UI customization

[gautham_hegde]

I was wondering what the best practices were for UI customizations.  It seems to be very difficult to make simple changes in the UI, such as changing the logo, color schemes etc. I know that I can make changes in the color schemes etc by changing main.css, but then I have the problem of merging it with the latest update of alfresco. Is there anyway that you can have the main.css files read in from one of the extension directories, so that any changes we put in our "extension-main.css"(for example) override the alfresco main.css. Without a reliable way of making UI customizations, this product will be very difficult to sell to clients, as no one wants to have the "out of the box" look and feel.

[rdanner]

Without a reliable way of making UI customizations, this product will be very difficult to sell to clients, as no one wants to have the "out of the box" look and feel.

ouch… that hurts  ops: 

[gautham_hegde]

hmm …what i meant to say was that not everyone wants to have the SAME look and feel.  Most companies want to intergrate the cms with their exisisting look and feel/brand.

[gavinc]

Hi,

Yes, you're right, currently it is quite hard to customize the web client and also impossible to avoid changing out files, which as you point out will be a pain when you upgrade.

One of the focuses of 1.3 has been just this. We have solutions for a lot of the common customization scenarios but i can't say for sure we'll get every single one, that's why feedback like this is crucial, so thanks.

Keep an eye on the wiki over the next few weeks for a web client customization guide.