Item2562: Not obvious to user that WebPreferences to override user settings with respect to skin (documentation)

Priority:	CurrentState:	AppliesTo:	Component:	WaitingFor:
Low	New	Engine

I find it illogical that a skin setting in WebPreferences overrides the user skin setting. It goes against the info in System.Skins: You can set the skin for the whole site, a single web or topic, or for each user individually.

Foswiki.pm line 1591 (release branch) reads user settings before web preferences.

-- ArthurClemens - 02 Jan 2010

I find it logical that web preferences overrides user preferences (maybe cause I'm used to this). Changing this behavior would have many consequences on existing sites. Remember that users can always impose their preferences using FINALPREFERENCES. Maybe we should highlight this in documentation...

-- GilmarSantosJr - 03 Jan 2010

As far as I remember user settings always ranked higher than web preferences.

Wow. Checked on an old ^TMWiki: a TESTTEST variable in WebPreferences overrides the value set in the user's hometopic.

I am getting old.

-- MichaelDaum - 03 Jan 2010

It has always been like this. And we have had many long discussions in the past of the current order of preference settings. And what we have now fits well in some cases. And not so well in others.

Current behavious is well documented in System.Macros#Setting_Preferences

But as Gilmar points out, the user can use FINALPREFERENCES to prevent WebPreferences to override.

There is no action to be done here unless we want to add more documentation in System.Skins putting some note to the order and the use of FINALPREFERENCES.

I doubt many will read this documentation at user level and if we add too much blabla the whole thing muds up. So be careful.

I have changed the summary field to documentation

-- KennethLavrsen - 03 Jan 2010