Ben seems to have some ideas about this.

I think we need a good solution for this to help 3rd party developers write applets. Moving off of enhancement to normal, as I feel this is important enough to be considered a bug.

FYI, on a per-window basis I think this may already be possible with a combination of window:getSkin() and window:setSkin()

local theSkin = window:getSkin()

local myExtension = {
   someNewStyle = {
      ...
   }
}

table.insert(theSkin, myExtension)

window:setSkin(theSkin)

Obviously that's not very streamlined, but it might be worth experimenting with if you want a short-term fix before this is fixed in earnest.

Thanks for the tip.

Does the Framework have a window? Can i get its window? 

What i would like to implement is something like the iconbar but only in some of my menus. I'd splat my iconbar over the top of the Iconbar, or better still, hide the Iconbar somehow. Or maybe i would put my iconbar above the Iconbar. Its all the same problem, i need to getSkin() on the Framework:window, if there is such a thing.

Framework doesn't have those methods available, but they may work if you put them in. Try adding these methods to squeezeplay/share/jive/ui/Framework.lua

function setSkin(self, skin)
         self.skin = skin
end


function getSkin(self)
         return self.skin
end


note: I'm just giving some pointers if you want to tinker a bit, I'm not even entirely sure that setSkin()/getSkin() will work in Framework (but my hunch is that it will). 

This needs a more thoroughly thought out solution, but since I'm not going to have time to work on that in the immediate future I thought this might help.

I think the existing UI works as described by Ben works. Please reopen if you disagree.

I re-opened it because of this comment from Ben:

Obviously that's not very streamlined, but it might be worth experimenting with
if you want a short-term fix before this is fixed in earnest.

Lets have this bug for keeping track of "Fixed in earnest", not a quick and dirty workaround.

this is an administrative shuffle on priority fields to help make better judgment on the top end of the priority list. P4->P5, P3->P4, and P2->P3.

there may be a full fix for this in 7.6.0 if a particular feature is approved for that release. set this to 7.6.0 for now, push it to future if that feature is pulled from the release.

Hey Ben, can you review this bug for an update and your perspective on priority?

There is work for this completed, but it's on a feature branch that we are not including in 7.6.0. I think for that reason the correct target for this right now is "Future"

the new method to be introduced is called getSelectedSkinTable(), which will return the entire table for the currently selected skin.

Eventually, developer could potentially do something like this:

-- retrieve the skin as a table that can be manipulated
local theSkin = jiveMain:getSelectedSkinTable()

-- add a new window style to the skin
theSkin.MyNewWindowStyle = {
 -- window skin parameters
}

-- create a new window object with the newly created style
local newWindow = Window('MyNewWindowStyle')

-- set the manipulated skin to the new variable
newWindow:setSkin(theSkin)
newWindow:reSkin()

This work hasn't been vetted in any meaningful way though, and really needs to be. There probably should be some protections built into this, as there's potential for UI harm.