More admin themes / base admin theme redesign

[cyberderf]

The admin theme is pretty cool... but with all respect due to the creators..  it'due for a redesign as for the look, and even usability. And there not a lot of themes for 3.x + version of PCW. 

A contest would be great!

 

 

[kongondo]

http://processwire.com/blog/posts/roadmap-2017/#whats-in-store-for-processwire-in-2017

Quote

New admin theme. While it's been mentioned in previous blog posts, this roadmap would not be complete without mentioning it here. An areas of focus will be developing a new admin theme that takes the best of the Reno and Default admin themes, and goes further. We aim to replace our current default admin theme.

 

[ZGD]

@kongondo Do you know if this is something that is being built already? I'd like to contribute if possible.

[szabesz]

3 hours ago, ZGD said:

is something that is being built already?

Probably not yet. Ryan has been working on the new frontend site profile(s) this week, see: https://processwire.com/blog/posts/processwire-3.0.50-core-updates/#Comment12974

Anyway, you might want to ask him

[kongondo]

What @szabesz said. Best to PM Ryan to tell him you are interested in contributing.

[lenoir]

I'd like to add my voice to this topic. I was just browsing through the modules under "admin themes", sorted them by date and oh… the latest one is 4 years old… And almost all of them stopped with version 2. 

As much as I like this CMS, I'm having more and more of a hard time convincing clients to use it, and I think it has a lot to do with the looks. It feels old and somehow odd…

i just came across the module "admin theme boss" by @Noel Boss and what a relief! Finally something I can present to my clients without shaking. ?

I'm really hoping for improvements in this field, since I'm a true believer in the love at first sight, or at least how important first impressions are.

[zoeck]

Did you checked the AdminThemeUIKit?

Itˋs Not 4 years old... its the newest theme ? 

 

https://github.com/ryancramerdesign/AdminThemeUikit

(and itˋs the Standard theme in the current processwire Version, just Check in your User Profile in the Admin Panel if you use the old theme or the UIKit Version....)

[adrian]

@lenoir - I think all those old themes should be removed from the modules directory - hopefully with the imminent site rebuild they will be. I think the problem with PW's admin theming approach is that new functionality doesn't make it into 3rd party themes. I have always said that we need a skinning approach, rather than (or perhaps in addition to) theming. That said, the approach that AdminThemeBoss takes is in effect a skin, rather than a  separate theme and I think this is great and is perhaps a model for others to follow.

[Noel Boss]

On 11/23/2018 at 7:12 PM, adrian said:

I think the problem with PW's admin theming approach is that new functionality doesn't make it into 3rd party themes.

As @adrian said – that's why AdminThemeBoss is built just as a CSS Layer on replacing the AdminThemeUikit CSS… But the way to go there is pretty difficult – with the current AdminThemeUikit it's hard to find the relevant LESS variables and use these or override stuff... Also hooking into AdminThemeUikit and replacing or extending stuff is not strait forward. Would love to see more in this regard, a Theme that is built with extensibility in mind.

[bernhard]

I've just created a frontendtheming module that does take the source files of uikit (in a separate module to be up-/downgradeable), injects custom LESS files as you want and parses it on the fly with a PHP less parser. That works really well. It's not something I can release soon, but maybe someone wants to take the same approach for the backend theme.

Just had a look and this approach would also be possible for the backend as Ryan is also using LESS to compile the pw backend css: https://github.com/ryancramerdesign/AdminThemeUikit/blob/master/uikit/custom/pw.less

Quote

Uikit CSS development with this admin theme

This module uses a custom Uikit theme developed in the manner outlined here: https://getuikit.com/docs/less.

When we are creating production CSS, we execute npm run compile in the uikit/ directory, as outlined on that page. The admin theme uses the resulting CSS file located in uikit/dist/css/uikit.pw.min.css. It takes a little while to run that full compile, so it's not ideal for development.

During development, we instead use the uikit/custom/pw.css file. In my case, PhpStorm automatically generates this file every time I make a change to any of the .less files. If you also want to use that development file, edit the AdminThemeUikit.modulefile and update the const dev = false; to const dev = true;. This will put the admin theme into development mode, which makes it use the development CSS file, and also disables navigation caching, so that you see changes instantly. Remember to change it back to false once you are production ready.

https://github.com/ryancramerdesign/AdminThemeUikit#uikit-css-development-with-this-admin-theme

[lenoir]

On 11/23/2018 at 6:58 PM, zoeck said:

Did you checked the AdminThemeUIKit?

Itˋs Not 4 years old... its the newest theme ? 

Of course, that's the one I'm using currently. Nice functionalities but limited in terms of design.  And again, it feels old… (i know i know, it's not. But still…) ?