Missing previews in the Themes section

[Martimiz]

I'm referring to this (closed) issue: #63

At this point there aren't any themes that actually have a (valid) preview image.

There seem to be two themes that actually have a screenshot attached to them from their composer.json (entidi/silverstrap-cerulean). Even though they point point to a valid location, the addons' copy of that file generates a file-not-found (a bug?):

http://addons.silverstripe.org/assets/screenshots/entidi/silverstrap-cerulean/_resampled/SetRatioSize150150-cerulean2.jpeg

Maybe we could provide some sort of standardization? Possible idea:

1. the screendump(s) should be part of the theme repo (in a 'preview' directory)
2. the addons module should automatically pick it (them) up, if at all possible.
3. adding them by composer.json should still be supported (backwards compatibility????)
4. this should be documented in docs, including file format/size suggestions.

Following that maybe issues should be created in existing templates on github to ask theme-creators to add their previews :)

[chillu]

Hey Martine, it's already standardized, and documented on http://addons.silverstripe.org/submit (screenshots key in composer.json). Could you explain where the need for additional ways to pick up screenshots comes from, e.g. in the suggested preview/ directory?

The missing screenshots turned out to be a permission issue on the server (assets/screenshots was owned by addons which ran the build task on CLI, but the webserver under www-data tried to generate the scaled down previews). Fixed now on http://addons.silverstripe.org/add-ons/entidi/silverstrap-cerulean, the remaining screenshots should be regenerated in the next 24h.

[Martimiz]

Mostly my reason for mentioning this was the little bug, that is now solved, thanks for that :)

As to the other point:
For one screenshots hosted somewhere else run the risk of accidentally being removed at some time.

Also, i feel Composer should maybe be more about installing packages, and not necessarily about 'feeding' the addons module, making things just more complex for developers. But that's just me thinking...

I thought that as the addons module already takes the README.md from GItHub without the need to point to it, it could just as easy take screenshots from a default location? But maybe that isn't so easy.

Also it wouldn't harm for people to find screenshots on GitHub as well, although a developer would also add them to the README file I suppose... :)

Thanks, Martine

[chillu]

The README.md naming is a fairly standard convention set by the open source world, and solidified by Github - so we're just taking existing standards here. In terms of screenshots being removed, yep that's a risk I think we're willing to take (in the end, it just makes the module look bad, so its in the interest of the module author to keep them working). You can always put screenshots in the README through Markdown, hosted anywhere you like, and they should show up on addons. That's the theory, I haven't checked recently if that feature is still working. We might need some relative URL rewriting if they're referencing repo paths (or use the Github markdown API to convert to HTML in the first place)

[Martimiz]

Oh well, it was just an idea that might make it easier for developers to add screenshots to their themes, as it is common in some other CMSses. And I still think that retreiving one or more images from a predefined folder in the default repo - if it exists - would be better from a functional point of view, then adding stuff to composer.json purely for the benefit of the addons module. But that's just me, I guess :)

And promoting something easy might convince theme-owners to add their screenshots, which, looking at the theme section, isn't really happening now :)

As to 'making the module look bad' - maybe this isn't about themebuilders selling their products, but about possible users finding out that SilverStripe has some great themes, ie promoting the framework...?