Re: customizing web pages

[kevin mcgowan <clunis@xxxxxxxxx>]

On May 26, 2004, at 9:47 AM, Phil Pishioneri wrote:

> I have a few questions related to the web pages distributed with 
> CoSign:
>
>   1. A site is allowed to alter the pages as much as they see fit,
>      right?  I'm basing this on the license and the change log entry
>      ("html: new example login/logout pages, no longer UM specific").  
>     (In any changes, we'd certainly make a reference to CoSign & UM,
>      and not just because it's in the license. :-)

You should be able to change the HTML any way you like, yes.  There are 
some things that need to be the way they are (form field names, submit 
button names, etc.), but I'm trying to get rid of as many of these as 
we can and/or document their existence.  If you run into anything in 
particular that causes a problem I'd love to hear about it.

In theory, you should be able to change the header and css files, leave 
all the other template pieces the same, and get a custom look.  In 
practice I don't think this is true, and one of my ongoing goals is to 
make it as true as possible.  At the same time, I know that any change 
we make to the display portion of the system has the potential to cause 
problems for deployers.

I don't think the license is intended to say that you need to mention 
either CoSign or UM on your pages.  It just says you need to include 
the license with the code if you, for example, make changes and start 
your own version.  Please don't do that last bit, btw. :)

>   2. Are any sites (UM included) looking to use the new look/feel
>      (possibly with only minimal adjustments)?  Or are you going with a
>      more "traditional" page (ala the current UM production login page,
>      which was the former distributed page) that reflects the
>      organization running the system?

I don't think UM will be switching to the new page; though everyone 
here thinks it is very cool and I'll definitely be stealing some ideas 
from it.  I actually want to be certain that our production page and 
the html we distribute aren't the same so that any pain I might 
accidentally inflict on others by changing HTML will be felt by us 
first during testing/development.

>   3. (For the UM developers)  In developing the new pages, were you
>      hoping that sites would adopt them (mostly) as-is, going for a
>      common look in the community of CoSign implementors?

we definitely hoped people would like them and that, if someone didn't 
have the time, energy, interest, or whatever to create a new look then 
they could reasonably run the default and look good.

k