Board Thread:Darwin/@comment-126761-20130822134425

With all of the changes to the underlying site structure that will come with fluid layout, there will need to be changes to the standard Wikia CSS, and of course to any custom CSS that might exist on individual communities. And since fluid layout also introduces a little more design complexity, it made sense for us to both improve the editing interface for the primary CSS file and provide some additional help and resources around CSS. Here are some details about how accessing and editing Mediawiki:Wikia.css will change.

Accessing Wikia.css

An entry point to the new editing interface will be added to Admin Dashboard. Browsing to Mediawiki:Wikia.css?action=edit will also route you to the new interface, located at Special:CSS.

How it looks

As you can see in the screen shot, it looks like a standard file editor, and now syntax highlighting is available when you edit. Admins on dark-themed wikis should be pleased to learn that highlighted class names will be visible now (they were black before, and unreadable on dark backgrounds). The “publish” area of the interface still has all of the options you might need (edit summary, minor edit, etc).

Error checking

The new interface also features realtime linting (error checking) with pop-ups that give you the details of the error. There’s also an icon that appears for any line with the !important declaration – a reminder to use it sparingly.

Updates and help

The right rail area in this interface will include links to the most recent Technical Update blog posts that note “big” CSS changes in each release. This way, if any recent changes might affect your local CSS, you’ll have that note right next to you while you’re editing. We’ll be providing a weekly report in the technical updates that details most of the changes in each release, big and small. The right rail will also include links to CSS help pages, webinars, and the Community Central Forum Board.

We've given all users access to this feature on the Community Test Wikia, so head over there to check it out for yourselves!