[themes] Re: Rapid Theme Development was: Re: [development] Administration Survey: Theme improvements, theme help system, theme mailing list

[Liza Sabater]

On Dec 13 2005, at 02:36 PM, Darrel O'Pry wrote:

> and if you could do something like array_sort($node->html) You could
> have finer grained control through the ui for managing output added by
> modules.
>
> If this is a completely absurd idea, please someone knock sense into
> me.

Wasn't it the point of blogs and CMS to separate design and content  
from the code? If anything, Drupal needs to have some sense knocked  
into it ;-) OK, that was a bad joke; with all seriousness though, I  
believe Drupal needs to have core and module developers working with  
themers on design and UI issues before launching off a new version of  
the software.

Boris' comment does not take into consideration the need for  
humongous budgets or allocation of man-hours that go into theming  
sites like netsquared. I have no idea what happened to the new Air  
America Radio launch but supposedly the job was monumental.

MovableType and WordPress did away with the sapping of resources for  
design and development. It's as if Drupal is trying to turn back  
time. There is really no honor in saying, "well, it's difficult so  
I'll make more money as a developer". How many developers are right  
now pouring millions of dollars into the coffers of Drupal for  
further development? Because that is what happened to MT (pre-VC  
money) and now to WordPress. They're not doing shabby because people  
are more than happy to give back or pay for something they know will  
be easy to maintain. And Yahoo! completely understands the importance  
of 'ease' in the development of new markets.

I'd like to see something as simple as each module having it's own  
div tag id so that if I need to change a form in one module, it will  
not wreck havoc in ALL forms. Also, I find it really problematic that  
I cannot change the help text on each module because it is encoded.  
But more importantly, the fact that I have to have advanced knowledge  
of PHP to customize templates and themes is, well ... it's really a  
step backwards in terms of design.

This is what I wrote on an earlier email that didn't go through :

> If there is one thing Drupal could spend a year sorting out and  
> optimizing is this : Completely separating design from the code;  
> especially when it comes to modules --whether they are contribs or  
> core.

SNIP

> I've seen Trae's designs and his CSS rock. Good CSS design and  
> development is extremely difficult to do when you are especially  
> considering issues of backward compatibility. Why would it be  
> expected of him --or any other theme designer-- to know advanced  
> PHP AND CSS (in that particular order) to customize their templates?
>
> Drupal has amazing potential, as I have said before, and I am using  
> it because CivicSpaceLabs sold me on the idea. But please,  
> understand that, Drupal needs to spend at least a year working on  
> design alone --and you can't do that if the code is constantly  
> changing and the specifications for a quasi-bug free site keep  
> changing by the week if not by the day. Not because that's the way  
> it should be but because that is unfortunately how Drupal has been  
> developed --design is way too intermingled with the code.

Trae is supposed to be working on making themes easier to implement,  
redesign and customize for CivicSpace users. I honestly believe he  
has a point.

Best,
liza