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My comments on the GeminiTwo skin
I thought it would be easier to post stuff here so that the inlined screenshots show up in the right place. For some reason Eudora puts inline graphics wherever it wants.
NeilHerber January 20, 2005, at 11:59 PM
This page is obsolete!
Please note that the tests documented here were carried out on very early versions of Gemini Two. The way the skin works (and the way PmWiki works with skins) has changed so much that this page is really just useful as a guage to show how much both have improved.
Hans has addressed all of my comments below. Please try the Gemini skin yourself at http://softflow.co.uk/design/Wiki/GeminiSkin
NeilHerber March 06, 2005, at 07:17 PM
Things I really like
- Clean and uncluttered
- Page footer and page action menus configured from Wiki pages
- Multi level side bar
- Right bar (now that it has been moved lower on the page!)
- Search box above the side bar
- Links rendered with underline
- Table-based so it works in IE 6!! (I use Firefox - my clients don't)
- Author very receptive to suggestions and able to make things work!
Minor complaints:
- I dislike the serif font used for headings when the body is sans serif. (Can be controlled by choosing fonts)
- I would like to have the "page footer" menu appear not as buttons, but as text with a separator - either a vertical bar or a bullet (Buttons actually look quite good with the "Sand" colors selected.) And I find that with some color schemes, the buttons look quite good. I intend to use buttons on "public" sites where new authors need the visual clue, and use text or no links on sites where PmWiki is being used as a CMS.
- I would like the "page action" menu look the same (separators) - This is actually quite difficult to do because it affects the floating of the action menu. Buttons semm to work, so I may have to give up on middot! Hans suggested changing the CSS to generate a right border that would form a verical line. Have not tried it.
- I find the graded background unsuitable for a business-oriented site, but I presume I can change it easily (Other scheme have been added to demo) It is also very easy to hack apart the CSS file and may your own scheme, just takes lots of time and a good eye for color. I have neither!
- The underline beneath the page name really annoys me because it doesn't align with the side bar undelines. I would drop it completely. (The Sand colors boxes the body, which looks better.) Line dropped lower on later versions

Problems:
- The underline beneath the page name cuts into character descenders and looks lame. I would drop it completely. (Has been moved down)

- The "Home Page" link above the search box looks like an orphan and can be easily placed as the top item in the sidebar (that's where I usually put it). (has been removed)

- On the "no left" page, the page footer menu stays to the right as though the left column were still there.
- The right bar collides with boxed content.
this is not really a collision of content, but a problem how pmwiki displays the borders and background for the block. see my email to pmwiki-users.
- Email says: It appears as if the textbox with the code does go underneath the right bar, but the text in fact does not, but will drop beneath the right bar. But the surrounding box will go underneath. This is a bit weird, but it seems to be a characteristic of pmwiki how it displays blocks. the text in the block is monospace, and it will not automatically have a line break inserted, but will stretch right for whatever space it needs. Now if you have an image right aligned, this text will actually disppear under the image. So the floating right bar does push the text below if it is too long, whereas an image does nothing. See in the SandBox on my testsite.
- New problem with right bar. In IE 6 it aligns perfectly with the bounding box for the body. In Firefox, it bleeds over the right edge.
Fixed it, ~Hans

- There seems to be a problem with IE 6 cookies holding on to the wrong data so the color scheme ends up incorrect. Investigating further ... I doubt that I will have an answer to this because I have decided on my sites not to use the "live" switching. I simply set one of the schemes as default and comment out the rest.