Updated Fishbone skin, with alt styles

[kdf]

Thanks to some stylesheet tweaking by MeSue, there are a couple of alternate
looks for the Fishbone skin. I've packaged up an updated version that allows
switching of styles from the help section. The latest choice is then stored as
a cookie so that the new preferred style takes over.

This requires a small change to the server itself, Web/HTTP.pm line 859 needs to
change to:
} elsif ($path =~ /slimserver.*?\.css/) {

I'm looking for a bit of feedback before I commit something like this.

The updated skin can be downloaded from here:
http://www.deane-freeman.com/~fishbone/Fishbone.zip

the help page includes the screenshots originally posted on the users' list.

Notes:
changing style requires a full window refresh to take full effect.
tested on IE and Firefox (not safari yet)
browse pane header needs some positioning tweaks, but I'm not sure yet how to
do it in a css.

Thank!
-kdf

[Grotus]

kdf wrote:
> Thanks to some stylesheet tweaking by MeSue, there are a couple of alternate
> looks for the Fishbone skin. I've packaged up an updated version that allows
> switching of styles from the help section. The latest choice is then stored as
> a cookie so that the new preferred style takes over.
>
> This requires a small change to the server itself, Web/HTTP.pm line 859 needs to
> change to:
> } elsif ($path =~ /slimserver.*?\.css/) {
>
> I'm looking for a bit of feedback before I commit something like this.

It would probably be reasonable to serve up any .css file. And since we
switched to Template Toolkit we could even serve it up through that to
allow for a little server side action for .css files. The original
reason for serving .css as static files was due to our home-grown
template system using {} as brackets, which didn't work too well with
stylesheets.

[kdf]

Quoting Robert Moser <rlmoser (AT) comcast (DOT) net>:

> kdf wrote:
> > Thanks to some stylesheet tweaking by MeSue, there are a couple of
> alternate
> > looks for the Fishbone skin. I've packaged up an updated version that
> allows
> > switching of styles from the help section. The latest choice is then
> stored as
> > a cookie so that the new preferred style takes over.
> >
> > This requires a small change to the server itself, Web/HTTP.pm line 859
> needs to
> > change to:
> > } elsif ($path =~ /slimserver.*?\.css/) {
> >
> > I'm looking for a bit of feedback before I commit something like this.
>
> It would probably be reasonable to serve up any .css file. And since we
> switched to Template Toolkit we could even serve it up through that to
> allow for a little server side action for .css files. The original
> reason for serving .css as static files was due to our home-grown
> template system using {} as brackets, which didn't work too well with
> stylesheets.

I'm glad you mentioned that. Ideally, I thought it would be nice to have this
kind of feature available to all skins, since a good number of the ones
currently included with the server are simply style sheet changes to EN. For
now, I went with the smallest ans simplest change server side, simply to take
away as much risk as possible for 6.1. I'm also not sure how extensive the
changes would get in order to support some sort of server-side style sheet
controls.

-kdf

[MrC]

I'm having, and have always had trouble getting skins to change correctly. Testing the new Fishbone changes are even more problematic for me now.

Despite numerous hard refreshes, clearing the cache, using Opera or IE, I get these weird mixtures of skins when trying to use the updated Fishbones.

What does one have to do to get the darned skins to take hold !?

Edit: also to note, there are double images being shown in the fishbone player area. Two SqueezeBox pics, two start buttons, etc. All the controls are doubled, side-by-side. See pic below.

[MrC]

Attached is a picture of the odd behavior I see with the Fishbone skin.

[kdf]

That looks like you are using a browser that does not support
stylesheets, OR you have not patched the server as described. if, as I
believe you mentioned, you are having troubles of a similar nature with
the standard skins, this really belongs as an issue in the discussion,
or beta forum or directed to support (AT) slimdevices (DOT) com. Please deal with
the issues from standard skins before you start testing developer
releases. This is a test skin, NOT intended to fix any reported bugs.

-kdf

On 18-Jul-05, at 6:04 PM, MrC wrote:

>
> Attached is a picture of the odd behavior I see with the Fishbone skin.
>
>
> +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Filename: Goofy.jpg |
> |Download:
> http://forums.slimdevices.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=190|
> +-------------------------------------------------------------------+
>
> --
> MrC
>

[Yannzola]

... http://www.deane-freeman.com/~fishbone/Fishbone.zip appears to be down or otherwise unavailable.

y.

[MrC]

kdf,

Nope, this is not a browser lacking-stylesheets problem (opera 8.01 and IE 6). And the server was patched at line 859 of file Web/HTTP.pm as described ( i just verified it again ).

As far as my comments about standard skins, that may have been over-stated, but reinforced by what I'm seeing with Fishbone. I can get the other skins to work with many refreshes - eventually, all the cached data works itself out, and things work fine. My point was that it doesn't just work by clicking the "click here" to refresh skins link, and often takes more than one refresh.

However, the problem I'm mentinoning to you is with Fishbone only, and only the modified one. But, no matter, I've figured it out for you. :-)

The cookie handling/parsing mechanism needs to be improved. Somehow, my Style cookie was corrupted. After deleting it, all works fine.

Probably bad cookied data parsing should result in the nuking of the cookie entirely, and resort back to smart defaults.

[kdf]

On 18-Jul-05, at 8:30 PM, Yannzola wrote:

>
> ... http://www.deane-freeman.com/~fishbone/Fishbone.zip appears to be
> down or otherwise unavailable.
>
thanks. its back now.
-kdf

[kdf]

On 18-Jul-05, at 8:47 PM, MrC wrote:

>
> kdf,
>
> Nope, this is not an browser lacking-stylesheets problem (opera 8.01
> and IE 6). And the server was patched at line 859 of file Web/HTTP.pm
> as described ( i just verified it again ).
>
> As far as my comments about standard skins, that may have been
> over-stated, but reinforced by what I'm seeing with Fishbone. I can
> get the other skins to work with many refreshes - eventually, all the
> cached data works itself out, and things work fine. My point was that
> it doesn't just work by clicking the "click here" to refresh skins
> link, and often takes more than one refresh.

please refer to the notes. the change requires a full window refresh
in order to take full effect.
I dont have opera, so I have no chance to test that, but it has been
working with IE in my tests. However, perhaps I can force a full
refresh without having to require the user to think.

>
> However, the problem I'm mentinoning to you is with Fishbone only, and
> only the modified one. But, no matter, I've figured it out for you.
> :-)
>
> The cookie handling/parsing mechanism needs to be improved. Somehow,
> my Style cookie was corrupted. After deleting it, all works fine.

If they end up corrupted again, feel free to post the contents.

This is the first report of any 'cookie' corruption that I have seen or
heard. The cookie handling javascript is freely available source code,
and not my own.

-kdf