<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Nov 9, 2005, at 3:49 PM, Boris Mann wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BR><DIV><DIV>On 9-Nov-05, at 3:33 PM, Kieran Lal wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><DIV>On Nov 9, 2005, at 2:21 PM, Richard Archer wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Does the theme have bugs in display?</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Does the theme have cross-browser problems?</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Do two themes I want to use put elements in different and</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">inconsistent place on the screen?</FONT></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV>Based on feedback we believe it is these three. We can still go back and do some more research, but a quick review of bugs posted against these themes and discussions with themers make it clear.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>I think I've said this before. I'm not averse to have a FAQ for these questions...but they are absolutely out of scope for Drupal, since they are mainly CSS/browser bugs (i.e. it's not anything in Drupal itself). I realize that this IS the user interface for what most people deal with, so it is a high pain issue, but I see us having a very hard time actually solving anything.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I am going to ask Trae McCombs to jump in here and write a page of how to manage your themes. He inherited the CivicSpace theme from Chris who did a lot very innovative things first with Democratica and then the CivicSpace themes.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Full-time themers like Trae have developed a suite of techniques for theming that I believe will go a long way to helping people debug their custom themes. These include tools that are built into Firefox to identify CSS classes, validating xhtml of contributed modules, and even paid services like browser cam that can help with identifying cross browser compatibilities.</DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV>One thing I would like to suggest is a focus on verifying/marking themes as compliant. e.g. Bluemarine, box grey, etc. (base, but somewhat crappy themes) work perfectly across browsers. Many themes that use high degrees of CSS-fu will/are plagued by continuing cross-browser issues and/or workarounds. Maybe just update the description of these theme projects to indicate as such? If themers used box grey or bluemarine as a base to develop further themes, perhaps we would have less issues. In some ways, that is what the base CS theme is trying to do BUT it is too complex for the average person to just extend slightly. A really nice, bare bones, tableless CSS PHPTemplate would go a long way....</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I think CivicSpace is moving in the direction of becoming a powerful toolkit for building tableless themes.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The CS theme now supports several layouts:</DIV><DIV>1) Columbus: <A href="http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/columbus/screenshot.png">http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/columbus/screenshot.png</A></DIV><DIV>2) Declaration: <A href="http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/declaration/screenshot.png">http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/declaration/screenshot.png</A></DIV><DIV>3) Federation: <A href="http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/federation/screenshot.png">http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/federation/screenshot.png</A></DIV><DIV>4) Republica: <A href="http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/republica/screenshot.png">http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/republica/screenshot.png</A></DIV><DIV>5) Wireframe: <A href="http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/wireframe/screenshot.png">http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/layouts/wireframe/screenshot.png</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Giving people the layouts they want right out of the box is a good way to help them not have to learn advanced CSS to use a tableless theme.</DIV><DIV>The CS theme also provides a range of Styles: <A href="http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/styles/">http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/themes/civicspace/styles/</A> so people don't have to be CSS masters.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I think doing as much of the theme customization on a powerful base is what people really want. Once you have a layout and style you just need a simple custom.css class to override colors and graphics. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Of course the most advanced theme can not help with bad xhtml from contributed modules. The forms API should be able to fix a lot of this.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>We should have a page on managing theme inconsistencies up shortly. Hopefully, it will become a collaborative effort.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Cheers,</DIV><DIV>Kieran</DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>--</DIV><DIV> <DIV>Boris Mann</DIV><DIV>Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595</DIV><DIV>SKYPE borismann</DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.bryght.com">http://www.bryght.com</A></DIV> </DIV><BR><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">--<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">[ documentation | <A href="http://lists.drupal.org/listinfo/documentation">http://lists.drupal.org/listinfo/documentation</A> ]</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>