Doxygen Awesome

Doxygen Awesome is a custom CSS theme for Doxygen HTML documentation with lots of customization parameters.

Motivation

I really like how the Doxygen HTML documentation is structured! But IMHO it looks a bit outdated.

This theme is an attempt to update the visuals of Doxygen without changing its overall layout too much.

Features

• 🌈 Clean, modern design
• 🚀 Heavily customizable by adjusting CSS variables
• 🧩 No changes to the HTML structure of Doxygen are required
• 📱 Improved mobile usability
• 🌘 Dark mode support!
• 🥇 Works best with doxygen 1.9.1 - 1.9.4 and 1.9.6 - 1.12.0

Examples

Some websites using this theme:

• Documentation of this repository
• wxWidgets
• OpenCV 5.x
• Zephyr
• FELTOR
• Spatial Audio Framework (SAF)
• Randolf Richardson's C++ classes
• libCloudSync
• libsl3

Installation

To use the theme when generating your documentation, bring the required CSS and JS files from this repository into your project.

This can be done in several ways:

• manually copying the files
• adding the project as a Git submodule
• downloading the project with CMake FetchContent
• adding the project as a npm/xpm dependency
• installing the theme system-wide

All theme files are located in the root of this repository and start with the prefix doxygen-awesome-. You may not need all of them. Follow the install instructions to figure out what files are required for your setup.

Git submodule

For projects that use git, add the repository as a submodule and check out the desired release:

git submodule add https://github.com/jothepro/doxygen-awesome-css.git
cd doxygen-awesome-css
git checkout v2.3.4

CMake with FetchContent

For project that build with CMake, the FetchContent module can be used to download the repository at configure-time.

Add the following snippet to your CMakeLists.txt

include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
    doxygen-awesome-css
    URL https://github.com/jothepro/doxygen-awesome-css/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(doxygen-awesome-css)

# Save the location the files were cloned into
# This allows us to get the path to doxygen-awesome.css
FetchContent_GetProperties(doxygen-awesome-css SOURCE_DIR AWESOME_CSS_DIR)

# Generate the Doxyfile
set(DOXYFILE_IN ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/doc/Doxyfile.in)
set(DOXYFILE_OUT ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/Doxyfile)
configure_file(${DOXYFILE_IN} ${DOXYFILE_OUT} @ONLY)

This downloads the latest main (but any other revision could be used) and unpacks in the build folder. The Doxyfile.in can reference this location in the HTML_EXTRA_STYLESHEET field

HTML_EXTRA_STYLESHEET  = @AWESOME_CSS_DIR@/doxygen-awesome.css

When the configure stage of CMake is run, the Doxyfile.in is rendered to Doxyfile and Doxygen can be run as usual.

npm/xpm dependency

In the npm ecosystem, this project can be added as a development dependency to your project:

cd your-project
npm install https://github.com/jothepro/doxygen-awesome-css#v2.3.4 --save-dev

ls -l node_module/@jothepro/doxygen-awesome-css

Similarly, in the xPack ecosystem, this project can be added as a development dependency to an xpm managed project.

System-wide

You can even install the theme system-wide by running make install. The files will be installed to /usr/local/share/ by default, but you can customize the install location with make PREFIX=/my/custom/path install.

Choosing a layout

There are two layout options. Choose one of them and configure Doxygen accordingly:

• Base Theme

  

  Comes with the typical Doxygen titlebar. Optionally the treeview in the sidebar can be enabled.

  Required files: doxygen-awesome.css

  Required Doxyfile configuration:

  GENERATE_TREEVIEW      = YES # optional. Also works without treeview
  DISABLE_INDEX = NO
  FULL_SIDEBAR = NO
  HTML_EXTRA_STYLESHEET  = doxygen-awesome-css/doxygen-awesome.css
  HTML_COLORSTYLE        = LIGHT # required with Doxygen >= 1.9.5
  

• Sidebar-Only Theme

  

  Hides the top titlebar to give more space to the content. The treeview must be enabled in order for this theme to work.

  Required files: doxygen-awesome.css, doxygen-awesome-sidebar-only.css

  Required Doxyfile configuration:

  
  GENERATE_TREEVIEW      = YES # required!
  DISABLE_INDEX          = NO
  FULL_SIDEBAR           = NO
  HTML_EXTRA_STYLESHEET  = doxygen-awesome-css/doxygen-awesome.css \
                          doxygen-awesome-css/doxygen-awesome-sidebar-only.css
  HTML_COLORSTYLE        = LIGHT # required with Doxygen >= 1.9.5
  

@warning

• This theme is not compatible with the FULL_SIDEBAR = YES option provided by Doxygen!
• HTML_COLORSTYLE must be set to LIGHT since Doxygen 1.9.5!

Further installation instructions

• Installing extensions
• Customizing the theme (colors, spacing, border-radius, ...)
• Tips and Tricks for further configuration

Browser support

Tested with

• Chrome 119, Chrome 119 for Android, Chrome 119 for iOS
• Safari 17, Safari for iOS 16
• Firefox 118, Firefox 120 for Android, Firefox 119 for iOS
• Edge 119
• Opera 108

The theme does not strive to be backward compatible with (significantly) older browser versions.

Credits

Thanks for all the bug reports and inspiring feedback on GitHub!

Special thanks to all the contributors:

Read Next
Extensions