[pmwiki-users] skin design and the searchbox

[Hans]

In skin design one of my guiding thoughts was to remove as much as
possible any "hard-coded" functionality from the template, like html
anchor links for page actions, and replace it with wiki configurable
functionality, like defining the action links on special wiki pages.
The SideBar is an example for this and is used in all skins.

Now I was playing with moving the searchbox out of the template as
well. Since we got markup (:searchbox:) it is easy to add to any page.
All I need to provide is proper css styling so a searchbox can fit
neatly into the sidebar. This works great, and it would give the
possibility to add the searchbox to different places, like the sidebar
top or bottom, or into the page foot menu or page top menu. All this
could be done from within the wikipages, with easy group customisation
etc.

But the problem is: if the searchbox gets used this way, and added to
the sidebar as markup for instance, then skins which don't provide for
this end up with  a nasty looking big searchbox in the sidebar, on top
of the one which is built into the skin template. Can this be
resolved?

One way would be to do a conditional test in the markup, like
(:if skin fixflow:)(:searchbox:)(:if:)
Perhaps this is already possible? to check a condition against $Skin ?

Another solution may be use another custom page to insert into the
template, instead of SideBar, and put the (:searchbox:) markup there
together with an (:include Main.SideBar:). But this looks a bit too
artificial and elaborate for the purpose.

Any thoughts on these matters, including the general idea of providing
more customisation using special wiki pages?
  

Best,
 Hans