= Styles 'n Scripts Extension

The Styles 'n Scripts extension was an extension requested by John Long
as a means of separating javascripts & stylesheets from other site content
stored in pages.



CONTENTS
========
In this README you'll find:
  1. Usage
  2. Why Change Things?
  3. Installation
  4. To Do



USAGE
=====
Using this extension is rather painless.  If you can use the rest of Radiant,
these additions will seem obvious.  There are a couple of things to take note
of, however.

  * The CSS and JS tabs are where you create, edit, and delete stylesheets and
    javascripts.  But you need Administrator or Developer permissions to see
    these tabs.
    
  * If you want to reference or otherwise use your script or stylesheet in one
    of your pages, there are <r:stylesheet> and <r:javascript> tags.  These tags
    can be used to inject your CSS or JS code into the page or just render a
    link to the file itself. (See the 'available tags' link on the Page edit
    form to learn more about options for these tags).
    
  * If you want to cut down on server requests for CSS and JS files, you can
    also create a master CSS or JS file for each and use the appropriate 
    <r:stylesheet> or <r:javascript> tags to incorporate other files of the same
    type.  Viola, now Radiant offers asset packaging just like Rails!
    

That's it.  Everything else is either too obvious to bother with here or
automagical and too top secret to disclose.



WHY CHANGE THINGS?
==================
As John sees it, the pages tab is really for storing the main content. (Think of
it as the list of available destinations for your users). Sure, they need
stylesheets and javascripts but those are supporting files (much like images).
They augment your pages.

There are a number of interesting benefits gained by this approach:

  * These files really deserve designer-level permissions -- not user-level.
    Well, they just got their own tabs with the appropriate permissions.

  * These files should be cached differently.  Rather than the 5 minute
    page cache, we now have essentially infinite caching.  Even more importantly
    because there's no dynamic content, we can tie the Last-Modified header to
    the updated_at datestamp and allow your server to quit repeatedly serving
    these assets.

  * This frees up pages to offer fields (like meta keywords, meta description,
    etc.) and focus on behaviors that make absolutely no sense for, say, a 
    stylesheet page (I mean, do javascripts really need a layout?).
    
  * Makes it easy to include search functionality across your pages without
    terms like "background" yielding all your stylesheets.

  * Declutter the pages tree view so that it truly only shows what your clients
    see -- the things they'd aim their browser at.

  * This opens the door for validation, minification and obfuscation of scripts
    and stylesheets (I'm thinking that these belong in a separate extension but
    they're *much* easier to build now that CSS and JS are a distinct type of
    object).

  * This lays a conceptual foundation for other, non-text assets like images,
    flash, and the like.



INSTALLATION
============
1.  Copy this extension into your existing Radiant project (place it at:
      [your project location]/vendor/extensions/styles_n_scripts

2.  Incorporate the database migrations into your existing database using:
      rake db:migrate:extensions

    Or, if you prefer to be more specific to this extension:
      rake radiant:extensions:styles_n_scripts:migrate

3.  Copy the needed images into Radiant's /public/images directory using:
      rake radiant:extensions:styles_n_scripts:update

4.  (Optional) Configure your stylesheet and javascript directories.  By default
    The Styles 'n Scripts serves your stylesheets and javascripts out of the
    /css and /js folders respectively.  You can change these locations via the
    custom_settings.rb file if you wish (just make sure you aren't competing
    with Radiant's /public files or your own pages.

5.  (Optional) Configure your stylesheet and javascript content (MIME) types.
    Again there are defaults but you can change them via the custom_settings.rb
    file.



TO-DO
=====
Create a way for users to upload stylesheets and javascripts (maybe even upload 
many via a zipped file) and unpack them into the db.

Improve caching.  I'd like to see a scenario where files are cached-on-save.
Rails page caching might be a great choice.  (Maintaining the cache -- sweepers,
etc. -- wouldn't be all that hard for these items.).

Add file minification to strip out comments and whitespace (and maybe obfuscate)
javascripts and stylesheets. (I already have this started).

Figure out what the core team needs to get this puppy baked into Radiant!