Announcement

#1 2017-09-25 19:52:49

teekay
Member
2013-06-12
427

Beta testing Bootstrap Darkroom 2.x

Hey Piwigo folks,

I'd like to call out on testers and comments/ideas for the upcoming new major version of Bootstrap Darkroom.

The theme has been ported to Bootstrap v4 (Beta), which required more or less a full rewrite of the templates. In that process I detached it from the parent bootstrapdefault. It's a separate theme now.

The CSS stuff has been ported to SASS, and care has been taken to split the layout/positioning core styles off from the color styles. All styles are compiled from the source scss now using npm and node-sass, which makes adding new styles pretty simple and dramatically reduced the amount of code required for bootstrap overrides - just set the variables, compile, done.

The picture page has been revamped a bit, replacing the tabs below the image with cards, adding icons for the main EXIF data fields. Still some work in progress here.

New options have been added, e.g. to show the main navbar on the picture page. The admin section has been cleaned up a bit.

If you like to chimp in, get the master zip from https://github.com/tkuther/piwigo-boots … master.zip

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#2 2017-09-25 22:01:56

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13782

Re: Beta testing Bootstrap Darkroom 2.x

Hi teekay,

Count on me to make some tests.

Considering how popular BD1.x (Bootstrap Darkroom 1.x) has been and if you change display in BD2, you should make it possible to publish new bug fixes versions of BD1. Considering the way Piwigo handles themes, it means creating a new theme BD2 (but it doesn't imply creating a new Git repository) so that users can have both BD1 and BD2 in the same Piwigo and upgrade them separately.

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#3 2017-09-25 22:59:01

teekay
Member
2013-06-12
427

Re: Beta testing Bootstrap Darkroom 2.x

Hi plg,

I was already wondering about this. If that's your and the community's preference, I'll do it that way.
Though, the display changes aren't that massive, it still looks quite the same. Just some gfx up here and there and bootstrap 4 under the hood. It will most likely break any custom CSS out there, though, so maybe BD2 is a better idea anyway.

The 1.x version still lives in the bootstrap-v3 branch in git, so that's not an issue.

Last edited by teekay (2017-09-25 23:03:04)

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#4 2017-09-26 17:47:12

teekay
Member
2013-06-12
427

Re: Beta testing Bootstrap Darkroom 2.x

After thinking about a separate BD2 PEM release once more, I conclude that the cons outweigh the pros.

Pro:
a) users could try 1.x and 2.x side by side in the same Piwigo instance
b) those with heavy customization or those that don't like the changes in 2.x could just stick to the 1.x version
c) Possible bugfixes for 1.x would get automatic updates

Cons:
a) user that just like to upgrade would have to reconfigure everything, as the settings in the database would need to be separated, too. Same thing would happen if I release 1.x as a new PEM project.
b) having two active major versions using the same GitHub project will cause fragementation in the issue tracker, who's using which version again?
c) a whole lot of users won't even realize there's a new version which needs to be installed from PEM separately, they set up their Piwigo once, and every now and then check for updates in the Admin backend.
d) backporting fixes for bugs that affect both versions means more work

The Pros can still be achieved by
a) install a testing instance of Piwigo
b) just don't update the theme then
c) accept the manual route. 1.x version can still be uploaded to PEM from the bootstrap-v3 branch if someone really needs it. You just need to install it by hand then.

I think a too strict focus on backwards compatibility and avoiding to confront users with something new that possibly will also require some work on their end (the ones with customizations) hinders developement process. See Windows for a really bad example, and other large projects like Elasticsearch for a positive one. I've spent days preparing reindexing strategies for large multi-TB ES clusters because they just broke stuff from 4.x to 5.x but some features in 5.x are so awesome it's worth the effort. The decision could still have been to just not install the newer version even the package manager tells you it's there on every "yum update".

Thoughts?

Last edited by teekay (2017-09-27 09:23:21)

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#5 2017-10-04 14:25:44

plg
Piwigo Team
Nantes, France, Europe
2002-04-05
13782

Re: Beta testing Bootstrap Darkroom 2.x

Hi teekay,

What is really important here is "how much will the presentation differs from BD1 to BD2?". If it's only "a little", then stop wondering, keep it as the same theme. If changes are important, on user level I mean, then it's complicated to force users to switch. This is why we have 2 themes "Simple" and "SimpleNG" (NG stands for Next Generation). If you think changes in BD version 2 are mainly "under the hood", then don't lose time creating a new theme for version 2 :-)

teekay wrote:

Cons:
a) user that just like to upgrade would have to reconfigure everything, as the settings in the database would need to be separated, too. Same thing would happen if I release 1.x as a new PEM project.

Of course you wouldn't create a new theme for BD1 :-) And you can perfectly import settings from BD1 in BD2 at first activation.

teekay wrote:

b) having two active major versions using the same GitHub project will cause fragmentation in the issue tracker, who's using which version again?

very good point :-)

teekay wrote:

c) a whole lot of users won't even realize there's a new version which needs to be installed from PEM separately [...]

They won't "need" anything. They could perfectly stay with BD1. And you can also add an "info" on BD1 saying that BD2 brings new features and so on...

teekay wrote:

d) backporting fixes for bugs that affect both versions means more work

Another very good point! If you know you won't have the energy to keep maintaining BD1, then it's a huge condition for not keeping 2 separate themes.

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#6 2017-10-04 23:46:59

teekay
Member
2013-06-12
427

Re: Beta testing Bootstrap Darkroom 2.x

No worries, it will look mostly the same as before (see screenshot)!

Only those users that have heavy CSS customizations and/or template overrides will either have to a) migrate, b) ignore the update, or c) manually downgrade and then ignore the upgrade.

Those that use any of the material or bootswatch styles will have to re-configure it because the config structure changed a bit. 2 clicks and back to normal.

PS: about the screenshot: just kidding! That's the new bootswatch "sketchy" style with the new fancy header image feature (some work in progress still). More screenshots in https://github.com/tkuther/piwigo-boots … /admin/img

Last edited by teekay (2017-10-04 23:50:11)

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