I have discussed theme engines like that before. I posted because I thought that a little more control in the hands of the user would be good, but then was swept away by my own imagination. :-)
I think it would be wise to differentiate between at least two kinds of users:
A consultant with no real design skills, but with a need to do some "theme tweaking" in customers installation. Online theme editor would enable much easier consulting - online - at a 2000 miles distance.
An end user with a need/urge to "fiddle" with the design - more or less a "skinning" exercise - for the fun of it.
Those who would not be in the target group: Professional designer/consultant. You have no need doing any more than providing a simple theme framework for them. They design in Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Dreamweaver etc. They do not change tools - even if what they come up with in the end could be achieved by a super theme.
I also think that the project must differentiate between at least two levels of sophistication:
"Skinning" - where what you change is colors, graphics and perhaps a little layout. This can be done almost entirely by css. So actually I think it should be a "css-module" in its own right. Selecting a color scheme etc. It could provide a "skinning block" and a "skin-mixer/roulette" if anybody else understand what I mean by that.
"Theming" - where you can do real layout. Having different kinds of content in different areas, and interactively more these areas in the interface (scale, drag, drop - square marking the relative position and size of a content area). This can be done in AJAX if there are any takers. I believe this is probably a phase two thing, as it is more sophisticated.
I envisioned a kind of "skin/theme-exchange". That could be a phase three. It would probably mean that you'd need some kind of XML scheme to support the exchange. It would be cool, but.... It could be the feature which would make Drupal explode as a blogging/personal home page platform. Some peole love to change their site design - and being able to automatically download and change theme - with no real effort/skills whatsoever, would probably prove very popular. It could also prove to be pure eye-candy, worthless sillyness.
Best Gunnar
Khalid B wrote:
Link to original discussion on super theme (or rather a proper theme customizer).
http://lists.drupal.org/archives/themes/2006-01/msg00005.html _______________________________________________ themes mailing list themes@drupal.org http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/themes