Can a skin "remember" a setting?

[JJZolx]

If someone develops a skin, could there be a means of selecting alternative style sheets from within the skin and then remembering the setting? Maybe via JavaScript and a cookie?

A lot can be done to use CSS to skin a skin (so to speak). You could have a pink and green Fishbone for example. Seems to me that skins should be used more for general page layout and interface behavior, while CSS could be used to "paint" those skins with alternative color schemes, fonts and graphics.

I realize that anyone is free to modify the CSS of a given skin, but a handful of selectable style sheets for each one might go a long way to pleasing people looking for visual improvements. Might even reduce the number of skins that need to be maintained in the standard installation. I haven't played with all of them, but some seem to differ only in color scheme.

[kdf]

Can a skin "remember" a setting?

Quoting JJZolx <JJZolx.1rtp00 (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com>:

>
> If someone develops a skin, could there be a means of selecting
> alternative style sheets from within the skin and then remembering the
> setting? Maybe via JavaScript and a cookie?

There was a third party skin that had a fair number if 'look and feel'
Unfortunately, they were also very complex and I expect that the authors gave up
trying to keep up with the major slimserver revisions (5.0 required big
changes)

> I realize that anyone is free to modify the CSS of a given skin, but a
> handful of selectable style sheets for each one might go a long way to
> pleasing people looking for visual improvements. Might even reduce the
> number of skins that need to be maintained in the standard installation.
> I haven't played with all of them, but some seem to differ only in
> color scheme.

This was my first impression when I started with slimserver. It looks like a lot
of the skins from the early days were just there to show off how much you could
alter with just a style sheet. However, the standard template only supported
so much. With greater demand for eye candy and instant, one-touch control,
much more complex skins came along. In some cases, when the author is more of
a hack (like me) the new skins arent as css-friendly as they should be. I did
make an attempt at a fishbone skin that used a colour scheme more like Default,
but it fell apart rapidly.

I think Jacob has done a fantastic job of presenting a future for skins.
Default2 and ExBrowse2 are feature-rich and offer hints of a lot of
flexibility. Much of the common code is noving into a toolkit which will
allow other skins to add similar featurs (like drag & drop playlist
organisation). Some day, I'm hoping to update Fishbone. I dont know what
Jacob has done as far as selectable stylesheets, but maybe he'll have some
input here. I have seen demos that allows the browser to select (Firefox has
View->Page Style)

-kdf