Jason Pearce

MediaWiki Skins by Castley

Posted Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 at 2:00 pm

2006 September 23: Anand released a new FratMan skin that works well with MediaWiki v1.7. The skin incorporates many of the changes suggested in these comments. Thank you Anand.

Robert Castley, Mambo project director from 2002 to October 2004, dropped in to thank me for the MediaWiki skins I created and to offer a few enhancements of his own.

Thanks for sharing your enhancements Robert. More so, thanks for all you have contributed to the open source community. I’ll need to create 1,000 skins or more to repay the dept I and others owe to you.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 at 2:00 pm and is filed under MediaWiki Skin, Web Projects . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

58 Responses to “ MediaWiki Skins by Castley”

tentacle Says:
Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 4:06 am
the Enhanced skin 1.5 works great now on MediaWiki 1.5. Except that on IE 6.0 the links on the left side are beginning at the very top (where the image is). I fixed it with removing the following block in the IE60Fixes.css

p-cactions li a {
```
display: inline-block !important;
vertical-align: top;
padding-bottom: 0;
border: solid #aaa;
border-width: 1px 1px 0;
```
}
tentacle Says:
Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 4:07 am
seems the code doesn’t maked it well in this blog ^^
its the part starting with “p-cactions li a”
tentacle Says:
Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 4:07 am
seems the code doesn’t maked it well in this blog ;)
its the part starting with “p-cactions li a”
tentacle Says:
Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 4:20 am
Update: You have to remove the “#column-content #content” “#column-one” “#footer” and the “#p-cactions li a”
Thorsten Says:
Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 at 2:48 pm
Hey, nice work, this skin hat a lot more air in it - I like that!

I have an amendment to post for the amendment above which did not work on my site directly. If You get a weird display in IE6 using the hack above, try leaving the block “#column-content #content” in place, adjusting the margin-left a little to: “margin-left: 14.5em;”.

That worked out for me …

Keep up the good work!
Thorsten
Carl Says:
Thursday, October 27th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
Nice work with this skin. One problem I’ve had is that indented text (ie formatted with a :) does not show up indented. Also definition lists don’t seem to format correctly. I’m not sure if this is a CSS issue, or something with the PHP? It shows up in firefox, and safari on the mac and IE6 and firefox on windows. Any ideas?
Thanks!
jasonpearce Says:
Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 9:13 am
Carl, it’s certainly a CSS issue. If it works in most browsers but not one specifically (in your case IE/win), then the CSS code is there, but a particular browser doesn’t understand it for some reason.

I’m spamped building a new WordPress skin right now. I’m sure when I need a new wiki site, I’ll use the new v1.5 and will work on enhancing this skin further.
John Says:
Wednesday, November 9th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
I realize this is probably a dumb queston, but I’ve spent hours trying to figure out how to install this skin! If you have a moment, would you be able to give a quick overview of the steps necessary to fit this into a MediaWiki installation while still keeping the default Monobook skin as an option. I’m using 1.5. Thanks!

John
Jussi Paju Says:
Monday, November 14th, 2005 at 6:19 am
Very nice work with the skin, not so nice with the server configuration, I went trough hell to download the rar-package to one of my linux-servers using wget. Anyhow I managed to succeed by tweaking the parameters and telling wget to identify itself as firefox.

I surf using this windows-laptop and download stuff directly to appropriate server trough ssh-terminal, so your attempt to prevent downloading with wget was just awful for users like me.
Thorsten Says:
Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
Hi folks again,

still, it’s a great skin to have for Your wiki - another minor change makes it work neatly with Safari and Konqueror, just change the only line in KHTMLFixes.css

to

“column-content { margin-left: 12px; }”

and there You go …

You may have a look at my site working with the skin (just some minor enhancements): http://www.projekt.editionswissenschaft.net

Greets, Thorsten
Marc Says:
Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Yeah, I had the wget problem also. I ended up downloading it on my windows machine and scp’ing it to my server.

The skin seems to be totally broken in Safari on the mac… anyone else have this problem?
Thorsten Says:
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 7:08 am
The fix for that is above! :-)
Marc Says:
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Actually, I tried that, but I still have the problem in Safari. All the text is overlying itself…
Thorsten Says:
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
This seems strange … on http://www.projekt.editionswissenschaft.net it works for Konqueror and today I received another feedback it works for Safari, too. Please warn me if that’s not true under all conditions!

Did You really make the change in KHTMLFixes.css?
Maybe You need to clean up Your browser cache once more to see the result …

(”All the text is overlying itself…” probably means: the main content column overlaps the left navigation, correct?)
rouven Says:
Monday, December 5th, 2005 at 7:49 am
IE50 and IE55 has those bugs too, any fixes yet?
Thorsten Says:
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
I didn’t test this (don’t have IE5 and 55 here …) idea out,
but there are two files in the skins-dir, where You could try applying the same changes as described for the IE6-bug above:
IE50Fixes.css and IE55Fixes.css
Maybe that works?
Thorsten Says:
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
Ah, rouven, Your company is seated in Hamburg? How nice … klick on my name above to find a neighbor … ;-)
SteveO Says:
Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
I’ve got the layout working good in IE6.0 but how on the left column the bullets under “Views” are spaced farther apart than the rest. Where can I change this so they all look uniform?
Mike Says:
Friday, December 16th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
I’ve also been having problems getting the layout to work properly in Safari. I’ve made the margin-left change to KHTMLFixes.css, but the main content column is still overlapping the left navigation. Looking at the page source in Safari, it looks like the KHTMLFixes.css header link is commented out.
Mike Says:
Friday, December 16th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
Wait, that’s not right. The IEXXFixes.css header links are commented out, and it doesn’t look like there is a header link to KHTMLFixes.css.
Mike Says:
Friday, December 16th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
I’ve gotten it to display properly in Safari by changing KHTMLFixes.css to:

“column-content { margin-left: 200px; }”

Alternately, just removing that line entirely may also work.

But I’m not sure whether either of those changes would break things other KHTML browsers.
Bob Says:
Thursday, January 5th, 2006 at 1:08 am
Can anyone tell me how to fix these skins so they don’t print the menues on the left? (I’m using the v1.4 enhanced skin at http://buhswiki.bu6.org)
Thumper Says:
Monday, January 9th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
(Sorry for the cross-post…)

I have a floating problem in IE 6 for PC. The left sidebar floats to the top. I tried the changes to the IE 6 CSS file as suggested in the earlier post. But it hasn’t helped.

Has anyone come up with any new ideas on how to solve the IE 6 sidebar float?
totta Says:
Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I have a floating problem in IE 6. The left sidebar floats to the top. I have read the logs here and I looked at the sites that use this skin and compared to mine. I do not see much of a difference, so I am stuck. The problem seems to be related to IE6, it works fine in Mozilla FireFox.

I tried the changes to the IE 6 CSS file as suggested in the earlier post. But it do not make any difference, I tried all the usggestion made in this blog.

Has anyone come up with any new ideas on how to solve the IE 6 sidebar float?

You can see for your self how it looks like on my website at http://www.epnn.com
Braindead Says:
Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I solved the IE60 problem, by commenting only the #column-one section:

like this:
/* #column-one {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
z-index: 4;
} */

IE6 has an issue with drawing a rectangle around the navigation links though… anyone else who experiences this?
Braindead Says:
Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
update: actually simply deleting the IE60fixes.css file solves that issue… strange…
totta Says:
Friday, February 3rd, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Thanks Braindead, I removed the IE60fixes.css and now it works fine.
bsides Says:
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 12:45 am
Hi, I found an error on MediaWiki 1.6+ (CVS version) in function wfnomsg(). It goes as read:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wfnomsg() in
/(here comes the path)/MonoBook.php on line 130

Do you guys have any idea?
bsides Says:
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 12:50 am
Ok, I found out by just comparing both monobook.php (from this skin to the original CVS version) and I realise that they changed this function to other one called wfEmptyMsg. So, here’s the fix:

Find, line 130 (or near that):
if (wfNoMsg($bar, $out)

And put in place
if (wfEmptyMsg($bar, $out)

It should work fine now. I would put a new download link at the top page too, since it’s going to be the new version soon.

PS - It’s for the “Enhanced skin (v1.5) by Castley” one.
Mark N Says:
Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Hi everyone - there is one problem that I just cannot seem to fix, and I have been toiling over this for at least 2 weeks….this skin works fine for me, except when it comes to category pages. When you have a category, it lists all of the article links under it with some kind of “middle” alignment rather than “top” aligned. I must have done trial and error work on every possible line in the code that could potentially cause this to happen, but NOTHING fixes it. It is frustrating to the highest degree…if anyone knows how to fix this, PLEASE let me know!

For example, this is what it looks like: http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/markn26/example1.jpg
This is how I want it to look: http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/markn26/example2.jpg
Jason Pearce | relatively irrelevant » Blog Archive » Creative Commons and Permission Says:
Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
[...] is-already-granted project like Creative Commons. For example, when I write some code or design a theme and release it to the public domain under an open source licens [...]
Romain Says:
Friday, March 3rd, 2006 at 4:21 pm
A very nice work !

I don’t know If I am going to ask too much here but can you tell me what to modify in the script / skins so that all article functions (view / edit / discussion / edit / history) could be bring back at the top of the article / page (like the default skin in Mediawiki). I find it more usefull in terms of editing stuff.

thanks
GHarker Says:
Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 8:47 am
I Really like these skins. I’m using the Castley 1.5 version. I’ve applied both the suggested IE60Fixes.css changes and the KHTMLFixes.css changes. There’s one addition to throw in - it appears that images with center alignment do not align to the center. I added the following to the images section in main.css

div.floatnone, table.floatnone {
float: none;
position: relative;
margin: 0 0 0.5em 0.5em;
border: 0
/*
margin: 0.3em 0.5em 0.5em 0;
border: 0.5em solid White;
border-width: 0.5em 1.4em 0.8em 0;
*/
}
.center {
width: 100%;
text-align: center;
}
*.center * {
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

The floatnone may be unecessary - but I noticed there was no css for it. The center stuff is copied from the original 1.5 monobook main.css - adding this makes images center for me.
Michael Says:
Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 at 12:18 am
You can fix the definition lis issue by including the following lines in main.css. Stick them in the lists section.

dt {
font-weight: bold;
margin-bottom: .1em;
}
dl {
margin-top: .2em;
margin-bottom: .5em;
}
dd {
line-height: 1.5em;
margin-left: 2em;
margin-bottom: .1em;
}
beuh_dave Says:
Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 5:02 am
I deleted IE60Fixes.css and replaced with a new IE60Fixes.css containing the following: Works well from what I can see. I don’t like the left margin when you simply delete the CSS file, so that’s why where this comes in.

column-content {
```
float: none;
margin-left: 15em;
height: 1%;
```
}
column-one {
```
position: absolute;
top: 10em;
left: 1em;
z-index: 4;
```

Anglopedia man Says:
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 at 8:17 pm

I implemented this skin and created my own left navbar. But the stuff under the left navbar is missing (including the edit/discussion text on the bottom) when I view the site on IE6. But it is visible on Firefox 1.5.

Like the others, I deleted the IE60fixes.css to solve the problem of the left navbar moving to the top of the bar.

Any ideas? Here is my site:

http://www.anglopedia.ca

Here is the end of the navbar code and the start of the search box and stuff that is supposed to appear below…

[...]

</div>

<div class="portlet" id="p-personal">
  <h5><?php $this->msg('personaltools') ?></h5>
  <div class="pBody">
    <ul>
    <?php foreach($this->data['personal_urls'] as $key => $item) {
       ?><li id="pt-<?php echo htmlspecialchars($key) ?>"><a href="<?php
       echo htmlspecialchars($item['href']) ?>"<?php
       if(!empty($item['class'])) { ?> class="<?php
       echo htmlspecialchars($item['class']) ?>"<?php } ?>><?php
       echo htmlspecialchars($item['text']) ?></a></li><?php
    } ?>
    </ul>
  </div>

</div>

<div class="portlet" id="p-logo">
  <a style="background-image: url(<?php $this->text('logopath') ?>);"
    href="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($this->data['nav_urls']['mainpage']['href'])?>"
    title="<?php $this->msg('mainpage') ?>"></a>
</div>

<script type="<?php $this->text('jsmimetype') ?>"> if (window.isMSIE55) fixalpha(); </script>

<?php foreach ($this->data['sidebar'] as $bar => $cont) { ?>
<div class='portlet' id='p-<?php echo htmlspecialchars($bar) ?>'>
  <h5><?php $out = wfMsg( $bar ); if (wfNoMsg($bar, $out)) echo $bar; else echo $out; ?></h5>
  <div class='pBody'>
    <ul>
    <?php foreach($cont as $key => $val) { ?>
      <li id="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($val['id']) ?>"><a href="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($val['href']) ?>"><?php echo htmlspecialchars($val['text'])?></a></li>
     <?php } ?>
    </ul>
  </div>

</div>

Kees Says:
Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Can anyone please tell me how to change the size of Table of Contents? I mean there is too much space around it.

Thanks!!!
Jason Says:
Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
What would I need to change to make the title bar/image a clickable link to bring back to the main page?

It seems like a simple edit… no?
Rob Says:
Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 8:12 am
What code is necessary to add to the head section in order to import the IEMacFixes.css, KHTMLFixes.css, Opera6Fixes.css, and Opera7Fixes.css when viewed using those browsers? Currently the if conditions are only testing for IE:

[if lt IE 5.5000]…
[if IE 5.5000]…
[if gte IE 6]…
[if IE]…

I don’t understand what variable those if statements are testing on, or what values to add for non-IE browsers. Can anyone help? I would like to import a CSS fix for Safari (KHTMLFixes.css?) since I am getting the same column overlay issue as described above but don’t know how to have the file KHTMLFixes.css imported when Safari is used as the browser. Can someone please explain this and/or provide the lines of code needed?
Erlend Says:
Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 at 4:48 am
Hi we use this skin in a wiki http://www.tnldp.org
Take a look at the wiki, the main part of the site floats into the sidebar. :(
We have troubles getting the skin to work with konqueor, does enyone else have/had this problem…?
The wiki works fine in every other browser we have tested.
Pablo Says:
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 4:32 am
There is a problem for the current version of mediawiki. The problem is important because it breaks the navigation menu and (thank god!) issues a nasty error message.

Line 130 of MonoBook.php makes a call to a function

wfNoMsg

which have been renamed to

wfEmptyMsg

as explained on

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-cvs/2005-September/011093.html

The fix is really simple, even a matter of search and replace if you don’t want to find the spot ;)

BTW — thank you for the nice theme! I like it a lot! The only thing I miss is there is no “flower” to click, it is part of the background image (which is very nice), and I used to click it to go “home”. I think it would be great if the flower as a different object, so people would have the ability to replace the flower with our transparent logo and also having the usual link to go the main page.

Thanks! Cheers everybody!
articles Says:
Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Any final fix instructions for the mac safari broken sidebar ?
Bill Says:
Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
What is the fix for the table of contents? It appears too big. The frat mat site is fine, but the .rar file isn’t.
AJ Says:
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 12:13 am
guys,
question : how do i create a link to the home page from the logo? Right now its’ a single image all the way across the top…

thanks,
AJ
AJ Says:
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 12:52 am
also,
is there a way i can re-organize my left panel? … right now its’ Views , personal tools, navigation tools and search box. I’d prefer to have it navigation tools, search box , views and lastly personal tools…

thanks,
AJ
Man of Experience Says:
Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 12:53 am
Hooray, what a nice skin, and appears to work on FireFox and IE6.0

I installed the 1.5 version on MediaWiki 1.6.3 and found a few bugs - fixed thanks to the above posts which i’ll quote here:

There is a problem for the current version of mediawiki. The problem is important because it breaks the navigation menu and (thank god!) issues a nasty error message.

Line 130 of MonoBook.php makes a call to a function

wfNoMsg

which have been renamed to

wfEmptyMsg

I deleted IE60Fixes.css and replaced with a new IE60Fixes.css containing the following: Works well from what I can see. I don’t like the left margin when you simply delete the CSS file, so that’s why where this comes in.

column-content {

float: none;
margin-left: 15em;
height: 1%;

}
column-one {

position: absolute;
top: 10em;
left: 1em;
z-index: 4;

I’m excited!
Jona Says:
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Hey Man, is the table of contents fixed with Skin 1.5 on Mediawiki 1.6.3?
JohnR Says:
Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 1:01 am
I’m not really sure why the table of contents is behaving the way it is, but adding this to main.css helps (a bit):

toctitle h2 {

font-size: 14pt;
margin: 0;
padding: 4px;
}
fx Says:
Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 7:42 am
with version 1.6.8 i receive the follwing error in the Navigation section:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /wiki/skins/MonoBook.php on line 172

Any Hints?

Can someone supply all fixed files as a new3 archiv? This would be great. I think this is one of the finest skins for MediaWiki. Thanks a lot!
fx Says:
Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 7:47 am
Sorry Mesg above is from the fraternitymanuals skin :)
AJ Says:
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 7:58 am
did anyone find a solution for the question below??? —
“I don’t know If I am going to ask too much here but can you tell me what to modify in the script / skins so that all article functions (view / edit / discussion / edit / history) could be bring back at the top of the article / page (like the default skin in Mediawiki). I find it more usefull in terms of editing stuff.”
Anand Says:
Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Jason,

I have a Fratman-Enhanced (Castley Version) ported to MediaWiki 1.7 with the fixes in your blog comments. The only outstanding browser issue after tests with BrowserCam are Safari 1.3, Explorer 5.0 and 5.5 for Win.

I’d like to contribute it to this page. You can email me if you would like to add it.
jasonpearce Says:
Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Excellent Anand. I welcome your contributions, will publicly credit and thank you, and will be happy to update my site with your modified changes. Thanks for offering to help and improve my work for the good of everyone.

Email me a .zip or .rar file that includes your changes and I’ll update the site.

Sincerely,
Jason Pearce
Man Of Experience Says:
Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Great news Anand, fantastic for the new wiki release.

Jason, I’d like to email with an issue or two, what is your email address? I can’t find it anywhere, although i’m assuming jason@jasonpearce.com will work!

Thanks
Jimmy Desai Says:
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Hey,

I’m sorry if I missed this somewhere, but I was wondering how to get the various coloured blocks as showin in this image: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Enhancedfratman.png . Does it require modifying the php file or can it be achieved through the wiki markup?

Thanks,
Jimmy
Jason Pearce | relatively irrelevant » Blog Archive » Wikimedia Foundation Called Says:
Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 10:21 am
[...] In April 2005 I developed a MediaWiki Skin and released another in October 2005. At the bottom of this skin is a link that says “developed (by Jason Pearce of Lambda Chi Alpha).” [...]
jasonpearce Says:
Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 10:42 am
2006 September 23: Anand released a new FratMan skin that works well with MediaWiki v1.7. The skin incorporates many of the changes suggested in these comments. Thank you Anand.
AM Says:
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
With MediaWiki 1.8.2 and Anand’s latest I cant seem to display HR stuff, no lines, it doesnt matter if I use HTML or —- wikitext.

Cant seem to find the problem either. Same page viewed in monobook seems to show the line.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
AM

MediaWiki Skins by Castley

58 Responses to “ MediaWiki Skins by Castley”

p-cactions li a {

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