uPortal + FSS = awesome

[Gary Thompson]

Now that the Fluid daily build pulls from the uPortal trunk, you can see 
what has been done there:

http://build.fluidproject.org/uPortal
http://build.fluidproject.org/uPortal/media/skins/universality/common/css/fluid/fluid.fss.min.css 

http://build.fluidproject.org/uPortal/media/skins/universality/common/css/fluid/fluid.layout.min.css 

http://build.fluidproject.org/uPortal/media/skins/universality/uportal3/fluid.theme.uportal3.min.css 


The CSS and JS files are all minimized, so you may need access to the 
source files to really make sense of them.

As a summary:

1. FSS is linked to in the head of the portal document
2. The portal layout was converted to use FSS divs for layout instead of 
tables
3. The portal main navigation was converted to use FSS tabs
4. I had to extend/modify fluid.layout.css to achieve the portal layout
5. The default skin "uportal3" was completely re-written based off of 
the mist theme and should generally comply with FSS themes

Still to be done:

1. Need a solution for portlet content that is larger than its parent 
container.
Initially, setting overflow to scroll may be the best start, but it 
would be great to have a way for institutions to specify that a portlet 
(and thus its parent container - i.e. column) force to the portlet 
content width even though it might otherwise exceed the parent container 
width.  You can see the effect if you reduce the width of your browser 
window on either the admin or student welcome tab - eventually the image 
in the "XX welcome portlet" exceeds the width of its portlet container 
and bleeds out into the next column.  Some of the burden will have to 
fall on institutions to update their content accordingly, but for 
greatest 3.1 adoption, it would be good to have something to offer as a 
solution.

2. Verify the integrity of the uportal3 theme
It got rather heated and hairy last week to get things finished.  I am 
not sure that everything is as clean and good as it could be.  I know 
for sure that I did not wrap back around and update the theme color 
schema.   A code review of the uportal3 theme CSS would be fantastic.

3. Determine if there is anything from the uPortal FSS implementation 
that should be folded back into FSS for the next release.
There is a concept of widget in FSS that might map directly to portlet 
in uPortal.  There is a concept of a block in uPortal that might map to 
a widget or similar in FSS.  There are probably others.

4. Implement UI Options.
I plan on including a link labeled My Preferences in the Customize My 
Portal links (in the right sidebar when logged in) that invokes UI 
Options.  I had hoped to add that in for the 3.1 release, but didn't get 
to it, and am not sure of it being default when UI Options is still 
considered Beta.

-Gary