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MediaWiki Fratman Skin

Posted Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 10:18 am

MediaWiki Fratman SkinMediaWiki is a free application, registered under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is used to run Wikipedia, the World’s largest online encyclopedia, as well as many other wikis.

Fratman is a minimalist skin for MediaWiki-driven websites. Originally developed by Jason Pearce, users began making enhancements and fixing bugs. To better facilitate community-driven development of this popular skin, the project has moved to Google code. If you would like to participate, please in further developing this skin, please send me your Google username. So far, there’s nothing there, so if you want to help get things started, I’d appreciate it.

Previous posts about this skin within my website can be found here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 10:18 am and is filed under MediaWiki Skin, Web Development, 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.

54 Responses to “ MediaWiki Fratman Skin”

  1. Alex Burr Says:
    Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 7:19 am

    Jason,

    Love the skin, man. I’m using a self-modified version of 1.7 on a Wiki project now, and have noticed something - it seems like when you pick “Edit”, the “Article” link in the “Views” portlet continues to stay “selected”. Is this by design?

  2. Peter Poortinga Says:
    Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 12:38 pm

    Jason,
    I also love your skin and want to use it for our local village site. However I came alone a bug which I do not understand
    Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wfnomsg() in /www/htdocs/leermens/wiki/skins/MonoBook.php on line 130

    And it does not show me the navigationbar

    Line 130 shows

    What to do? I’m not a php-expert.

    I’m using your skin version 1.5 and use MediaWiki 1.6.7, with NL language. Version 1.7 does not work yet since my hosting provider is not using PHP5 :-(

  3. Jan Simons Says:
    Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 8:49 am

    Just replace wfNoMsg() in the skin template with wfEmptyMsg()
    HTH

  4. Peter Poortinga Says:
    Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 1:22 am

    Jason,
    Thanks that is solved. Is there also some documentation, since the sheet looks fine in Firefox, but in IE6 the sidebar moves to the top. I show some IE-patches in de monobook folder. Do I have to connects those patches in a way?
    regards Peter

  5. Sean Says:
    Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 7:47 pm

    I am having the same problem and have no idea how to fix it, I need to figure it out soon though, any help would be greatly appreciated.

  6. mr. w Says:
    Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 4:03 am

    Hi,
    I really like your skin, but I have a little problem. I got the following error message:

    Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/mw/wiki/skins/MonoBook.php on line 142

    The headline ‘Navigation’ is there, but the navigationbar items aren’t.
    Can U help me?

    line 142: data['navigation_urls'] as $navlink) { ?>

  7. Nigel Says:
    Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 3:05 pm

    Peter’s and Sean’s problem about the sidebar moving to the top, overlaying the logo, can be solved by commenting out the following code from skins/fratman/IE60Fixes.css as shown:
    /*
    column-one {

    position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
z-index: 4;

    }
    /
    (you will need to do exactly the same for the other IE fix files, IE55fixes.css and IE50fixes.css, for users with those browsers). While you are at it, you might also comment out the whole of the section in those files under the heading /    the tabs*/, which just make the Views menu in the sidebar look different form the other menus in the sidebar.

    The problem seems to have arisen from copying over these fix style sheets from monobook, where they are used to fix styles that are different in fratman, and so they mess up rather than cure IE problems.

    I hope this helps!

  8. Mark Says:
    Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 2:18 pm

    I have used Fratman in the past and it worked great. I am trying to set up a new site, on Mandriva 2006.0 with MediaWiki 1.8.2 + Fratman 1.7. It just doesn’t work and I don’t know what I am doing wrong.

    I replaced the “monobook” directory with the fratman files and copied the fratman_enhanced.php overtop of the MonoBook.php file in the parent directory. But when I go to the site, it doesn’t look at all like Fratman- wrong fonts, wrong layout, no Frat graphics. In fact, it looks identical to the “standard” skin (if you set $wgDefaultSkin = ’standard’; in LocalSettings.php instead of “monobook”)

    Any ideas? Perhaps Fratman 1.7 is not compatible with MediaWiki 1.8.2 and I have been pounding my head on it for no reason? Thanks

  9. Iñigo Medina Says:
    Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 1:19 pm

    Thanks for a so clean-beatiful skin. We’re using at linfohistiocitosis.info and installation was really easy.
    Good work!

  10. Adam Says:
    Sunday, January 7th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

    http://jasonpearce.com/blog/2006/09/23/mediawiki-fratman-skin/#comment-6244

    I have the same problem as Mark! It looks wonderful on the fratman website, but nothing like it on mine…

    Help!

    • Adam
  11. Rod Says:
    Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 5:28 am

    Hi

    I love the skin it made what I was trying to achieve look good, so thanks.

    I just need to change the footer so I can add Commons SA licence … how do I do it? Which bit to edit

    Thanks

  12. Chuck Says:
    Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 1:53 am

    Hi,

    I am seeing an orange vertical bar on the left side of the footer for the full height of the footer on IE 6.0. I am using MedaWiki 1.9 with the 1.7 version of the skin. I am a site administrator and not very good in CSS or PHP.

    Regards,
    Chuck

  13. egen Says:
    Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 4:57 pm

    Hi, thanks for you skin.
    I am upgrading mediawiki to 1.9.0 and toolbars are not present on edit page.

  14. egen Says:
    Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 1:29 am

    Problem was resolved. Copy part from Monobook.php ” and place to Fratman.php (or Fratmanenchaced.php).

  15. Jean-Loup Says:
    Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    Just started using v1.7 with MediaWiki 1.8.2 in a couple of educational wikis (see http://oocpp.coderswiki.org ). It works nicely after some fixes mentioned in previous comments and some twiddling for IE browsers. I like the clean look of the FratMan skin, thanks for making it available.

  16. Hal Says:
    Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 6:53 am

    If anyone is having problems with IE7 with 1.7 of this skin, I found it works perficly without the IE fixes css files. The fixes break it. I don’t have IE6 installed, so I can’t say what happens for that.

  17. David Veksler Says:
    Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 3:37 pm

    If anyone has Fratman working with 1.9, can you please post a link or send me a note? I can’t get the toolbar to show up.

  18. egen Says:
    Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 2:45 pm

    You need to be replaced in the header file fratman_enhanced.php

    open original fratman_enhanced.php and replace
    block “?>”

    from same block of MonoBook.php
    (Before editing, make a copy of original file)

  19. David Veksler Says:
    Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 am

    Egen,

    Can you be more specific please? What block exactly do a need to replace?

  20. Eric Says:
    Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 10:45 pm

    I got the toolbar to show up, but the horizontal rule/seperator (—-) doesn’t show up…

  21. Isaac Says:
    Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 2:50 am

    Hi,

    Is there any way to make the [edit] links smaller, or aligned to the right instead of left? As it is, they are too big and ruin the section titles of each page -It’s still a great design though!

    Even better, could the [edit] links be removed altogether for users not logged in?

    I’m only an administrator, so any help would be really appreciated.
    Thanks,

  22. Isaac Says:
    Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 9:54 am

    Solved. Add this to ‘fratman_enhanced.php’ before the tag and it will removed the section edit links for users that aren’t logged in.

    data['loggedin']) { ?>

    [By the way, Nigel's IE fix for the sidebar overlap problem works for me. But also, when I followed Hal's suggestion and removed all the IE fixes .css files my pages formed perfectly. I'm using Mediawiki 1.9.2 and IE7]

  23. Isaac Says:
    Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 10:00 am

    Oops, I meant….

    Solved. Add this to ‘fratman_enhanced.php’ before the tag and it will removed the section edit links for users that aren’t logged in.


    data['loggedin']) { ?>

    [By the way, Nigel’s IE fix for the sidebar overlap problem works for me. But also, when I followed Hal’s suggestion and removed all the IE fixes .css files my pages formed perfectly. I’m using Mediawiki 1.9.2 and IE7]

  24. Isaac Says:
    Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 10:07 am

    Ok, last try at making the code appear properly…

    
data['loggedin']) { ?>
  25. sverre Says:
    Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 9:29 am

    Hi, great design !!

    “Solved. Add this to ‘fratman_enhanced.php’ before the tag and it will removed the section edit links for users that aren’t logged in.

    data['loggedin']) { ?>”

    …before what tag is that ?

    Thanks !

  26. Maarten Gielen Says:
    Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 10:31 am

    hey,

    great skin, very light and pure.
    Maybe it is a good id to include a ‘how to instal.txt’ in the zip… ?

  27. Roger Houghton Says:
    Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    Great skin which I’ve used on several sites, most recently http://www.clevelandpools.org.uk. I have a couple of queries, though. Firstly, the search box only shows up for logged in users. The other thing is, how do I edit the sidebar that loggedin users see? I can edit the default Navigation bit in …/MediaWiki:Sidebar but not the logged-in bits under View and Personal Tools. I can go to …/MediaWiki:View and there’s a page with ‘View’ which I can edit but none of the bits underneath such as ‘>>Message’ or ‘>>Discussion’.

    Thanks,

    Roger

  28. Darren Heitner Says:
    Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    How do I make my edit pages have a WYSIWYG editor? It would make editing pages much easier for my visitors.

  29. Sverre Says:
    Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 4:26 am

    Hi Roger, how did you hide the “change” link for not-logged-in users ?

  30. Roger Houghton Says:
    Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    Trouble is I can’t remember. I really should write these things down. I’ll try and work out what I did and report back.

  31. Maarten Gielen Says:
    Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 9:52 am

    hey, i totally agree on the suggestion for a wysiwyg editor… any progress in view?

  32. Darren Heitner Says:
    Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 5:21 pm

    WE WANT WYSIWYG! Please? :)

  33. Roger Houghton Says:
    Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    “Hi Roger, how did you hide the “change” link for not-logged-in users ?”

    This way, I think:

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/39ssj5

  34. Bastian Says:
    Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 6:51 am

    Hi there,

    I got two problems with this (fine) skin (I use version 1.9x of mediawiki):

    1 - The already mentioned problem with the WYSIWG-Toolbar. Which block do I have to replace in the enhanced_fratman.php (taken from the monobook.php) so the Edit-Toolbar shown up?

    2- Here are two screenshots of the Firefox and the IE - menu. You see the strange looking of the “Views-Menu” and the small sign in front of any Navigation-Point. What do I have to change si that it looks like the Firefox-Version?

    http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ffmenufratmanjf4.png

    http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=iemenufratmanmq7.png
    Thanx!

  35. maarten gielen Says:
    Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    hey everybody!

    GOOD NEWS

    i’ve just installed a wysiwyg editor on this skin, and it’s working fine
    just get it here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cacycle/wikEd (only working with firefox… )

  36. Hal Says:
    Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 11:39 pm

    Re - Toolbar missing

    Other people seem to have tried to post how to fix the edit toolbar, but I guess the comment system sanitizes the php out of the message.

    You need to copy line 72 (only one line) of MonoBook.php and put it into fratman_enhanced.php BEFORE line 67.

    I am going to try to post the line here with some added spaces so hopefully it won’t get removed:

    < ?p h p print Skin::makeGlobalVariablesScript ( $this->data ); ? >

    Don’t paste that in because I added white space, but copy that line from MonoBook.php.

    To clarify - the above line needs to go into fratman_enhanced.php ABOVE the line with “wikibits.js” in it (line 67).

  37. Esp3tek Says:
    Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 5:40 am

    hey Bastian, the menu view is strange in IE, i solved it:

    rename:

    IE50Fixes.css to IE50Fixescss
    IE55Fixes.css to IE55Fixescss
    IE60Fixes.css to IE60Fixescss
    IEMacFixes.css to IEMacFixescss
    broswerforms_compact.css to broswerforms_compactcss

  38. Tony Says:
    Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 10:34 pm

    Not sure if this thread is still being monitored, but I hope someone can help me with this. I download v1.7 above and extracted just the files in it to my skins folder. I kept getting an error - dealing with the “require_once(’anand_fratman_17/includes/SkinTemplate.php’)” command - until I copied the entire wiki/includes folder into the anand_fratman_17 folder. Then I got something, but still not the full skin.

    Should I be copying other folders into the anand folder? Is there a single compressed file that has all I need?

  39. MistyLook Theme for MediaWiki Toolbar Fix at bavatuesdays Says:
    Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 10:47 am

    [...] I found this fix thanks to Hal’s comment on Jason Pearce’s blog. [...]

  40. Luke Says:
    Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    Yeah! Thanks Hal, that fixed it.

  41. Milosz Galazk Says:
    Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 11:56 am

    3 x Thanks! for the most clean mediawiki skin.

  42. Anton Says:
    Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Hi all,
    I’m having tough time getting edit toolbar to work on this skin.
    I’ve tried copying line from monobook skin, but it still does not work.
    Monobook skin’s toolbar appears, but not in this one.
    I’ve downloaded version 1.7 of this skin, mediawiki I’m using is 1.13, i get error in my Safari console: ReferenceError: Can’t find variable: addButton
    Any help is appreciated!
    Thanks all

  43. Anton Says:
    Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Nevermind. I found some other code missing in fratman file. Adding these lines helped:
    < ? php $this->html(’headscripts’) ?>
    < ? php if($this->data['jsvarurl']) { ?>
    <script type=”text(’jsmimetype’) ?>” src=”text(’jsvarurl’) ?>”>
    < ? php } ?>
    < ? php if($this->data['pagecss']) { ?>
    html(’pagecss’) ?>
    < ? php }

  44. Daniele C. Says:
    Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 10:15 am

    I get 2 javascript errors: “wgBreakFrames is not defined” and “mwEditButtons has no properties”.

    What can it be?

    Using v1.7

  45. Daniele C. Says:
    Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Ok, I added the following block at line 66 (surrounded by php tags, of course):

    print Skin::makeGlobalVariablesScript ( $this->data );
    $this->html(’headscripts’);
    if($this->data['pagecss']) html(’pagecss’);

  46. gego Says:
    Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    I also wanted to say thx for the nice skin. I just would need some help with 2 problems. While it works fine, I have 2 problems:

    1 I cannot see the edit icon bar in the edit mode.

    2 I cannot get RSS feeds to work.

    skin implemented on this page: http://www.univie.ac.at/jelinetz/

    I tried the above mentioned workarounds but they didn’t seem to have any effect.

    help would be great. cheers, gego

  47. gego Says:
    Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 4:03 pm

    … i mean the formatting toolbar in an edit window…

  48. gego Says:
    Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    Q: In monobookI see the editor and everything works fine, but as soon as I switch to my custom skin the edit “menu” is no longer there.

    A: Add this line to the skin template (usually located in /skins/skin_name.php where “skin_name” is the name of the skin you’re using-> fratman.php or fratman_enhanced.php) right before the tag (meaning at the end of the head section):

    < ? php $this->html(’headscripts’) ? >

  49. links for 2009-04-10 | Nathan and his Open Ideals Says:
    Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 11:03 am

    [...] Jason Pearce | relatively irrelevant » Blog Archive » MediaWiki Fratman Skin ratman is a minimalist skin for MediaWiki-driven websites. Originally developed by Jason Pearce, users began making enhancements and fixing bugs. To better facilitate community-driven development of this popular skin, the project has moved to Google code. (tags: wiki mediawiki skin) Share and Enjoy: [...]

  50. jobe Says:
    Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 5:10 am

    Hi all,
    Fratman skin is really great!

    Hi removed IE*.css in order to solve the visualization problem, but now my sidebar (from Navigation till the end) is a link to MainPage! :(
    Any idea? Thanx a lot,

    Jobe

  51. jobe Says:
    Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 7:49 am

    I had the possibility to test the skin on IE6.0 and it works, so it’s a IE7 problem only… :(

  52. jasonpearce Says:
    Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 7:50 am

    Sorry Jobe. It’s been nearly three years since I developed this skin. Browsers have updated and so has the MediaWiki code base, so it doesn’t surprise me that my FratMan skin is giving you some problems.

    I currently don’t have any upcoming MediaWiki websites to develop. But when I do, I’ll likely develop a new clean skin that works for all A-Grade browsers and will share it to all.

    Sincerely,
    Jason Pearce

  53. Tim Says:
    Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 10:21 pm

    Like Hal Jobe and EspTek i find that in IE7 the sidebar is strange, but removing just renaming the IE60Fixes.css solves the problem in 1E7.
    So all I need to do is find the place where the AAIE60Fixes.css is called and have it called only when the browser is IE 6.
    Aha. In fratman_enhanced.php at line 63
    There is

    This means that if the version is greater than 6 then include the IE60Fixes.css.
    According to the site below
    http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html
    [if IE 6]
    will work for all versions of IE6. So I changed line 63 to

    And after a lot of wailing and nashing of teeth (because the CSS was being cached, and I was not refreshing the cashe - be sure to use “Ctrl + F5″ to make sure that the CSS as well as the page are refreshed), the above seems to work for IE7 and I presume for IE6 too.

  54. Tim Says:
    Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 7:59 am

    Alas, the above “fix” did not work with IE 6.02x.

    I have windows XP computer with IE 7 and a Win2K computer with IE 6.02x or thereabouts.
    The “fix” above only works on the computer with IE 7, so it is no better than just removing the
    IE60Fixes.css file as suggested by Hal.

    I guess that “[if IE 6]” may mean only IE 6.0 precisely (?).

    Perhaps I need something like [If IE => 6 AND < 7]? I am not sure.

    Nearly there, but not quite.

    Tim

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