<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Nov 09 2005, at 09:49 PM, Kieran Lal wrote:</DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><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></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I'd love to see more code snippets. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV><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></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>!?!?! </DIV><DIV>Where are these themes? I've never seen them. Are these the new ones Trae is working on?</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style=""><DIV style="">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></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Still do not understand the concept behind this. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style=""><DIV style="">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 style="">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 </DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style=""><DIV style="">CSS masters.</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Have these been debugged? Democratica, Spreadfirefox and Lincoln's revenge were really buggy last time I used them. I chose to start with Friends Electric instead of Democratica for the YearlyKos design for that reason:</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.yearlykos.org">http://www.yearlykos.org</A></DIV><BR><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style=""><DIV style="">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></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Totally. </DIV><DIV>I used MarvinClassic for my portfolio site</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.lizasabater.com">http://www.lizasabater.com</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>But found the tables a headache to modify. I've settled on a customized Marvin 2K for PHPTemplate for my sites. As I roll them out they will have the same layout, only different look and feel. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.dailygotham.com">http://www.dailygotham.com</A> </DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.culturekitchen.com">http://www.culturekitchen.com</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>/ liza</DIV></BODY></HTML>