84 lines
3 KiB
Text
84 lines
3 KiB
Text
skin.txt
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MediaWiki's default skin is called Monobook, after the black-and-white photo of
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a book, in the page background. This skin has been the default since MediaWiki
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1.3 (2004). It is used on Wikipedia, and is popular on other sites.
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There are three legacy skins which were introduced before MediaWiki 1.3:
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* Standard (a.k.a. Classic): The old default skin written by Lee Crocker
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during the phase 3 rewrite, in 2002.
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* Nostalgia: A skin which looks like Wikipedia did in its first year (2001).
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This skin is now used for the old Wikipedia snapshot at
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http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/
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* Cologne Blue: A nicer-looking alternative to Standard.
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And there are four Monobook-derived skins which have been introduced since 1.3:
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* MySkin: Monobook without the CSS. The idea is that you customise it using user
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or site CSS (see below)
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* Chick: A lightweight Monobook skin with no sidebar, the sidebar links are
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given at the bottom of the page instead, as in the unstyled MySkin.
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* Simple: A lightweight skin with a simple white-background sidebar and no
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top bar.
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* Modern: An attractive blue/grey theme with sidebar and top bar.
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== Custom CSS/JS ==
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It is possible to customise the site CSS and JavaScript without editing any
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source files. This is done by editing some pages on the wiki:
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* [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] -- for skin-independent CSS
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* [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]], [[MediaWiki:Simple.css]], etc. -- for
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skin-dependent CSS
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* [[MediaWiki:Common.js]], [[MediaWiki:Monobook.js]], etc. -- for custom
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site JavaScript
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These can also be customised on a per-user basis, by editing
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[[User:<name>/monobook.css]], [[User:<name>/monobook.js]], etc.
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This feature has led to a wide variety of "user styles" becoming available,
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which change the appearance of Monobook or MySkin:
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http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_user_styles
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If you want a different look for your wiki, that gallery is a good place to start.
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== Drop-in custom skins ==
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If you put a file in MediaWiki's skins directory, ending in .php, the name of
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the file will automatically be added as a skin name, and the file will be
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expected to contain a class called Skin<name> with the skin class. You can then
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make that skin the default by adding to LocalSettings.php:
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$wgDefaultSkin = '<name>';
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You can also disable dropped-in or core skins using:
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$wgSkipSkins[] = '<name>';
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This technique is used by the more ambitious MediaWiki site operators, to
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create complex custom skins for their wikis. It should be preferred over
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editing the core Monobook skin directly.
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See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skinning for more information.
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== Extension skins ==
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It is now possible (since MediaWiki 1.12) to write a skin as a standard
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MediaWiki extension, enabled via LocalSettings.php. This is done by adding
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it to $wgValidSkinNames, for example:
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$wgValidSkinNames['mycoolskin'] = 'My cool skin';
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and then registering a class in $wgAutoloadClasses called SkinMycoolskin, which
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derives from Skin. This technique is apparently not yet used (as of 2008)
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outside the DumpHTML extension.
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