Vector and Minerva should share variables (skin variants)
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Description

Vector and Minerva now have identical skin variables definitions that need to be manually synced.
They live here:

These colors are "Wikimedia-branded". The concern is this would make Minerva and Vector look Wikimedia branded when installed on 3rd parties. By default we want these to be non-Wikimedia colors. What we want is to be able to conditionally toggle on a Wikimedia theme similar to how OOUI has themes. This seems to overlap a little with the goal of T122924.

Going forward, we would like to define a Wikimedia theme that both Minerva and Vector can consume optionally.
One solution would be to put this shared variables list in core, but this has the negative effect of making all MediaWiki instances look like Wikimedia's brand .

I wrote some notes here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Jdlrobson/Themes_in_MediaWiki

One idea is too make it possible to set themes on skins which would allow us to define themes for dark mode for example which is a longstanding request (T26070).

Details

Related Changes in Gerrit:

	Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	[POC] Skin: Skin themes	mediawiki/core	master	+119 -1
	[WIP] Change MediaWiki skin defaults	mediawiki/core	master	+2 -2

Customize query in gerrit

Related Objects

Mentioned Here: T122924: Merge Extension:Theme into core
T26070: [GOAL] Provide a dark / night mode skin or theme

Event Timeline

Jdlrobson created this task.Aug 30 2022, 9:08 PM

Restricted Application added subscribers: Masumrezarock100, Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptAug 30 2022, 9:08 PM

Change 815826 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; author: Jdlrobson):

[mediawiki/core@master] [WIP] Change MediaWiki skin defaults

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/815826

Change 815826 abandoned by Jdlrobson:

[mediawiki/core@master] [WIP] Change MediaWiki skin defaults

Reason:

to be continued..

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/815826

Change 821309 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jdlrobson; author: Jdlrobson):

[mediawiki/core@master] [POC] Skin: Skin themes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/821309

Jdlrobson renamed this task from Vector and Minerva should share variables (skin theming) to Vector and Minerva should share variables (skin variants).Aug 30 2022, 9:10 PM

Change 821309 abandoned by Jdlrobson:

[mediawiki/core@master] [POC] Skin: Skin themes

Reason:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/821309

From the above abandoned Gerrit patch (@Volker_E):

High level comment after short conversation with Jon about this:

We would want to aim for/limit the functionality of those for basic appearance values, things like page composition, interaction sizing and layout should continue to come from the skins.

We should aim to avoid calling this concept 'theme'. Our environment is already complex enough in that area, that such a label would make people's heads spin.

It might be better to continue with “variables” or “variants”.

We already a globally importable mediawiki.skin.defaults.less that is named such that it doesn't clash or force anything.

I imagine a similar mediawiki.skin.wmui.less or mediawiki.skin.wikimedia-design.less could similarly exist as something that can be freely imported by skins, whom can either have it as the sole statement there or possibly add/override more of their own if they wish.

Maintenance_bot removed a project: Patch-For-Review.Aug 30 2022, 9:30 PM

Jdlrobson moved this task from Backlog to Future Unplanned on the Web-Team-Backlog-Archived (Needs Prioritization (Tech)) board.Sep 2 2022, 12:06 AM

Jdlrobson moved this task from Backlog to It's complicated on the MediaWiki-Core-Skin-Architecture board.Sep 2 2022, 12:16 AM

Jdlrobson moved this task from Needs triage to Design on the Vector (legacy skin) board.Sep 27 2022, 10:38 PM

Jdlrobson moved this task from Future Unplanned to Consolidate frontend code approaches in Minerva and Vector on the Web-Team-Backlog-Archived (Needs Prioritization (Tech)) board.Oct 26 2022, 10:10 PM