Has anyone seen this?
http://drupal.org/node/43525 http://drupal.org/node/43449 http://xlecom.com/?q=node/117
Written in Microsoft Excel no less ...
On Friday 06 January 2006 12:34, Khalid B wrote:
Has anyone seen this?
http://drupal.org/node/43525 http://drupal.org/node/43449 http://xlecom.com/?q=node/117
I did see the announcement come through for the upgraded version, and was going to check it out later, when I had more available time.
Written in Microsoft Excel no less ...
However, I didn't notice that part previously, and I will not bother with it now.
I agree it is a very strange choice.
Due to the "pushy salesman/marketeer" style of writing, I suspected it was a hoax from someone promoting an unrelated site.
However, you can see that the guy is an Excel guru, and hence coded the theme generator in VBA!
Lots of people are on his site asking for support, making comments, ...etc.
My points are: a) people will use what they know, and b) there is a dire need for this.
So, referring to the other discussion on Super Theme, we might as well do something that runs in Drupal and allows changing color and maybe layout, otherwise someone will code it in IBM 360 assembler.
On 1/6/06, Jason Flatt drupal@oadae.net wrote:
On Friday 06 January 2006 12:34, Khalid B wrote:
Has anyone seen this?
http://drupal.org/node/43525 http://drupal.org/node/43449 http://xlecom.com/?q=node/117
I did see the announcement come through for the upgraded version, and was going to check it out later, when I had more available time.
Written in Microsoft Excel no less ...
However, I didn't notice that part previously, and I will not bother with it now.
On Friday 06 January 2006 16:16, Khalid B wrote:
I agree it is a very strange choice.
Due to the "pushy salesman/marketeer" style of writing, I suspected it was a hoax from someone promoting an unrelated site.
However, you can see that the guy is an Excel guru, and hence coded the theme generator in VBA!
Lots of people are on his site asking for support, making comments, ...etc.
My points are: a) people will use what they know, and b) there is a dire need for this.
So, referring to the other discussion on Super Theme, we might as well do something that runs in Drupal and allows changing color and maybe layout, otherwise someone will code it in IBM 360 assembler.
Ha ha! Point taken. There is currently Theme Editor [0]. Could that be used as a starting point, or is that not enough?
[0] http://drupal.org/project/theme_editor
Op zaterdag 07 januari 2006 07:14, schreef Jason Flatt:
Ha ha! Point taken. There is currently Theme Editor [0]. Could that be used as a starting point, or is that not enough?
Slightly unrelated, yet interesting enough for people, I guess: I am going to rewrite my code generation scripts in CLI PHP this weekend. What this does is (on a *much* lowe level) create code for you to start developing. What my fugly shell scripts do now is: $ ./scripts/make_node news_content newsitems ** adding directory /modules/news_content/.module ** generating file /modules/news_content/news_content.module ** generating file /themes/box_grey/node-news_content.tpl.php ** generating file /themes/chameleon/node-news_content.tpl.php .. etc
I want to extend these scripts by adding some more theme creation scripts. Scripts that hunt the database for some settings (like enabled node types) and then create all the tmp files and css files and more like that for you.
If people like to help, we could team up. If people beleive in my idea that theme development is something a consultant/designer/developer does once, in his/het development environment and IDEs, and not online, then we could team up too :)
I still need to find a place to contribute this to drupal. Maybe the devel.module, maybe a new location. It will, in any case ship with drupalCOM.
Bèr
Link to original discussion on super theme (or rather a proper theme customizer).
http://lists.drupal.org/archives/themes/2006-01/msg00005.html
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
Op zondag 08 januari 2006 14:58, schreef Gunnar Langemark:
"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.
My argeebee theme is this, minus the online part. If we could tie a simple CSS colorSCHEME generator with this, one that poops out CSS, we are set.
Note the stress on SCHEME. making colors is not too hard. Making them play nice together is. developing a colopicker is not hard. It can even be done on a low level with a few textfields where one inserts HEX codes. No, developing and algorithm to pick nice contrasting, yet beatifull color sets is hard. argeebee on drupal.org has a list of some online scheme generators.
Bèr
So that seems to be a good starting point - right? An interactive color scheme generator on top of that? Would that be an admin interface with some logic behind it? Select one color - cut the colorwheel in three or four - find the two or three other colors matching, lighten and darken to add the lighter and darker shades by a set percentage. VOILA - a color scheme. That's basically what those color scheme, palette generators do. Should be possible. It's the interface part that is difficult I think.
Best Gunnar
Bèr Kessels wrote:
Op zondag 08 januari 2006 14:58, schreef Gunnar Langemark:
"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.
My argeebee theme is this, minus the online part. If we could tie a simple CSS colorSCHEME generator with this, one that poops out CSS, we are set.
Note the stress on SCHEME. making colors is not too hard. Making them play nice together is. developing a colopicker is not hard. It can even be done on a low level with a few textfields where one inserts HEX codes. No, developing and algorithm to pick nice contrasting, yet beatifull color sets is hard. argeebee on drupal.org has a list of some online scheme generator
Op zondag 08 januari 2006 20:18, schreef Gunnar Langemark:
It's the interface part that is difficult I think.
Yes, that is the hard part :)
For myself, I set some guidelines. A lot of these scheme generator work only on heave Javascript. Or only with flash. I want this to primarily work w/o any of the ajaxy coolness. Later on, we can *add* ajax to ease the process. but that would be in the end.
So, it boils down to a four page wizard: Select one color cut the colorwheel in three or four find the two or three other colors matching, (from a database, or an algorythm) lighten and darken to add the lighter and darker shades by a set percentage.
For reference:
http://www.colourlovers.com/ http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html http://www.siteprocentral.com/cgi-bin/feed/feed.cgi
Bèr
We agree I think. Your reference sites show a couple of different approaches
no comment - just color submission?
Well styled is probably too complex in the interface for joe average, who just wants a set of colors.
colorschemer is just about right. Now add to this an interface which lets you assign colors to different elements of your theme, as background colors etc. It can initially be done by lists, later by drag and drop.
I think this interface also lends itself to being implemented in a simpler way at first and then developed further without drowning itself in complex scripts just to run the interface.
Very nice and powerful interface. Maybe also too complex, and maybe over the top when it comes to needed code, javascript, graphics etc.
Best
Gunnar Langemark gunnar@langemark.com
On 1/7/06, Jason Flatt drupal@oadae.net wrote:
Ha ha! Point taken. There is currently Theme Editor [0]. Could that be used as a starting point, or is that not enough?
I think even something like theme_editor is overly complex for a certain group of people who have Drupal sites, particularly those who are using it for a blog. CSS isn't overly complicated, but Drupal's CSS *is*, especially if you're trying to learn CSS by modifying Drupal's files.
I have several people at the Lab where I work that use a multisite Drupal installation as a blogging tool, and they want two things from their theme:
* something different than the canned styles * something they can play with on their own
Mostly, they just want different colors, and a bit of style here and there (rounded corners, background graphics, and so forth). Nothing overly complicated; they don't want to define dynamic pulldown menus or corner graphics for each block. Bluemarine with user-editable colors would make them quite happy.
I think what we should consider here is dusting off the old Polder theme, which, way back in the day, I was quite fond of. It had basically a canned look to it, but it allowed colors and other parameters to be modified through the admin interface:
http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/themes/polder/ (note, two years old, horribly broken)
Something like that would provide end-user customization, without having to get their hands dirty and brains overloaded with understanding Drupal's implementation of CSS.
-- e www.eafarris.com
On 6-Jan-2006, at 4:16 PM, Khalid B wrote:
I agree it is a very strange choice.
Haven't looked at the code, but perhaps it's not such a strange choice after all. Excel is probably used for more programming than all other languages combined :) Of course most of the programs are trivial, and most of the non-trivial ones are a mistake, but...
Due to the "pushy salesman/marketeer" style of writing, I suspected it was a hoax from someone promoting an unrelated site.
I like the 'random color theme generator feature :)
However, you can see that the guy is an Excel guru, and hence coded the theme generator in VBA!
Lots of people are on his site asking for support, making comments, ...etc.
My points are: a) people will use what they know, and b) there is a dire need for this.
So, referring to the other discussion on Super Theme, we might as well do something that runs in Drupal and allows changing color and maybe layout, otherwise someone will code it in IBM 360 assembler.
Emacs lisp would be my first choice :)
On 1/6/06, Jason Flatt drupal@oadae.net wrote:
On Friday 06 January 2006 12:34, Khalid B wrote:
Has anyone seen this?
http://drupal.org/node/43525 http://drupal.org/node/43449 http://xlecom.com/?q=node/117
-
Bèr Kessels -
eric Farris -
gunnar -
Gunnar Langemark
-
Jason Flatt -
Khalid B -
puregin