Skins are customized template files. You can use skins to change the look of a TWiki topic, for example the layout of the header and footer. Note that the renderd text between header and footer does not change. You can use skins also to define an alternate view, i.e. a view optimized for printing.

A skin file is located in the twiki/template directory and has a name like <scriptname>.<skin>.tmpl or <scriptname>.<topicname>.<skin>.tmpl. For example, the print skin for the view template is view.print.tmpl (red color added for clarification).

A skin can be activated in two ways:

• Define the SKIN preference variable in TWikiPreferences, one of the WebPreferences, or a user preference. I.e.
  • Set SKIN = wikiwiki
    Note: Who has time to create the classic wikiwiki skin?
• Add ?skin=name to the URL, i.e. for this topic:
  • http://pyqplayer.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/bin/view/TWiki/TWikiSkins?skin=print (for the print view skin)
  • http://pyqplayer.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/bin/view/TWiki/TWikiSkins?skin=plain (for the plain view skin that has no header and footer)

The ?skin=name URL parameter overrides the SKIN preference value.

-- PeterThoeny - 20 Jan 2001

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