Template editor.. hmm?

[wesley]

I was looking at a blog software comparison chart (well, it's compiled last
year and s9y compared was version 0.6.5 CVS.. but anyway) and one thing
I noticed was a lack of template editor integrated into s9y. s9y lacks lots
of other 'built-in' editors, but this one has particularly gotten me noticed
because... well, I just remembered how I toiled away editing CSS file just
to build my website's template (that, and some photoshopping). Also, other
editors, we could do without.. I'm pretty sure having text editor for uploaded
files within a blog is great, but why not just use the goshdarn Notepad (or
TextEdit, if you're on Mac, like me)? But template... this.. needs to be
preferably tweaked within the blog system itself.

We could have some sort of a configuration panel + dummy page combo.
Dummy page updates the changes user does to the configuration panel and
so forth. I don't think we need to even go into editing .tpl files - just having
the option of tweaking the main .css file should be enough. I prefer to steer
clear of customizing .tpl files - hence the obsession with HTML nuggets...

Anyway, I wonder how hard would it be to make some sort of an admin
plugin that enables on-the-fly editing of a .css file?

[MySchizoBuddy]

u mean like the theme editor in wordpress.

[wesley]

u mean like the theme editor in wordpress.

Sure, why the confuzzled face, though?

[garvinhicking]

Creating this wouldn't be hard. I just didn't (and personally won't) develop such a plugin because of 2 reasons:

1. The .css files would have to be world writable. That means the user has to chmod the files once again so that s9y can write to them

2. File editing in form textareas plain sucks! There is no syntax highlighting, no cheat-sheet, no comfortable editing. Why would anyone want to inflict this hurt to himself? I do think HTML and CSS editing shall not be done within the browser. There are editors for this reason.

Having said that: I wouldn't mind such a plugin to be able to edit it.

Regards,
Garvin

[gwilsonmail]

One blog/cms I road-tested didn't have a sophisticated tempate editor, but it did have a page which listed all the template elements. If you clicked on the filename it opened in your default text editor and when you saved it saved back to the website.

The IPSWITCH WS_FTP ftp client for windows allows you to edit an online file, then saving it writes it back to the website automatically.

Simple ftp and edit methods seem to exist to make a simple template editor.

[Dinges]

Macromedia Homesite/Dreamweaver also supports working via FTP, not having to upload manualy, just save and it is stored on the server.