ThemeBuilder Debugging Tools

When building a new skin, it can be helpful to check Display Debug Comment. This will display extra information when viewing HTML sources or using a tool such as Firebug in Firefox. You can do this by following the steps below:

1. Click the Confluence Administration icon, and select General Configuration

2. Click Edit Skins in the ThemeBuilder section of the left sidebar.

3. Click the Options tab within the skin you want to edit.

4. Select the Display Debug Comment checkbox at the bottom of the editing options.

Example Output:

<!--
userAgent: 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/26.0'
skin : 'com.adaptavist.confluence.theme.engine.skins.model.Skin@aff33d2b'
skinId : 'TEST2'
spaceName : 'test2'
currentURL : '%2Fconfluence%2Fdisplay%2FTES%2FForm%2BMail%2BOne'
contextPath : '/confluence'
action name : 'viewpage' ********* Builder data *********
adaptavist.builder.sitemeshPage: com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.parser.TokenizedHTMLPage@4c6291ee
adaptavist.builder.helper: com.atlassian.confluence.themes.PageHelper@6cc6f949
adaptavist.builder.actualPageTitle: Form Mail One
adaptavist.builder.mode: view
adaptavist.builder.context: page
adaptavist.builder.decorator: page
adaptavist.builder.pageContext: com.atlassian.confluence.renderer.PageContext@cbf72858 Current
adaptavist.builder.skinId: TEST2 Latched
adaptavist.builder.skinId: null
Flags in order of priority:
REQUEST flags - with-sidebar(true) myflag(true) without-sidebar(false) login(false)
SESSION flags - none
USER flags - none
PAGE flags - none
SPACE flags - none
GLOBAL flags - none
********* Flag Logic *********
Setting with-sidebar to false
Setting without-sidebar to true
Setting login to false
Decorator is one of globa/profile/search/login/unknown
In edit mode
Setting with-sidebar to true
Setting without-sidebar to false
Setting login to false
-->

See the Debug section on the Skin Editor - Options page for more information.

Set Skin by URL

You can also add a query string to the end of the page address to force Confluence to use any skin when ThemeBuilder is the theme for that space. For example, add skin=root to see how that space will display in the default ThemeBuilder skin.

Then, http://domain/page becomes http://domain/page?skin=root.

Press Enter and reload the page to see the page with the default skin.

Remove the query string, and reload the page to see the page with the skin you set through ThemeBuilder.

This is an excellent tool for comparing small changes against the default ThemeBuilder skin, and it’s also suitable for troubleshooting if you are not sure if something in your work has broken the current skin.