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  • Book Overview & Buying MediaWiki Skins Design
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MediaWiki Skins Design

MediaWiki Skins Design

3.7 (3)
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MediaWiki Skins Design

MediaWiki Skins Design

3.7 (3)
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Overview of this book

Table of Contents (16 chapters)
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MediaWiki Skins Design
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MediaWiki Skins Design
Credits
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Credits
About the Author
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About the Author
About the Reviewer
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About the Reviewer
Preface
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Preface
Lock Free Chapter
1
Introduction
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Introduction
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Examples of MediaWiki Skins
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Customized MediaWiki Skins
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Why Skin Your (Media) Wiki?
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Our Case Study: JazzMeet
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The Process of Skinning MediaWiki
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Summary
2
Formatting the Body
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Formatting the Body
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Initializing Your Skin
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Using Your Skin
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Styling Article Content
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Making Our Case Study 'JazzMeet'
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Styling the Edit Interface
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Preview Page
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Logging In and Registering
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JazzMeets So Far
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Summary
3
Formatting Interface Elements
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Formatting Interface Elements
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The Interface Area: .portlet
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Changing the Logo
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Styling the Navigation: #p-navigation
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The Userbar: #p-personal
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View Options: #p-cactions
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The Toolbox: #p-tb
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The Search Box: #p-search
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The Footer: #footer
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Summary
4
Changing the Layout
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Changing the Layout
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Keep Your Head On: MediaWiki's Tag
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Changing the Content Area: #bodyContent
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Changing the Interface
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Creating Your Own Template
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Summary
5
Useful MediaWiki Functions
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Useful MediaWiki Functions
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PHP Functions and MediaWiki Functions
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Functions for
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Functions For
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Advanced PHP Functions
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Summary
6
Adding Decorative Elements
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Adding Decorative Elements
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Decorative Elements
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Focus-Drawing Techniques
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Depth and the Third Dimension
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Focus-Lessening Techniques
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Summary
7
Dynamic CSS and JavaScript
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Dynamic CSS and JavaScript
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Inline Edit Interface
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Installing Lightbox 2
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LightboxThumbs
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Tables: Making Data easier to read
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Summary
8
Social Networking and MediaWiki
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Social Networking and MediaWiki
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Integrating Twitter with MediaWiki
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YouTube in MediaWiki
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Social Bookmarking
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Social Bookmarking Aggregators
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Summary
9
Deploying Your MediaWiki Skin
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Deploying Your MediaWiki Skin
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Deploying on your Own Wiki
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Packaging Your MediaWiki Skin
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Licensing Options
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Summary
10
MediaWiki Print Styles
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MediaWiki Print Styles
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Viewing the Printable Version of Your Page
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What's Already Done for Us: commonPrint.css
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What Remains to be Styled
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Summary
1
Troubleshooting Browser Issues with MediaWiki
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Troubleshooting Browser Issues with MediaWiki
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Browser Modes
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Conditional Comments
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Internet Explorer 5 Bugs
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Internet Explorer 6 Bugs
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Inline List Items Partially Displayed
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Bugs in Other Browsers
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Firefox Bugs
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Testing your Design in Multiple Browsers
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Summary

Decorative Elements

A decorative element is not essential to your wiki's skin, but adds some value to it. This value could give your wiki a certain attitude or a distinctive element over a competitor's wiki, or help your visitors perform some task on your wiki, such as finding the information they are looking for using the search box feature.

When to Use Decorative Elements

It is important to use the decorative elements in your MediaWiki skin sparingly, so as not to detract from the wiki's content, which is why most of your visitors are on your wiki in the first place.

Having said that, a white page with black text is not very welcoming for your visitors, and decorative elements can help make your wiki more visitor-friendly.

As a general guide, it is probably OK to use decorative elements when:

  • Your page is a somewhat sparse

  • Something on your page needs more focus than it currently has

  • The wrong elements on your page have too much focus (for example, through poor choice in layout), and you need...

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MediaWiki Skins Design
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