Themes for the download component

[Oscar]

I see there is an option for changing themes in the parameters for phoca downloads and there are 2 options available. I've had a look around the site but can only find themes for phoca gallery.

Will there be more options for themes in future releases?
Has anyone made any themes they would like to share?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

[Jan]

Hi, I am planning to add some guide how to change the design for Phoca Download - it will be not so easy as for Phoca Gallery, but it will be not so difficult.

I hope I will release it soon.

Jan

[Oscar]

Hi Jan,

Thanks for the reply....and also thanks for all the great work you do with your Phoca Extensions.
I think that any guide for how to customise the appearance will be very well received by all of us end users.

I'm in the process of learning how to change the colour of the sections at this moment and have just discovered that it is actually using images to colour the section boxes.
Perhaps making a set of transparent images allowing the joomla template colour scheme to show through but keeping the borders might be useful.
Just need to find them now to see how easy it will be to make these.

First I have to find them

[Jan]

There problem with transparent Icons is, it is not accepted by IE (IE6)

Jan

[Oscar]

I personally think that anyone using ie6 should update their browser or use Firefox.
Do you think there are that many ie6 users that it's worth worrying about?

I think I might still use them

[Jan]

Hi, on reviews, joomla.org forums, pms, in emails, etc. there are still such posts:

"Because people still using IE6, my client wants to work it in IE6", etc., etc., etc.
"I have rate this component poor, because it has some problems in IE6", etc.

on components which have problems in IE6

I don't test my sites (e.g. for friends) to any IE browser because I don't care but while developing some component which can be used by many different people you need to care about this (cca. 6 - 10% of users is a large number )

Jan

[Oscar]

I fully understand your position on this subject of browsers Jan.

I looked into making transparent images but couldnt get the background eraser to work I'm not very good with photoshop. So for now I have removed reference to these images in the CSS and it looks not to bad.

I'd prefer to still see section boxes or at least the borders so will not give up yet

[Oscar]

I ended up making 4 new images and thought I'd post a picture to show those who are interested.
I didn't use transparency on them either so no ie6 users will think Phoca Extensions aren't good.




I would be happy to share these or make new ones just pm me. (If Jan doesn't mind of course)

[Jan]

Hi, it will be great to share your ideas (just write it here so I can mark the topic as improvement).


Anyway, I have written a small guide which files needs to be edited to customize your own theme, so maybe it can helps while creating new design of your Phoca Download site, see:


https://www.phoca.cz/documents/17-phoca- ... load-theme

In 1.3.6 new theme was added - so this can be changed easily (as the category view doesn't include table design)

Thank you, Jan

[Oscar]

Thanks Jan
Looks very nice Jan...I see I inspired your creative side. If my images would be helpful to you for further new theme options just tell me where to send them. I've already made the same style in Blue, Green & Yellow borders and it only takes 5 mins to make others. All use a black background.




My Guide:

I use a dark template on my Joomla website and although the Section boxes or as I call them modules in Phoca Download that display your downloads look great I wanted them to match my site template. So this is how I did it.

First off, I always recommend making back ups of any file or images I plan on editing.

I started by downloading & opening the phocadownload-grey.css located in components / phocadownload / assets /

Look for these 2 bits of the code as they refer to the text tile in each section category and the border surrounding it.

#phoca-dl-sections-box div.pd-sections div div div h3 {
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
margin-bottom: 7px;
background: #fafafa;
border: 1px solid #e9e9e9;
}

/* section, category, file */

#phoca-dl-section-box .pd-section h3,
#phoca-dl-category-box .pd-category h3,
#phoca-dl-file-box .pd-file h3{
margin: 0;
padding: 5px;
background: #fafafa;
border: 1px solid #e9e9e9;
margin-bottom: 7px;
}

I changed the background hex code from #fafafa to my templates background hex code which is #000000 and the border to match my joomla template module border colours.

Then to change the rest of the appearance you need to download 4 images from
components / phocadownload / assets / images

bl.png
tr.png
tl.png
br.png

Open these images in your chosen program i.e. photoshop and re colour them to match your joomla template.
At first I had intended to make these images transparent but apparently this causes compatibility issues with Internet Explorer 6 so I just painted over the existing images. I did it this way so I could keep the existing borders.
I then used my ftp program to first re name the original images and then uploaded the ones I had edited.

I hope this small guide helps you to get the look you want.