How easy does Askbot make it to customize its HTML?

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edit: there are two caveats though - (1) it's best to localize customizations to css whenever possible, because there will be changes in url parameters, template tags and template variables; (2) there is a bug in the javascript skin media resolution - because of it at this point you should copy entire base skin (currently there is only "default") - templates and media - into your own.

Hi Pekka, HTML is stored in the django templates and is easy to modify.

The newer look is only available at the experimental branch called "common-question-view" (I'll add instructions on how to get it a bit later - generally it's git clone, fetch that branch and check it out) now in the master branch. I also seems to work well in IE7-8 but with some issues in version 6 (works well with FF & Chrome).

Instructions for creating new skins are described here (btw - the general system is probably the same as in OSQA at this point).

Skins are switched by setting ASKBOT_DEFAULT_SKIN to a particular name by editing file settings_local.py.

You will not have big issues maintaining your own templates unless you decide to depend on some from skin 'default' - so it will be best if you copy "default" to your own within the same directory though - forum/skins. At this point skins cannot be placed to an arbitrary directory - but it may be possible with re-configuring django a bit - I'll doublecheck on this today-tomorrow.

The plan for near future is to minify HTML in the default skin and come up with a good naming convention for id and class names of "business" elements - so that users could easily maintain their own templates and stylesheets without confusions. Javascript within skin media will also change - as element finding sometimes heavily depends on descendant selectors.

So it will be best to copy "default" skin entirely (both media and templates) into a new one if you are not willing to wait until default skin is considered ready.

Cheers.

-Evgeny.