inkfree press wrote:
... Any argument over "oh, use my default" is only for bragging rights and not for any other purpose actually related to design or site building. ...
I haven't chipped in for a while, but I think there's a dangerous oversimplification going on when one implies that the default theme is unimportant. The default theme is, like it or not, 'the look of Drupal.' What identity it projects has a nontrivial impact on how the platform itself is perceived and used. Those of us who see the default theme as "Another setting to change, like setting the site name" don't care, but that's also because we have been using Drupal for a long, long time. Those learning the system or evaluating it *will* see the default, and many small sites set up for ad-hoc communities don't bother installing additional themes. They may see the 'themes' setting and flip through the bundled defaults, but few will bother downloading new themes and even fewer will build their own. For very functional sites, there is no reason to obsess about the 'look and feel' unless the default theme is really terrible. The nature of the default theme WILL still have an impact on the users of said sites, though. That said, I do think that we've lost sight of the really important aspect of 5.0 theming in this discussion. Rather than asking what a new theme should bring to the table, we've been sucked into weeks of font-tweaking. Ultimately, I think we would be better served by settling on a much-improved base XHTML layout (zen's is MUCH better than any previous Drupal default) and promote it as a base for pure-css themes by designers who lacked the programming experince to put together a Drupal theme from scratch. --Jeff