Volto Light Theme by kitconcept

Vision

The main vision of the Volto Light Theme is to serve as a foundation for kitconcept's future projects, following the release of Plone 6.

It contains the feedback from the company's last years projects and the success stories in the UI/UX side.

It aims to be future proof, so it has to be aligned with the upcoming Volto vision in terms of theming strategy decided by the Plone community.

Requirements and specs

It should not use any SemanticUI component or styling

Volto will abandon SemanticUI as default design component system in the mid term, and we should be prepared for it.

We will achieve that by not using any SemanticUI component, nor any related styling (.ui.XXX) in our upcoming themes.

The Volto strategy is:

• Provide a very basic and structural Vanilla components to build upon theming and CMSUI as well (@plone/components)
• These components will be based in a headless component system React Aria Components
• Volto projects can be themed using @plone/components as baseline or use a complete different design or component system of the developer/integrator choice. The presence of Volto's component registry system could help for adapting, if required.

Volto components customizations use case

If possible, we will switch to SemanticUI-less components when @plone/components is ready. Specially if the elements that we are customizing are clearly "theme" (eg. header/footer, etc). In the case of other Volto customizations that are not clear part of the theme (eg. Search block), it's fine to stick using what the original is using (SemanticUI). When Volto will make the switch in the future, we should then adapt all the customizations to match the one in the Volto core. The approach used is to use a proxy to a component of the components folder. This way it's easier to keep track of changes, and another add-on can customize again the light theme component, not the original Volto customization.

It should use kitconcept's layout used in FZJ/DLR projects

Since FZJ/DLR projects we've been trying a new concept in layout for Volto. This new layout uses three widths for the content elements:

• Narrow (text)
• Default (blocks)
• Layout (main screen elements like Header, Footer)

The Layout sized elements snap to 1440px. The breakpoints are also different than default Volto.

This new layout uses mixin's and CSS that can be found in layout.less in the theme folder.

Since the new container queries spec is out, we will be introducing it to the current CSS in order to implement the complexities that the "inner container" (the one between the toolbar and the sidebar) width presents. Until now, we did complex calculations given into account if the size of the inner container depending if the toolbar, the sidebar, or both were presents. With container queries we can do that in a more sensible and easy way.

Organization of the files

We will start organising the files in the root of theme folder, to differentiate from a normal "SemanticUI" theme. Take a look at the current state. We will follow this convention:

• One file per component/block
• Use the Volto theme facility using the SCSS scape hatch provided so other add-ons can hook to it.
• The styling is centralized in main.scss, the rest of the files are loaded from there.

Why a headless component system?

https://medium.com/@nirbenyair/headless-components-in-react-and-why-i-stopped-using-ui-libraries-a8208197c268

Vertical spacing block model

This theme has the concept of block "grouping" given two consecutive blocks with the same styling block wrapper property backgroundColor. You have to add this property to your blocks in your blocks code. This add-on customizes RenderBlocks.jsx component in order to do so.

The wrappers have the classnames blocks-group-wrapper and the name of the background color, eg. grey, defaulting to transparent if no backgroundColor property is set in the styling block wrapper in the block.

Disclaimer: This might change in the near future, since we are developing a new integral Block Model for VLT and Volto.

Vertical spacing rules

These main rules spec applies to the theme:

• On each change of color, a vertical padding (both padding-bottom and padding-top) of 80px defined with the main variable $color-block-change-vertical-spacing.
• The default bottom margin is defined with the main variable $block-vertical-space and set by default to 25px.
• [grid] Vertical spacing for grids should be 80px for both top and bottom, even if the previous and next blocks are of the same color.
• [grid+grid] When two grids happen side by side and are of the same color. It should be equal to the grid gap, so it's set to @gutterWidth and currently 1rem. It has to be adjusted with a bit of negative margin to cancel the current inner padding in grid cells.
• [grid+grid] Grids columns belonging to the same grid and same color in small mobile viewports. They should be closer to match the other adjacent ones, so they seem to belong to the same grid set.
• [footer] The footer has a top vertical spacing of 80px.
• [teasers] The last teaser, except if the following is a button, does NOT have a line at the bottom.
• [listing] The last listing, except if the following is a button, does NOT have a line at the bottom.
• [listing] After two consecutive listings, the vertical spacing should be 200px.
• [text+button] If there's a text and a button, then the vertical spacing betweeen them is 60px.
• [image+separator-block] If after image comes a separator block, the vertical spacing between them is 40px.

Media queries vs container queries

We use media queries when the styling it's generic enough to apply only to the View.

We use container queries when do care explicitly about how the styling is being applied in edit mode as well and we want the content area to behave 1:1 with the view mode.

Reason: The container queries allow us to abstract the width from the sidebar and toolbar in edit mode, showing the content area as it will be in that size, in view mode.

Remember: The margins in responsive are being taken care with container queries in layout.scss. So everything related to that, goes like it works in there, with container queries. See implementations for details in case you need it.

Specification

@kitconcept/volto-light-theme works with the following Plone Blocks:

• Grid-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-blocks-grid)
• Teaser-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-blocks-grid)
• Slider-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-slider-block)
• Button-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-button-block)
• Separator-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-separator-block)
• Heading-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-heading-block)
• Introduction-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-introduction-block)
• Accordion-Block (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@eeacms/volto-accordion-block)

and the following add-ons:

• DSGVO-Banner (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kitconcept/volto-dsgvo-banner)

Installation

It is recommended that your project or policy add-on package.json include the aforementioned add-ons.

  "dependencies": {
    "@eeacms/volto-accordion-block": "^10.4.0",
    "@kitconcept/volto-button-block": "^2.3.1",
    "@kitconcept/volto-dsgvo-banner": "^1.3.0",
    "@kitconcept/volto-heading-block": "^2.4.0",
    "@kitconcept/volto-highlight-block": "^3.0.0",
    "@kitconcept/volto-introduction-block": "^1.0.0",
    "@kitconcept/volto-separator-block": "^4.0.0",
    "@kitconcept/volto-slider-block": "^6.0.0",
    "@kitconcept/volto-light-theme": "^2.0.0",
  }

This theme won't install them for you, as they are declared as peerDependencies. This is because the theme won't have to force you to use any specific add-on version, and avoids package hoisting issues.

In your project or policy add-on package.json you should declare all of them as Volto add-ons

  "addons": [
    "@eeacms/volto-accordion-block",
    "@kitconcept/volto-button-block",
    "@kitconcept/volto-heading-block",
    "@kitconcept/volto-introduction-block",
    "@kitconcept/volto-highlight-block",
    "@kitconcept/volto-separator-block",
    "@kitconcept/volto-light-theme",
    "your_policy_addon_here"
  ],

Make sure your policy add-on is the last one, as you would want that its configuration has priority over all the others. Make sure also that @kitconcept/volto-light-theme is the one before your policy add-on.

Then, declare the theme in your project package.json:

  "theme": "@kitconcept/volto-light-theme",

Alternatively, you can also declare it in your project's volto.config.js:

const addons = [];
const theme = '@kitconcept/volto-light-theme';

module.exports = {
  addons,
  theme,
};

You can specify your project add-ons in volto.config.js, but sometimes is better to have them all in one place (in your policy add-on) for portability.

Feature Flags

Enable Fat Menu

Since 2.0.0, the light theme has a fat menu (below the main site sections) triggered clickin on one of them. It's behind a feature flag, as opt-out:

config.settings.enableFatMenu = true;

Show Site Label

If you want to show a label on top of site you can pass label name to siteLabel property.

config.settings.siteLabel = 'Plone Intranet';

If you wanted a translated label then you have to define a translation object in defineMessages function provided by react-intl.

Here is the code snippets you have to add in your addon index.js file. If you don't have addon, you can also add in your config.js file in root of your frontend folder.

import { defineMessages } from 'react-intl';

defineMessages({
  siteLabel: {
    id: 'siteLabel',
    defaultMessage: ' ',
  },
});

Then add the translation you want in your locale file.

Show intranetHeader

We have totally different header for intranet sites. If you want that, you can enable it by passing intranetHeader property.

config.settings.intranetHeader = true;

Releases

The releases follow a semantic versioning model.

Definition of breaking change

In general, the same rules as Volto releases applies. However, in VLT we add an extra exception: The vertical spacing is carefully curated and considered an important feature of the theme and because of that, changes and improvements in the vertical spacing are NOT considered breaking changes. They will be noted properly in the changelog.

Upgrade Guide

See a detailed upgrade guide in: https://github.com/kitconcept/volto-light-theme/blob/main/UPGRADE-GUIDE.md

Development

This theme works under Volto 17 alpha 16 onwards. Compatibility with Volto 16 might be achieved, but it has to be at customization level in the specific project add-on. This is mainly due to the RenderBlocks customization that is based in the one in 17 because of the Grid block in core and the autogrouping feature. See more information about the other dependencies in peerDependencies in package.json. The development of this add-on is done in isolation using a new approach using pnpm workspaces and latest mrs-developer and other Volto core improvements. For this reason, it only works with pnpm and Volto 18 (currently in alpha) but it does not mean that the add-on will only work in 18.

Requisites

• Volto 18 (2024-03-21: currently in alpha)
• pnpm as package manager

Make convenience commands

Run make help to list the available commands.

help                                 Show this help
install                              Installs the dev environment using mrs-developer
i18n                                 Sync i18n
format                               Format codebase
lint                                 Lint Codebase
test                                 Run unit tests
test-ci                              Run unit tests in CI
start-backend-docker                 Starts a Docker-based backend for developing
start-test-acceptance-frontend-dev   Start acceptance frontend in dev mode
start-test-acceptance-frontend       Start acceptance frontend in prod mode
start-test-acceptance-server         Start acceptance server
test-acceptance                      Start Cypress in interactive mode
test-acceptance-headless             Run cypress tests in headless mode for CI

Development Environment Setup

Install package requirements

pnpm i
make install
pnpm i

Start developing

Run (in separate terminal sessions)

Start backend server

make start-backend-docker

Start frontend

pnpm start

Linting

Run ESlint, Prettier and Stylelint

make lint

Formatting

Run ESlint, Prettier and Stylelint in fix mode

make format

i18n

Extract the i18n messages to locales

make i18n

Unit tests

Run unit tests

make test

Run Cypress tests

Run (in separate terminal sessions)

Start the frontend in dev mode

make start-test-acceptance-frontend-dev

Start the backend acceptance server

make start-test-acceptance-server

Start the Cypress interactive test runner

make test-acceptance

Release

Run

make release

For releasing a RC version

Run

make release-rc