As I have been playing around with the new Blogger theme more and more, I have been modifying some add-ons to work better with it. Since this theme has a Right Sidepanel vs. the standard Left Sidepanel, it occurred to me that if there was a setting in Admin somewhere to tell you that you had a Right Sidepanel, then add-ons could take advantage of this setting and build code in that would handle both types of Sidepanels.
What do you think? Or maybe there could be a global parameter set up in a theme that could help.
i think this is a good idea but not in admin, since it's a theme thing. a standardized variable name would be cool, but i think it's pretty much up to theme developers and extension developers to make their inventions work together.
I would have thought that 90% of all extensions wouldn't care if the panel was on the right OR the left? Either they exist in the "panel" or the "main"? Am I wrong?
I've been using the delbat theme (which also has the sidebar on the right side) for some time now and haven't noticed any problems caused by various extensions.
I am not entirely sure how this data would provide useful to extensions either. Unless someone were to extend the panel system to provide two panels (a bit like Drupal) (I am not even sure that it would be entirely possible through extensions anyway).
Otherwise, you just kinda leave it ambiguous. Unless your extension is really "left hand side specific" like an extension that provides a giant arrow pointing to the right saying "Content Here ->" =P
There are extensions that do have >>>. But most are not specific. My WeightedWords add-on does this. The DiscussionTags add-on does this. The HidePanel add-on places the hidepanel button on the left. So, all of these have to be changed. But maybe because I have many, many add-ons activated on my local install, that is not a realistic problem for live forums.
So, probably the best solution is to eliminate the ">>>" or "<<<" if there. However, the Hidepanel add-on does need adjustment.
I've not tested the theme with many add-ons enabled so I'm not sure about how's the right side panel would cause a problem with some extensions. You can also modify the theme and change it to left side panel if you have too.