Use djangoproject.com color theme in django-admin template

[benjaoming]

Dear all,

This is not to open up some big discussion on the aesthetics of the admin site. It's fine and functional and doesn't get in your way.

But I wanted to make the simple suggestion of working a bit with the color scheme. Yellow text on a blue background is just a bit... hmmmmmm!

Anyways, I've tried changing it a bit by switching font family and sizes and using the djangoproject.com green in the header. And basically not trying to change too much.

Hope it isn't too controversial :)

/ Benjamin

[benjaoming]

Put this in your templates/admin/ folder to overwrite default template with some new style...

[Aymeric Augustin]

I'm quite reluctant to change the look of the admin just for the sake of it.

Do we want every Django developer to explain to his clients why the look of their backend changed?

[Idan Gazit]

I'd love to see a beautiful admin, but slapping a fresh coat of paint on the admin isn't as simple as a couple of selectors in an inline <style> tag. I'm also leery of making a lot of visual changes to the admin absent some larger direction, as there are a lot of less-technical users who may get freaked out by the changes.

Given the effort required to properly overhaul the admin, this should come hand-in-hand with some work to modernize the admin's markup, which will in turn make styling and scripting much easier. I'd be happy to see self-contained patches which work towards that goal.

[anonymous]

@idangazit

I'm quite aware that an inline style tag is not going to be approved, and I sincerely hope that was not a factor in your decision making process :) I only wanted to provide a simple 1-file way of showing how the current admin site can be re-styled to look a bit more modern.

Anyways, if the idea is to make such a re-design much more complicated, then I foresee that Django will be stuck with the current looks for a long time. I respect that one should avoid breaking template overwrites and that some users may possibly be confused. But what I'm saying is that it's time for some kind of moderate development so the design of the admin site can start a slow and stable evolution instead of just being stuck since version 0.1 :)

I agree with you that the admin markup needs to be modernized, but I think this is a far more dangerous project than updating the current stylesheet as it will break current customized template overwrites and CSS.

I think that more self-contained patches for the admin CSS would be great!