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[mmasterson]

Just a quick question - I have a contractor developing a 4.4 skin for me and when they install it on my test server it appears some of the files in skin/common_files directory have been modified and apparently break the default skins shipped in the product.

The skin they are starting with is the newer 2-column skin shipped in 4.4, but should they have to modify files in common_files?
Is this an optimal solution and best practice for 4.4?

I'd like to be able to switch between themes and also ensure that as fixes are made to common elements via patches that they are as easy to apply as possible.

Thanks for your input!

[cflsystems]

They can modify files in common_files yes but each skin has its own files for some of them so depends on the skin. If the skin in use has its own product.tpl for example then there is no need to modify product.tpl in common_files

[mmasterson]

Is it possible to add the files that need modification from skin/common_files into the other skin/custom_skin folder and then add to the files.lst? Otherwise the issue I'm seeing is that it appears to be breaking all other skins that may have dependency on the file in the common_files skin.

Seems like this is somewhat new for 4.4 with true dependency between custom skins and common_files, enabling "hot swap" skin changes, right?


Thanks again.

[cflsystems]

The idea is to easily swap skins yes. Not sure why you want to add anything to files.lst - this file has nothing to do with editing skins

[mmasterson]

@cflsystems I'm confused because the new skin approach starting in 4.4 seems quite a bit different - which appears designed to allow quick swapping between skins.

The way I understand it, files in the customer skin folder (e.g. 2-column) will overide the ones in the common_files folder. Thus, shouldn't a custom skin be implemented by modifying the files *only* in the 2-column (or better yet a copy of that folder) so that the underlying common_files are not changed?

Otherwise there would no way to swap to a different skin quickly due to the changes in common_files that would likely break other skins.

[cflsystems]

Yes, modify only the files in the skin you are using. If a file doesn't exist there then you have to modify it in common_files
OR I would assume that if you create new file with same name in the skin you are using it will override the file from common_files so you don;t have to edit there