[Solar-talk] New div IDs for layouts?

[Rodrigo Moraes]

On 7/18/06, Paul M Jones wrote:
> In the current layouts, I'm using "location" IDs: top, bottom, left,
> right, etc.  I've got enough done now that I think I can start
> switching to semantic IDs.  Want to get input before I do so.

I would write about these namings... but you've done it before. I
think it is much better to not use names including "top" or "right" or
the others you mentioned, since these are related to how they are
presented and not to what they present. I'm not using the default
layouts because of this. For example, "twoColRight" is a bad name
because if I change a CSS rule it can become "twoColLeft" or even
"oneCol". Semantic names are much better, so go for it.

> I still plan on using the 'content' ID to show where the page content
> itself goes.

Perfect. In my previous job I created an app that allowed users to
customize layouts. In the front end they selected colors, backgrounds,
fonts etc using a friendly GUI, in the back end CSS rules were created
based on those definitions. Some dynamic modules could use preferences
based on their ID's, or inherit from a default definition.

I would be interested to help with a "UI Widgets Framework" for Solar,
and to start a library with commonly used widgets (and maybe make an
app to customize them). This is very much related to how layouts,
partial templates, css and also view helpers are named/organized. I
must say this subject interests me a lot, but would anybody here also
have interest in developing a UI widgets library for Solar?

> This means that the Solar_App $layout_* property names will change to
> match the new semantic IDs; e.g., from $layout_right to
> $layout_page_head, $layout_page_menu, etc.

Again, much better. :)

> Any comments/criticism here?  Do you think those are enough to cover
> most or all broad semantic sections on a page?

Your list covered most of common blocks and I can't think on anything
else right now. Perhaps... I would include site-nav and page-nav apart
from *-head, *-info and *-menu, for navigation bars, but these can
pretty much be included depending on the app. I'll think a bit more...

regards,
rodrigo moraes / brazil