[pmwiki-users] Move sidebar menu to the header, basically

[kirpi at kirpi.it]

It may well be very naive, but I can't help wondering if PmWiki could
gain any (much) wider adoption by offering, ceteris paribus, a more
modern look out of the box.

I should emphasise two points: the first is that the default skin[1]
is wonderful, honed over the years, and personally I would never ditch
it; the second point is that the skin system in PmWiki is very well
working, easy and flexible.
Yet when I try to show some friends PmWiki, as a general, easy tool to
build a website also for noninitiates, the main reaction I get is: "it
is old-looking, it looks stale". Most of them end up falling into the
Wordpress net, only because the look of the main themes available out
of the box.
I feel it is a pity.

At the same time, as I am far from an expert in the field, I guess
that building a new skin (and especially keeping it up to date over
the years) would be too challenging for me: Petko is steadily evolving
and perfecting PmWiki-responsive skin, and any new development in
PmWiki is made keeping this very skin as a reference; so, I asked
myself if a solution would be to just re-arrange PmWiki-responsive
skin on the fly, by means of a few lines of javascript (or a similar
quick approach).

I tried just a dirty hack[2], and the feedback was: "This is nicer!
Not like that stale PmWiki you suggested me to adopt!"
Now, I ask myself if such an approach would make sense, so that any
newcomer realizes in a second that PmWiki allows to have a "modern
looking" website with no to little effort.

I made my test here[2], to better show what I mean.
There might be issues though, that my gross ineptitude prevents me from seeing.

Luigi

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[1] De facto, Petko's "PmWiki-responsive" skin.
[2] https://www.kirpi.it/z/pmwiki.php - default skin slightly twisted
to mimic a "standard" look of a "modern" website.