Theme-components category

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

I like that they have their own category now.

However, the category’s name is plural (#theme-components), whereas it’s singular in any other category: theme, plugin, etc. Except for releases for some reasons.

[JammyDodger]

I spotted that as I was going through them. I’ve not decided yet whether to pluralise the others, or to make the new one singular. I’ve put a pin in it while I add all the new official component topic headers.

It feels more natural to have them as plural, but I’ll see what everyone else thinks first.

[Decorbuz]

@Canapin

I like that they have their own category now.

Yeah, I’m glad that this change has finally been made. It’s something that I asked for a while back.

"theme-component" should be a subcategory instead of a tag

In my opinion, I think that the theme-component tag would serve its purpose better as a subcategory. At least for me, they’re easier to find compared to tags, and in recent years, theme components have become more and more significant in contrast to their plugin counterparts (many of which are being converted to theme components for easier use). For lack of a better term, they deserve… “equal” treatment. After all, they’re extremely popular and are very much an integral part of Discourse nowaday…

I wonder why it isn’t a subcategory though?

@JammyDodger

It feels more natural to have them as plural, but I’ll see what everyone else thinks first.

If you’re going to make it plural, you should also make theme, plugin, etc… plural.

You should also consider removing the line in between “theme” and components" since categories aren’t limited in the same sense as tags.

[JammyDodger]

@Decorbuz

You should also consider removing the line in between “theme” and components" since categories aren’t limited in the same sense as tags.

It actually started off without one, but then it looked like a second theme category with a ‘components’ tag, so the hyphen was popped back in to be more visually intuitive:

@Decorbuz

I wonder why it isn’t a subcategory though?

I wanted to give them equal parity with plugins and full themes, as well as provide two separate lists without the topics being mixed together.

@Decorbuz

If you’re going to make it plural, you should also make theme, plugin, etc… plural.

Yup. Or make the new one singular. As per:

@JammyDodger

I’ve not decided yet whether to pluralise the others, or to make the new one singular. I’ve put a pin in it while I add all the new official component topic headers.

From a descriptive point of view I still think plural sounds more apt (it’s a list of theme components after all), but prior style counts so singular could still win out.

[Jonathan5]

It’s good to have this category. Thanks.

It would be nice to have it listed alongside plugin and theme in the category list.

Is there any way of changing the topic list to show the topics without the screenshots? It would be easier to read on narrow mobile screens. And the current screenshots aren’t much use for a topic list anyway.

I always liked the singular when looking at a topic (eg something looks like it’s been labelled as a “plugin”) but plural would make more sense for them all when looking at the category list.

[nolo (Manuel)]

Thanks for the change, really improves the structure!

One suggestion: I think the gallery grid view works great for themes. But for the components I find it difficult to browse. There’s many more components and their images are often not so helpful or descriptive of them. Maybe a list view with preview images would work better? Or with previews and excerpts?

[JammyDodger]

@Jonathan5

Is there any way of changing the topic list to show the topics without the screenshots? It would be easier to read on narrow mobile screens. And the current screenshots aren’t much use for a topic list anyway.

@nolo

One suggestion: I think the gallery grid view works great for themes. But for the components I find it difficult to browse. There’s many more components and their images are often not so helpful or descriptive of them. Maybe a list view with preview images would work better? Or with previews and excerpts?

I think these are great suggestions. For the initial ‘slide across’ I tried to mirror all the category settings from Theme for simplicity, but there’s definitely scope for further tweaking. For the tiled view, I think having the right first screenshot for each could help give them a more consistent look in the category view, though you’re right that there may not be a ‘perfect’ one for each component/theme/plugin. If you filter by tag (including ‘no tags’) then they flip back to a regular topic list view. I prefer the list style layouts personally as they include the tag info, which I think may be useful.

Update: I’ve changed them to the listed view like the plugins.

[JammyDodger]

@Canapin

However, the category’s name is plural (#theme-components), whereas it’s singular in any other category: theme, plugin, etc. Except for releases for some reasons.

We have gone plural. Well, at least for themes and #plugins, to match #theme-components. It will be on a category-by-category basis, so there is scope to tweak a couple more if the mood takes us.

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And they’ve been reverted…

Someone has kindly pointed out that pluralising them would cause a name-clash with the existing #plugins and themes tags. I have rolled back the changes while I reconsider the options.

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And another pertinent example for the ‘singular’ camp:

@Falco

If you looking into developing a new #theme-components, there are many JS spellchecking projects on the wild, like https://www.javascriptspellcheck.com/.

[JammyDodger]

I have caved and gone with theme-component I was holding out as I thought having eg plugin and #plugins as a category and a tag was still too similar to be ‘neat’, but I think having consistency in the short-term wins out.