Lack of documentation?
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- Justin B
- Newbie
- Posts: 9
- Thanks: 0
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Unless there is something I am missing there seems to be a complete lack of documentation regarding the totality of rt's reusable css styles. It appears they have created dozens of potentially helpful classes that could be utilized by everyone, but in order to discover these one must poke through countless demo pages and attempt to guess or reverse engineer what these classes do. To complicate things these classes bear inconsistent naming conventions between templates.
Is there any documentation of these, or perhaps at least a cheat sheet someone has created?
Lets look at some examples...
A) useful classes I have noticed in demo pages but would like clarification on when/how to use them:-
rt-block
noblock
p class="no"
clear
module-surround
alternate
right-separator
pull-right
pull-left
rt-image
horizmenu
classes that exist, but I have only learned about through the forum, they are undocumented and I must wonder how many of these exist
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flush
flushtop
flushbottom
C) classes that have inconsistent naming, revolving around variations of whether or not they include the "rt" and/or "demo" prefixes. How do we remember which ones to use?-
rt-block
rt-demo-width-50 OR width-50 OR rt-width-50
rt-demo-space
rt-center
Can somebody provide good documentation of all these classes that exist??
Also, can the RT team explain what reasoning or pattern (if any) there is to the "rt" and "demo" prefixes? Do I have to check which is used on a whole list of elements and adjust each time I change templates?
I have years of experience with Joomla and am a convert from yootheme, where they have similar classes but document everything. And please don't even bother posting a response that is similar to, "just look at the css files for all classes," this is hilariously impossible considering the sheer number, complexity of, and incredibly cascaded way these files are written. We shouldn't be expected to spend hours browsing the forum to find this information, it makes no sense to not save everyone time by putting these in a list!
Thanks for any thoughts and resources.
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- David Goode
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17058
- Thanks: 890
- Web Designer and Host
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Hi Justin,
The majority of the css classes are shown on each demo template, usually on the typography page of the relevant demo. It has been done that way for quite some time now as there has historically been some css written for a specific part of the template for the demo. This means that not all css is interchangeable hence no real list.
However, we are looking at how we can better document the templates for members. There are members who are happy to use the Tutorial & Demo content info from the forums and we know there are members who would like a pdf manual for each template. This is not a quick project and while we are busy converting templates to suit J3.0 and make some of the older templates responsive, it will be lower in the list of priorities.
The whole thing also becomes more complex as we also have members who would rather create their own .less files which is completely acceptable with Gantry 4 framework.
If I can find time I will pull together the common elements and post them back here but it won't be for a couple of weeks due to work commitments.
Hope this helps
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- Justin B
- Newbie
- Posts: 9
- Thanks: 0
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I understand that many styles are documented on the modules and typography pages, but they do not contain many styles that I have seen used in other demo content, nor are these listed in the Tutorial & Demo contents of the forums. I have familiarized myself with these materials before making a frivolous post. I included examples to illustrate this, you will not find most of the styles listed above in any of the aforementioned places, hence my post. I really don't care whether it is on a post or pdf as long as it is covered in its totality in one location. I am sure an effort to do this would be much appreciated.
For now can you help me understand any conventions behind the use of the "rt" and "demo" prefixes? Right now I am working with the latest Fresco Responsive for J3.0 and it has many css files but main content classes seem to be contained in these files:-
community-a.css (name of one of the presets)
template.css
demo-styles.css
Can you please explain the structural convention behind these files and also which styles tend to be prefixed with "rt" and/or "demo"??
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- David Goode
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17058
- Thanks: 890
- Web Designer and Host
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Hi Justin,
Pretty much anything that needs styling for the template will be prefixed rt-
The exceptions will be some of the base Joomla code and traditional code such as body, ul, li etc.
When you see rt-demo- that is because we needed the layout to be different to our normal styling, very often this is confined to Home page layouts. It may be that we have defined an article or module to look like 3 individual boxes hence using rt-demo-width-50 as a class in the text for the article as opposed to a module suffix.
Items such as rt-container and rt-block are the main structure in our templates so when we need to override the standard padding and margins we use the various module suffixes which then call alternative css rules.
This means that there is never going to be a definitive list of css. There could be a list of common css used for module suffixes e.g. nomarginall nopaddingall nomargintop etc.
As I mentioned previously, with less being used to compile the css and templates having to be responsive there will be additional css but it is likely to vary between templates. The whole idea of css is to allow better control of style and layout. As each template is different and has different layout and needs then we will have varied css, so creating a 'list in totality' is never going to happen.
Based on your initial post I can tell you that most of the items in your A section should not be touched as they will break Gantry and template layout positions. Your section B examples are all from templates and have been shown on the Module Variations pages of the demos. Just check the page for the Fresco demo - demo.rockettheme.com/joomla/fresco/features/module-variations
Hope this helps
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- HeliFly
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 59
- Thanks: 0
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Hi David,
I too share Justin's frustrations re class definitions. It's easy to say that we should look at the relevent page on the demo site, but these contain descriptions of only a few of the classes you've used when constructing the pages.
Take Cerulean, in the demo page you've used all these classes that have no real description; horizontal-login, rt-box2-stack, rt-teaser, rt-suspend, rt-relative, submedmargintop. I accept that the function of many of these can be deduced, but it takes an element of trial and error that some basic documentation would resolve.
I accept that it is a requirement when undertaking web design work to have an understanding of some core concepts behind the technologies being employed, but it would help us more basic users if there was more documentation.
I'm also struggling to find documentation on other layout classes used by gantry. egThese seem to be used extensively to help control layout, but once again, it is only through trial and error that it seems us newbies are ever going to figure out what they do.<div class="gantry-width-80 gantry-width-block">
Regards,
John.
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- anthony martel
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 407
- Thanks: 0
- RocketRox ):
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HeliFly wrote:
Hi David,
These seem to be used extensively to help control layout, but once again, it is only through trial and error that it seems us newbies are ever going to figure out what they do.
Regards,
John.
I am ok with John ..
I am trying to have some classe hidden for phones or tablets and i have switch to Cerulean for this "responsive idea ...but there is sure a Lack of Documentation i am newbie in css and i have to search in all files ...
And the most difficult thing is cerulean now or Gantry Compiled CSS so to find the good class its really an amazing job ... - - My website URL is:
www.amaplemonstrueux.fr
- My Joomla version : J-3.6
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- wukovits
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 187
- Thanks: 0
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I would LOVE a guide for the standard classes implemented in the RocketThemes. This is the third or fourth thread I've seen pertaining to this, and I'm not seeing any clear guide for these classes.
In particular, I'm using the Graffito theme in Joomla 2.5, and while the Typography page on the sample template explains lots, it lacks ANY information on the styles for images.
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- MrArtist
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 33
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I must say I can't help but agree with the original questioner's point and the overall confusion of documentation, features and the mechanics of the possibilities, often only found by digging deep in the forums.
Not knocking the overall quality of the templates and extensions in themselves, nor the excellent work done by the people answering our dumb questions, nor indeed the efforts made to display and document the features in each new template, but due to the history of all the data here on the forums and help files we are left in a state of confusion. Whilst the demos are great, and the getting started files are useful, they do seem to leave out some important basics once we start getting down to the nitty-gritty of adding our content in a way that we'd like or expect.
I'm still finding basic things out that I either have never spotted before, or have all but forgotten because the information is so spread out in so many different places whether it be by template demo site, template forum, extension forum, documentation pages, in the css, less, Gantry docs, etc.
At times the forums are full of repeated simple basic problems across all the extension or template categories that could be be more simply addressed by having more centralised resource of answers and methods along with simple (regularly updated) crib sheets that are not necessarily so template or extension specific, but address ordinary issues such as margin/padding spacing, font changing, menu orientation, etc, etc.
On top of all that the forum and help files are full of documentation that we have no way of knowing is current or old. Particularly, it seems, since the middle of last year when more LESS and Responsive construction was introduced. That and things like fontawesome make a lot of the old information redundant, or does it, we have no way of knowing? For instance a lot of the information about using custom CSS files is from 2011 and so one assumes it's potentially quite old and a lot of changes have happened since, not least of all the introduction of LESS. Depending on what help/forum file I read, I am taken to various places that leave me questioning the accuracy or relevance of the information that's available. After many hours of trying what one help file tells me to do, I often find out it doesn't work with my template or it's taling about an extension that no longer exists or has features that can't be found (e.g. the RokNavMenu documentation link(s) that talk about setting up Extended Link and Boost which is as far as I can tell old and irrelevant now.)
This is what I mean, information here needs to be thoroughly and constantly updated and notes need to added as to what is old, relevant, current, changed, working or fixed or upcoming for various users/extensions/templates (kind of like you do in the great update notes of templates and extensions).
I think things here need a serious update and perhaps put all the old tutorial and help files to one side and bring in a simpler categorisation of areas to ask questions in. I think I recall from you newsletter or blog that you will be updating the forums in 2013 so I hope you will be rethinking how it all goes together and refreshing the information available. As things are, by categorising by template, extension or various other areas seems to lead to huge confusion and repetition when so often these things are intertwined in more ways than several. I have spent some weeks here now trying to unravel things and reading through forum questions that all too often never seem to get properly addressed or fizzle out because it seems no one has a proper answer.
That's not to say that the experts here don't know their stuff and of course some of the answers provided really do solve the problems, but all too often the same kind of things get asked or NOT answered in a way that should get added to a database of answers that should become part of the tutorials on what can or can't be done, how to do it, how everything relates to each part of everything else, etc.
A few simple diagrams would help a lot in this respect, showing what templates and extensions do and can't do, what they rely on and what is old, new, legacy, not applicable, etc, etc.
It's not Rocket Science! - Or is it?
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- TunerPage
- Sr. Rocketeer
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- how to change post title stype same as demo content? please help me
- check our technology blog http://www.tunerpage.com
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- Zoran Kanti-Paul
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 240
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MrArtist wrote:
I must say I can't help but agree with the original questioner's point and the overall confusion of documentation, features and the mechanics of the possibilities, often only found by digging deep in the forums.
I have to agree with this as well. There is simply too much 'mystery' in what RT has done.
It's almost as if it is purposefully being made hard for users to do things themselves.
I think that this is mainly down to organization of documentation and the forums themselves.
It is extremely hard at times to find relevant search results here. Maybe an overhaul of the forum would be a good place to start. Better tagging of content etc.
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