Item9440: WebTopBar and WebBottomBar need to be customizable on per-web basis

In TWiki, WebTopBar and WebBottomBar, like WebLeftBar, can be customized for a given web by creating the topic in that web.

Foswiki seems to have decided that WebTopBar and WebBottomBar are only available for the site.

• Topic WebTopBar defines the content of the top bar. ... The top bar is common for all webs.
• Topic WebBottomBar defines the content of the bottom bar. ... The bottom bar is common for all webs. * Topic WebLeftBar defines the content of the left bar. Each web has its own WebLeftBar.

(ref: Pattern Skin docs.

This is inappropriate.

First of all, the naming choice is bad. If it's called WebTopBar it should define the Top Bar for the Web. It's ok to inherit from WebTopBar (or better yet, SiteTopBar) but it's important that Top, Bottom, and Left bars are all customizable.

At my company we have nearly 2000 webs!

For purposes of enhanced user experience as well as backward compatibility with TWIki, it is necessary for us that WebTopBar and WebBottomBar be customizable on a per-web basis.

-- VickiBrown - 06 Aug 2010

When we forked (tm)wiki did not have WebTopBar per web.

Are you sure this is not a local tailoring you have done at your place?

I am not arguing against but just want to note that PatternSkin did not have this just one year ago in the old project.

-- KennethLavrsen - 07 Aug 2010

TWiki used to have WebTopBar per web. As I recall, they changed this to make it non-customizable, perhaps in TWiki 4, and we complained. ...

I found that discussion: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/WebTopBarShouldBeWebPerWeb

At Yahoo!, we put it back the way it used to be. With nearly 2000 webs, this is very important to us. As we are moving to Foswiki, we would like to have this feature in the core, not special-cased just for us.

-- VickiBrown - 08 Aug 2010

I understand the requirement. But for the record Twiki does not have this. It is a feature enhancement and should be treated as such. It is not a bug where someone in Foswiki needs to feel guilty that they removed the feature.

Reading the feature proposal I still have the same idea how to implement this with a preference setting. Vicky please raise a feature proposal and I may personally take this up as committed developer for Foswiki 1.1.

Changing this item to enhancement.

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Aug 2010

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