On 29.Aug.2006, at 05:49 PM, Bèr Kessels wrote:

Trea hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that we needed designers to

talk about design. But Morbus is right too when he complains about usability

technical issues around themes too.

I've been following this conversation with great interest because, as someone who develps and designs all her blogs, Drupal became a challenge more for the complexity of little details in design issues than the bigger picture of "does it work". It's a great discussion and would like to jump in a bit with some questions and comments:

(1) STYLING OF FORMS

I love the Drupal Theme Garden and I think Lullabot is going in the right direction with Sand ... BUT... There is no way for us to see how forms and the admin section work.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time changing the size of textareas in modules. The way forms are coded in Drupal, I honestly do not know if there is a way for the coders out there to work with this; but for this blog developer/designer it is an issue. 20 rows are fine as a default, but I find 40 rows better for my taste. As a designer, I feel I ought not be messing around with the module code itself for issues of styling forms. Unfortunately, I find myself doing this with every fresh install.

(2) DOES IT HAVE TO BE EITHER/OR

Why can't Drupal have fixed and liquid default themes? Just asking.

(3) WHAT IS 'TABLELESS'?

I have not tested all the themes, so may I ask : When speaking of 'tableless' are you talking about no tables at all (even across module elements) or no tables used in the design?

Because if it is a tableless design we are talking about, I have to ask : Is there something wrong with MARVIN 2k [ http://drupal.org/project/marvin_2k_phptemplate ]? It is a tableless design (but for the calendar).

I use this theme for 4 versions of culturekitchen [ www.culturekitchen.com ], another 3 for The Daily Gotham [ www.dailygotham.,com ], www.lizasabater.com and 4 blogs I am developing in 4.6 and 4.7. I never see this theme mentioned anymore in the Themes section even though it works fine with 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 (if you don't care about the block regions).

I do have to say that something 'broke' the form tabs over at culturekitchen and have not fixed it because I am working on a slight redesign that will accomodate 4 columns. I anyway have found it easy to change, because it works across browsers (at least last I saw through Browsercam). Oh ... I don't support Mac/IE.

I am curious to know why it has been dropped?

Best,

Liza Sabater, Publisher