Symphony.

Hello,

is someone using the Opera browser here? I’ve just noticed that the debug extension does not render correctly in Opera, everything is shifted which makes it unusable :-(

Regards, Mark

Hi goldmar, I also use Opera and I have the same problem. So I use the Firefox bowser to run the debug extension.

Cheers, Iago

I don’t think any of the core development team are Opera users. If you are able to fix, by all means send a pull request through Github. I’ve never looked hard at the Debug or Profile devkit CSS but perhaps its down to inconsistencies with implementing CSS3 properties.

OT: I’d entirely forgotten Opera still existed - are they still releasing browser updates?

Edit: yep, they sure are - I just checked their site. Their mac version is still weird and ugly though :( I’ll stick with WebKit.

Well… yeah, Opera is still around and kicking ass! :-)

Opera has more market share than Safari (slightly), so I guess there are people who use it (including me). Also, it’s more standard-conforming than Firefox. And it features out-of-the-box Mouse Gestures, Visual Tabs, bookmark & history synchronization and more nifty stuff. It also has something similar to Firefox Firebug - Opera Dragonfly which is quite good. And yeah, of course they are still updating it… about every few weeks.

I dont’t use mac but I’ve also tested it with Linux and it worked great.

Anyway, about the bug… I’ll look at it when I find some time. However, I don’t really understand Git - I’m used to Subversion and Git seems to be quite complicated.

Only reason I have Google Chrome is because of this bug. Would be cool if someone finds a fix.

I get that there is an error that needs addressing, what I don’t get is how people can develop for the web without acccess to every browser possible on every platform possible? I have Win Mac and Linux copies of most browsers available!

Opera is the biz, and is outrunning Firefox in my opinion, Firefox is getting very slow and bloated these days, though is still my browser of choice, closely followed by Opera (although our office firewall blocks it! damn IT.)

I havent seen this bug myself, but I’ll take a look on Mac and Win

I am not sure if Rowan really maintains the Debug Devkit extension. There is an issue on the bug tracker which is 3 months old.

Well, I’ve read up on the documentation on git, now I know everything about it. It really does have some advantages over SVN :-D

However, my adventure with the Debug DevKit extension was really no fun at all. To be honest - it was probably the weirdest piece of code that I’ve seen in the last months! And it’s really far from elegant.

I’ve managed to fix some of the problems with Opera; the line shifting occurred due an incorrect tag order:

<div id="source"><pre><line id="1"><marker></marker><content><span class="context-markup xml"><span class="declaration open close"><span class="begin">&lt;?xml</span> <span class="attribute">version=</span><span class="value">"1.0"</span> <span class="attribute">encoding=</span><span class="value">"utf-8"</span> <span class="end">?&gt;</span></span><span class="text"></content></line></span></span>

If you look closely, then you’ll notice that the part </span></span> should be before </content></line>. Also, the code is extremely confusing and causes hundreds of errors when validating. I really doubt that this is neccessary.

You can pull the fix from my repository.

However, that’s not the whole story. Even after changing that file, there are still some visual problems… and while hunting down the cause for those remaining issues, I’ve discovered that parts of the Debug DevKit extension are not located in the submodule, no, they lie within the Symphony Core repository (ie. symphony/assets/devkit.css)! I don’t understand that. I thought extensions were supposed to be modular, otherwise they do not make any sense at all.

So in order to fix that bug, I’d have to fork both the Symphony Core AND the Debug DevKit repositories, fix the bug in files spread across both repositories and then make two pull requests for one issue?!

I did not have time to look into the rest of Symphony’s code but I really hope that it’s more mature than this extension.

I did not have time to look into the rest of Symphony’s code but I really hope that it’s more mature than this extension.

I am rather sure it is.

they lie within the Symphony Core repository (ie. symphony/assets/devkit.css)! I don’t understand that. I thought extensions were supposed to be modular, otherwise they do not make any sense at all.

Historical reasons, probably… Should be considered a bug. Please post the issue on the Symphony bugtracker.

I think Symphony provides a generic Devkit CSS which creates the base layout styling for the two-column structure, typography and so on. In this regard, this should totally be part of the core. Developers can then create their own Devkits which inherit this core style, and they can tweak it on a per-extension basis.

Symphony provides the Devkit framework for extensions to use, so it’s natural for bug fixes to span to two if there are separate bugs with both the core styles and the individual Devkit itself.

At the moment there are only really two Devkits (Debug and Profile) which used to be in the core but were then pulled out to be extensions, so that bugfixes could run at a different rate to the core.

There’s the Browse Devkit and the Logs Devkit too ;o)

I think Symphony provides a generic Devkit CSS which creates the base layout styling for the two-column structure, typography and so on. In this regard, this should totally be part of the core. Developers can then create their own Devkits which inherit this core style, and they can tweak it on a per-extension basis.

I don’t agree. What’s the point in providing a css file when the extension authors define the html output themselves - probably without knowing what the core team had in mind when writing the css? And now you can’t just change the css in the core to fix the Debug DevKit problem because it’s possible that this will break other extensions…

Is the devkit.css in symphony/assets loaded before the one in extensions/debugdevkit/assets? If so, can you not just override in the latter the styling in the former?

I don’t agree. What’s the point in providing a css file when the extension authors define the html output themselves - probably without knowing what the core team had in mind when writing the css?

To ensure consistency between Devkits. There are no guidelines, but extension developers usually pave the cowpaths and follow convention of what’s preceded them. So if you create a new Devkit the chances are you’d modify an existing one which would output similar HTML. By all means override with Devkit-specific CSS, but Symphony should provide a base level of styling as a framework to build Devkits from.

Admittedly when bugs appear in the core files you do get the problem of dependency, but I’d say having a consistent look and feel from a framework that others inherit is beneficial both from a user experience and development speed point of view.

What Nick Dunn has said is both correct and is of Symphony team’s consensus.

Thank you for clarifying it. I still have a few questions though:

• Is there something in the core that uses this framework (or: this css file)? Or is it only there for the extensions?
• Does somebody still develop the Debug DevKit extension? I’d fix this bug myself but it’s extremely hard to grasp the code… it’s not quite transparent.

Is the devkit.css in symphony/assets loaded before the one in extensions/debugdevkit/assets?

I’ve tried changing the css file in extensions/debugdevkit/assets but it did not have any impact, so I think the one in the core overrides it.

I get that there is an error that needs addressing, what I don’t get is how people can develop for the web without acccess to every browser possible on every platform possible?

Yeah, I do have Firefox installed - but I prefer using Opera. Testing with different browsers is the last thing I usually do (after everything else is done). In my opinion standard-compliance is more important than browser compatibility. There is nothing worse than still being forced to support IE6 today…

I’ve tried changing the css file in extensions/debugdevkit/assets but it did not have any impact, so I think the one in the core overrides it.

Well, I tried overriding a couple of style elements and found that it does work. That is, extensions/debugdevkit/assets/devkit.css overrides symphony/assets/devkit.css.

If you want to negate symphony/assets/devkit.css just copy its contents and paste them above the contents of extensions/debugdevkit/assets/devkit.css. Then you can make whatever changes that you need to make for it to display properly in Opera.

It doesnt render perfectly in IE as well and ?debug gives me a DOMParser not defined error.

It doesnt render perfectly in IE as well

Don't use IE to develop for Symphony. :-)