Theme Builder Plugin

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  • Created by Unknown User (gfraser), last modified on Jan 11, 2008

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Theme Builder - For Developers

Note: If you're a theme developer or designer, you probably want to read Builder - For Designers instead (wink)

Whether you want to theme your custom actions, make it easy for designers to add CSS to your macros or even want to create mini-applications, this theme provides an arsenal of functionality aimed at reducing your workload...

Seamless Integration

The theme is brimming with customisation options allowing you to seamlessly integrate your own features in to the wiki's navigation.

– pic showing menu linking to some custom app –

You can also seamlessly integrate your actions and macros in to the wiki by applying the theme to them.

CSS Injection

Leave the aesthetics to designers - add a few simple classes to your HTML markup and let them do the rest with CSS:

– pic –

The theme makes it easy for designers to inject CSS, leaving you free to get on with coding.

Bundled Libraries

Theme Builder is bundled with some of the most widely used libraries currently available.

jQuery 1.2.1

jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

The following jQuery plugins are also included:

  • jQuery-cookies
  • jQuery-dimension (packed)
  • jQuery-lazyload (packed)

Prototype

Prototype is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.

Featuring a unique, easy-to-use toolkit for class-driven development and the nicest Ajax library around, Prototype is quickly becoming the codebase of choice for web application developers everywhere.

Script.aculo.us

This library provides you with easy-to-use, cross-browser user interface JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly.

What's inside? animation framework, drag and drop, Ajax controls, DOM utilities, and unit testing.

Browser Detection

Your client-side scripts can use the theme's inbuilt JavaScript browser classification API to determine all manner of information about the end-user environment.

– pic showing some of the methods/properties? –

HTML Injection

Theme Builder fully supports the Custom HTML feature found within Confluence - administrators can inject HTML in to the <head>, just below the <body> and just above the </body> tags.

User Macros

You can also use User Macros (another standard admin-only Confluence feature) to inject HTML in to theme panels and page content. With the added benefit of Velocity templating, you can pass in parameters, do simple iterations and conditional logic, etc.

<html> tag

Theme Builder allows you to add additional markup inside the opening <html> tag - useful for things like the Google Maps API that requires this sort of thing.

Scriptix Compatible

Have you seen our free Scriptix plugin? It lets you write macros, servlets, actions, etc., in languages like PHP, JavaScript and Python:

– pic of scriptix eye candy –

Theme Builder allows you to embed scriptix macros in to the theme and allows you to apply the theme to your scriptix global-, space- and page-level actions and macros.

Now you can not only write Confluence extensions in a huge array of scripting languages, you can tightly integrate them in to the UI as well!

Macros Galore

This theme is chock full of all kinds of useful macros to help with a wide variety of tasks.

– pic from plugin manager showing some of them –

For example, you can show or hide your own macros in the theme or in pages based on page title, labels, metadata, context and mode to name but a few. You can run your macros in the context of other pages and even other spaces if so desired (with full adherence to user privileges of course) by wrapping them in macros included in the theme plugin.

Menu Driven

Easily add menus to your own macros and actions using the royalty free menu system included as part of the theme's license:

– pic of menus –

You can even add menus to normal wiki content - perfect for creating small software simulations!

Third Party Plugins

There's a vast array of open source plugins available for Confluence and you can easily wire them in to the UI.

– pic of chart plugin –

You can generate navigation and panel content using SQL, XSLT, scripting languages, Java plugins, user macros, portlets to name but a few.

– pic of diagram macro –

The picture above was generated using a mixture of Scriptix, XML, XSLT, user macros and the Diagram plugin. See it in action...

Scaffold and Metadata Compatible

The latest version of the open source Scaffolding Plugin (advanced Confluence templating) is fully compatible with Theme Builder.

We've also integrated the theme with the open source Matadata Plugin (all versions!) so you can show and hide content based on metadata on the current page and even parent pages. (smile)

Web UI link integration

Theme Builder replaces the vast majority of Confluence navigation links and allows theme designers and navigation architects to completely customise the navigation.

A slight downside to this is that your Web UI plugin components won't appear by default because the default. But fear not - using the menulink macro you can easily show your Web UI links absolutely anywhere - in menus, as text links, even on specific pages!

If you've developed a publicly available plugin, even a commercial one, let us know what your Web UI links are and we'll add named links for them in to the next release of the theme - free of charge!

Mashups

By now you must have realised that the mix of Confluence and Theme Builder is a great platform for "mashups". When you throw Scriptix and the huge number of other open source plugins in to the mix, not to mention any custom plugins you could write, you can do pretty much anything.

By using the theme for your mashups or other development efforts, you are instantly integrated with all the other disciplines involved with your wiki including designers, content authors, administrators, navigation architects and more...

Source Code Included

Found a bug and need it fixing immediately? Need to tweak the way something works? No problem - you get the full plugin source code with the commercial license!

The source code is also ideal for learning how to interact with the Confluence API for security, data persistence, session variables, caching, servlets and more.

Battle-tested Reliability

Theme Builder has been around since Confluence 1.4 and is in use by 1000+ organisations in 50+ countries. It's been tested on a huge range of client and server platforms. It's even being used on the worlds largest privately owned medical ship!

With customers delivering wiki content to rural India and remote regions in Africa we've had to focus really hard on performance. We're constantly tuning, bug-fixing and updating the theme so you're never left behind.

Awesome Technical Support

When you raise a support query on our issue tracker, you're not wading through first-line support. You're straight through to the plugin developers who can give you a quick and authoritative answer.

You can even add bug reports and feature requests directly to our public issue tracker - the authoritative "to-do list" for our developers. The theme is primarily developed based on your feedback and you'd be surprised at how quickly we can get new features rolled out and patch releases for urgent bug fixes.

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