2) Writing a designer and developer related manual, how a
standard template has to be designed in terms of file
structure, mandatory files, constant settings etc. (maybe
Michael Scharkow could help with this 'cause he has released
his fine Urban Nomad template a few days ago).
3) Writing a step by step guide how to install such a
template (mostly done by Michael Scharkow) including a list
of mandatory extensions.

[Michael Scharkow]

Post by Dieter Mayer
Hi listmembers,
seems that there has been an interesting discussion about free
Typo3-Templates in the thread "TYPO3 ready to use web site templates". That
made me musing about extending the Typo3-Repository...
Goal: building a growing 'ready to run' and 'free to use' template base like
the houndreds of free Mambo templates. Look at
http://www.mambohut.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,73/, then you
know, what I'm talking about.

Hi Dieter,

I am not convinced of making such a mass of ready-to-run templates for
some reasons:
1. TYPO3 is a professional tool for professional sites. Professional
sites need custom templates.
2. Mass templates are boring to annoying to look at. If I see another
site with the Kubrick template, I'll go somewhere else.
3. The goal for the new template project I am working on is basically to
aid with template building and show off common features of TYPO3. Thus,
I expect the static templates to be a starting point for writing one's
own TS templates (which is the most fun in playing with TYPO3, right?),
I do *not* intend these templates to be used "as is" because I am bored
by them already ;)

So again, what would be the use of whipping up 200+ templates that
implement the same features, add a few <div> here and there, and some
different CSS?

Post by Dieter Mayer
1) Discussing & defining a spec sheet, what functions and extensions a
standard template should include at minimum (e.g. css styled content, maybe
tt_news etc.).

I have done that in my initial posting which should still be available
in typo3.design and here. I'm happy to discuss those issues here.

Post by Dieter Mayer
2) Writing a designer and developer related manual, how a standard template
has to be designed in terms of file structure, mandatory files, constant
settings etc. (maybe Michael Scharkow could help with this 'cause he has
released his fine Urban Nomad template a few days ago).

WRONG! I have nothing to do with this. All credits belong to Stephane
and Ryan. Although I'd have appreciated this to be included in the new
example_templates project because we should not create an extension for
just one template (TER is crowded already).

Post by Dieter Mayer
3) Writing a step by step guide how to install such a template (mostly done
by Michael Scharkow) including a list of mandatory extensions.

Yes, I'll do this with the first release of example_templates which
might happen next week (although only with 3 or 4 templates).

Greetings,
Michael

PS: If anyone of you wants to make a working TYPO3 template out of the
mentioned oswd.org templates, please send them to Stephane or me, we can
help putting those in example_templates. But please use some *original*
features like TMENU_LAYERS, or funky TS hacks ;)

[Ingo Renner]

Post by Michael Scharkow

Post by Dieter Mayer
Hi listmembers,
seems that there has been an interesting discussion about free
Typo3-Templates in the thread "TYPO3 ready to use web site templates". That
made me musing about extending the Typo3-Repository...
Goal: building a growing 'ready to run' and 'free to use' template base like
the houndreds of free Mambo templates. Look at
http://www.mambohut.com/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,73/, then you
know, what I'm talking about.

Hi Dieter,
I am not convinced of making such a mass of ready-to-run templates for
1. TYPO3 is a professional tool for professional sites. Professional
sites need custom templates.
2. Mass templates are boring to annoying to look at. If I see another
site with the Kubrick template, I'll go somewhere else.
3. The goal for the new template project I am working on is basically to
aid with template building and show off common features of TYPO3. Thus,
I expect the static templates to be a starting point for writing one's
own TS templates (which is the most fun in playing with TYPO3, right?),
I do *not* intend these templates to be used "as is" because I am bored
by them already ;)

4. Some are making money by selling templates which wouldn't be possible
when having a big repository
5. Nobody will learn using TYPO3 templating techniques by just klicking the
'install extension' button.


Ingo

[Peter Kindström]

Hi
I think a template repository would be a great idea to improve
Typo3, because it
* is good to have some examples to build your own template from
* makes it quicker to get a decent site up and running
* makes even newbie Typo3 sites look nicer (?)
* a nice look is good for the "business" (look at M$ software)
* some people like writing, not designing
(and they still want a fully featured CMS!)

In short, I can?t see how a template repository could be *bad*
for the community? Can you?

And about

Post by Ingo Renner
Nobody will learn using TYPO3 templating techniques by
just klicking the 'install extension' button."

That?s nonsense! You just have to read a recent posting from a

Post by Ingo Renner
Ok, I downloaded the UrbanNomad template extension
which works fine. I am trying to create a new template,
using this extension as a tutorial of sorts.

/Peter Kindstr?m

[Michael Stucki]

Hi Peter,

Post by Peter Kindström
I think a template repository would be a great idea to improve
Typo3, because it
* is good to have some examples to build your own template from
* makes it quicker to get a decent site up and running
* makes even newbie Typo3 sites look nicer (?)
* a nice look is good for the "business" (look at M$ software)
* some people like writing, not designing
(and they still want a fully featured CMS!)

almost the same as above:

+ Good developers are bad designers. Let's help them to get their site
started with a nice looking template and they will hopefully help us by
writing nice extensions etc.

(My personal website is still somewhat inexisting - it's just a file
archive, no less, no more... :-))

Post by Peter Kindström
In short, I can?t see how a template repository could be *bad*
for the community? Can you?

No. I really like the idea!

- michael

[Dieter Mayer]

Hi Michael,

Post by Michael Scharkow
I am not convinced of making such a mass of ready-to-run
1. TYPO3 is a professional tool for professional sites.
Professional sites need custom templates.

Well, you can find a lot of professional templates for free on various
sites, enough for building up a repository - I think, this is a good base
for a Typo3 newbie to start with a predefined, prof. template.

Post by Michael Scharkow
2. Mass templates are boring to annoying to look at. If I see
another site with the Kubrick template, I'll go somewhere else.

Me too, but a newbie can take this as basis for his own creation.

Post by Michael Scharkow
So again, what would be the use of whipping up 200+ templates
that implement the same features, add a few <div> here and
there, and some different CSS?

A big part of my developing time is the boring job of generating css files.
A div or table based layout is easy to code, but adding css instructions for
all used extensions is very, very boring and annoying. For example, some of
my templates are using css files with 1100+ lines of code - ugly.
So I think it could be a good idea to offer predefined templates including
the css definitions of the 'most wanted' extensions. Very helpful, not only
for the beginner...

In this case it makes sense to have a template repository.

And btw: Typo3 is not only used for professional sites with custom
templates. Listen to the english and german lists, you'll find a lot of
messages from people, that use Typo3 for small or medium sites, many of them
for private or semi professional purposes...
Give them predefined templates (maybe including a basic page tree) to start
with, and they will be happy...

Greets,
Dieter

[Dieter Mayer]

Hi Ingo,

Post by Ingo Renner
4. Some are making money by selling templates which wouldn't
be possible when having a big repository

Do you know how many companies out there in the WWWorld earn money with
commercial templates in competition with all those free templates? I
suppose, free templates don't kill this business, because every customer who
wants a special designed template is furthermore able to get one
developed...

Post by Ingo Renner
5. Nobody will learn using TYPO3 templating techniques by
just klicking the 'install extension' button.

Yes, I agree - but there's a difference between newbies that will only have
a quick result (maybe for a quick analysis or the comparison with another
cms) and deeper interested designers. Don't forget: all of them will have
the possibility to analyze the templates and TS codes and learn Typo3ing by
watching and doing - same as with static templates. How many Typo3
interested people resigned after a few hours, because they don't got a
result in a short time? I think, a lot of them woldn't give up, if they got
a result in a justifiable time - I suppose, after that first success they
are willing to dive deeper in the system, learn more and get better
results...

Greets,
Dieter

[Michael Scharkow]

Post by Dieter Mayer

Post by Ingo Renner
5. Nobody will learn using TYPO3 templating techniques by
just klicking the 'install extension' button.

Yes, I agree - but there's a difference between newbies that will only have
a quick result (maybe for a quick analysis or the comparison with another
cms) and deeper interested designers. Don't forget: all of them will have
the possibility to analyze the templates and TS codes and learn Typo3ing by
watching and doing - same as with static templates. How many Typo3
interested people resigned after a few hours, because they don't got a
result in a short time? I think, a lot of them woldn't give up, if they got
a result in a justifiable time - I suppose, after that first success they
are willing to dive deeper in the system, learn more and get better
results...

We've had the discussion that TYPO3 is too hard on newbies multiple
times, and honestly, I do not see that making everything click'n'go is
the solution to this. As Ingo said, nobody will learn anything from
this, and if you really want to compare Mambo with TYPO3 in terms of
available templates, you're screwed anyway. Look at Plone, they have
*no* templates whatsoever (okay, one with and one without tables) and
people seem to use it in professional environments.

I tend to see example templates just as a slightly nicer variant of

page = PAGE
page.1 < styles.content.get

We're just pushing the barrier of *really* having to read a lot of docs
and spending weeks and months somewhat further up the hill. This may be
okay for newbies who just want quick results but it will result in even
more postings like "Okay, I have template X and want a third menu level
but don't bug me with the docs".-
In other words: Making a template repository will probably help in the
short run, but not necessarily in the long run (from a user's perspective).

Greetings,
Michael

[Dieter Mayer]

Hi Michael,

I'm a new subscriber to typo3.design and have no clue about the past
postings. So what is the alternative or the plan to avoid this and to get a
better respective easier template- and css design? As I wrote earlier, the
problem is not the html-template or the TS code, for me it's the horror with
neverending css files - sometimes dozens of lines for each extension, that's
too complex to handle, if you use a lot of different designs like I do...

Post by Michael Scharkow
We've had the discussion that TYPO3 is too hard on newbies
multiple times, and honestly, I do not see that making
everything click'n'go is the solution to this. As Ingo said,
nobody will learn anything from this, and if you really want
to compare Mambo with TYPO3 in terms of available templates,
you're screwed anyway. Look at Plone, they have
*no* templates whatsoever (okay, one with and one without
tables) and people seem to use it in professional environments.
I tend to see example templates just as a slightly nicer variant of
page = PAGE
page.1 < styles.content.get
We're just pushing the barrier of *really* having to read a
lot of docs and spending weeks and months somewhat further up
the hill. This may be okay for newbies who just want quick
results but it will result in even more postings like "Okay,
I have template X and want a third menu level but don't bug
me with the docs".- In other words: Making a template
repository will probably help in the short run, but not
necessarily in the long run (from a user's perspective).

Greets,
Dieter

[Michael Scharkow]

Post by Dieter Mayer
Hi Michael,
I'm a new subscriber to typo3.design and have no clue about the past
postings.

Another opportunity for a plug:
Use a newsreader! Check out
http://typo3.org/community/mailing-lists/use-a-news-reader/

Post by Dieter Mayer
So what is the alternative or the plan to avoid this and to get a
better respective easier template- and css design? As I wrote earlier, the
problem is not the html-template or the TS code, for me it's the horror with
neverending css files - sometimes dozens of lines for each extension, that's
too complex to handle, if you use a lot of different designs like I do...

The styles that the extensions provide are a problem that should be
solved by the extension writers, not us. There are just too much
extensions, should we write styles for them in good hope that maybe
someone even uses extension XYZ?

CSS-horror is not strictly a TYPO3 error, although the common practice
with styling as seen in CSC and lots of extensions (too many classes
when you can use selectors, etc.) looks to bloated and annoying for me,
I don't see how a template repository could solve this.

Greetings,
Michael

[Christopher]

Hi,

Post by Dieter Mayer
Hi Michael,
I'm a new subscriber to typo3.design and have no clue about the past
postings. So what is the alternative or the plan to avoid this and to get a
better respective easier template- and css design? As I wrote earlier, the
problem is not the html-template or the TS code, for me it's the horror with
neverending css files - sometimes dozens of lines for each extension, that's
too complex to handle, if you use a lot of different designs like I do...

I'd say the solution is to standardize your design process. I don't
see any reason - if you're designing new sites often - why you
couldn't just build a generic html / css template for each of the most
frequently used extensions and do minor customization each time. With
a cleverly thought out html template, it should be possible to create
a set of extension styles that don't need extensive customization. You
can even create separate stylesheets for each extension if you like
and call them into the main stylesheet...

@import(tt_news.css);
@import(sr_feuserregister.css);
@import(some_other_extension.css);

I find it is only very rarely necessary to substantially change
extension templates once I've customized them the first time, and if
you make use of the _cascade_ in [c]ss, you get a lot of your
extension styles for free...


-Christopher

[JoH]

Post by Christopher

Post by Dieter Mayer
I'm a new subscriber to typo3.design and have no clue about the past
postings. So what is the alternative or the plan to avoid this and
to get a better respective easier template- and css design? As I
wrote earlier, the problem is not the html-template or the TS code,
for me it's the horror with neverending css files - sometimes dozens
of lines for each extension, that's too complex to handle, if you
use a lot of different designs like I do...

I'd say the solution is to standardize your design process. I don't
see any reason - if you're designing new sites often - why you
couldn't just build a generic html / css template for each of the most
frequently used extensions and do minor customization each time. With
a cleverly thought out html template, it should be possible to create
a set of extension styles that don't need extensive customization. You
can even create separate stylesheets for each extension if you like
and call them into the main stylesheet...
@import(tt_news.css);
@import(sr_feuserregister.css);
@import(some_other_extension.css);
I find it is only very rarely necessary to substantially change
extension templates once I've customized them the first time, and if
you make use of the _cascade_ in [c]ss, you get a lot of your
extension styles for free...

And another thing you should try is:
Ignoring all those extension- and CSC-specific classes and do something
using the default techniques offered by CSS.
Usually i.e. headers in a news list or single news display don't differ very
much from the rest of the header styles. And if they do, there might be
things they have in common.
Since almost every content element and/or plugin has got at least one
surrounding box with a class you can do something like this:

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {
font-weight:bold;
line-height:1.3em;
margin:0;
margin-bottom:0.65em;
color:#fff;
background:#900;
}

h1 {
font-size: 1.8em;
}


h2 {
font-size: 1.6em;
}


h3 {
font-size: 1.4em;
}


h4 {
font-size: 1.2em;
}


h5 {
font-size: 1em;
}

div.myextension h1, div.myextension h2, div.myextension h3, div.myextension
h4, div.myextension h5 {
background:#090;
}

Same thing for almost any other extension.
This way you don't have to hassle with redundant settings for the different
classes.

When using different colors for different pages, while keeping the rest
ofthe CSS you can split up the CSS into different files.

includeCSS.file1 = commonsetup.css
includeCSS.file2 = colorset_red.css

Keep all color related things inside colorset_red.css and when you want to
switch to a blue page, simply copy it to colorset_blue.css and change the
values there.
This way I never needed CSS files with more than a few hundred lines for the
commonsetup and the colorset_whatever had almost less than 100 lines.

Joey

[Dieter Mayer]

Hiya Michael,

Post by Ingo Renner
Use a newsreader! Check out
http://typo3.org/community/mailing-lists/use-a-news-reader/

Nice, but my Outlook plugin fetches not all past postings and I don't want
to use a separate app. Bad for me, ok...

Post by Ingo Renner
The styles that the extensions provide are a problem that
should be solved by the extension writers, not us. There are
just too much extensions, should we write styles for them in
good hope that maybe someone even uses extension XYZ?

No, that's too late now, too many extensions developed. That's the reason
why I came to the idea of a template repository. Read below.

Post by Ingo Renner
CSS-horror is not strictly a TYPO3 error, although the common
practice with styling as seen in CSC and lots of extensions
(too many classes when you can use selectors, etc.) looks to
bloated and annoying for me, I don't see how a template
repository could solve this.

Think about templates with extensive css files - css files, that includes
settings for the 'most wanted' and 'most used' extensions - like tt_news,
chc_forum, indexed_search...
Maybe a bit more work for the template developer, but a great benefit for
Typo3 coder. Coders can contribute new class definitions to the template
designer, so he can update the css files with new definitions.
Just an idea from my point of view, but let's end the discussion here, I
continue template coding in the common way :-)

Ciao,
Dieter

[Dieter Mayer]

Hi Joey,

Post by JoH
Ignoring all those extension- and CSC-specific classes and do
something using the default techniques offered by CSS.
Usually i.e. headers in a news list or single news display
don't differ very much from the rest of the header styles.
And if they do, there might be things they have in common.
Since almost every content element and/or plugin has got at

Danke, good to know, helpful.
Must think about it, makes sense.

Greets,
Dieter