New `about.json` fields (all optional):
- `authors`: An arbitrary string describing the theme authors
- `theme_version`: An arbitrary string describing the theme version
- `minimum_discourse_version`: Theme will be auto-disabled for lower versions. Must be a valid version descriptor.
- `maximum_discourse_version`: Theme will be auto-disabled for lower versions. Must be a valid version descriptor.
A localized description for a theme can be provided in the language files under the `theme_metadata.description` key
The admin UI has been re-arranged to display this new information, and give more prominence to the remote theme options.
- Themes can supply translation files in a format like `/locales/{locale}.yml`. These files should be valid YAML, with a single top level key equal to the locale being defined. For now these can only be defined using the `discourse_theme` CLI, importing a `.tar.gz`, or from a GIT repository.
- Fallback is handled on a global level (if the locale is not defined in the theme), as well as on individual keys (if some keys are missing from the selected interface language).
- Administrators can override individual keys on a per-theme basis in the /admin/customize/themes user interface.
- Theme developers should access defined translations using the new theme prefix variables:
JavaScript: `I18n.t(themePrefix("my_translation_key"))`
Handlebars: `{{theme-i18n "my_translation_key"}}` or `{{i18n (theme-prefix "my_translation_key")}}`
- To design for backwards compatibility, theme developers can check for the presence of the `themePrefix` variable in JavaScript
- As part of this, the old `{{themeSetting.setting_name}}` syntax is deprecated in favour of `{{theme-setting "setting_name"}}`
This feature introduces the concept of themes. Themes are an evolution
of site customizations.
Themes introduce two very big conceptual changes:
- A theme may include other "child themes", children can include grand
children and so on.
- A theme may specify a color scheme
The change does away with the idea of "enabled" color schemes.
It also adds a bunch of big niceties like
- You can source a theme from a git repo
- History for themes is much improved
- You can only have a single enabled theme. Themes can be selected by
users, if you opt for it.
On a technical level this change comes with a whole bunch of goodies
- All CSS is now compiled using a custom pipeline that uses libsass
see /lib/stylesheet
- There is a single pipeline for css compilation (in the past we used
one for customizations and another one for the rest of the app
- The stylesheet pipeline is now divorced of sprockets, there is no
reliance on sprockets for CSS bundling
- CSS is generated with source maps everywhere (including themes) this
makes debugging much easier
- Our "live reloader" is smarter and avoid a flash of unstyled content
we run a file watcher in "puma" in dev so you no longer need to run
rake autospec to watch for CSS changes
