[drupal-devel] CivicSpace Labs launches new beta site

[Chris Messina]

Thanks Andre. Great points.

And I do think I can pair down my CSS considerably, but trusting in
inheritance on Drupal is no easy task. Maybe it's because I don't have
a way of gauging where all of the HTML output comes from or because
the way I've modified the themeable functions makes it hard to keep
things consistent or because Drupal's XHTML isn't what I'm looking
for, but a great deal of those styles are necessary.

I should also point out that I consolidated just about everything
except for layout into styles.css, whereas I had previously been using
3-5 stylesheets (coupled with those provided by modules). My CSS is
certainly not as tight as I'd like it to be yet, but I think part of
it is running up against some of those areas I mentioned in Drupal
that need some work (making the menu module use consistent classing
next to the local tasks XHTML would be one example).

In any case, I was truly impressed by how much I could do w/ Drupal
once I was forced into a room for ~48 hours with Neil to build a
website. We might end up adopting this approach for everything we do
from now on (though perhaps at not such a frantic pace).

So thanks again for your feedback and let me know if you find anything
else once you've played around a bit more!

Chris 


On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 19:41:05 -0500, Andre Molnar
<mcsparkerton at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Visually nice,
> 
> I like the CSS rollover solution for the top links - its actually
> accessible (vs. similar effects I have seen being used).
> 
> My only comment would be to pear down your CSS file.  It could likely be
> peared down by 20-25K without loosing any styling.
> 
> Trust CSS inheritance and precedence.
> 
> I haven't played around with the site yet to comment on functionality or
> ease of finding information, but my initial sense is that it will take
> some getting used to.
> 
> andre
> 
> p.s. Oh yeah - and mention Drupal a bit more.
> .
> Chris Messina wrote:
> > Despite the title sounding like a press release, it's true what it
> > says! Neil, Keiran, Ankur, Johnny and I spent literally the last two.5
> > days pushing through a signficant redesign of civicspacelabs.org
> > (anyone who was in the menus IRC meeting knows how intellectually
> > present I was after being up for 29 hours).
> >
> > In any case, I wanted to invite the Drupal community to come take a
> > look at a site that will hopefully begin to show what's possible with
> > Drupal from a UI/experience perspective. There are plenty of other
> > sites out there that are already pushing the limits of Drupal, but I
> > would like to make an effort to prove (with documentation!) just how
> > powerful and robust Drupal is for designers too... as well as make
> > note of the areas in which Drupal needs vast improvement.
> >
> > So I'm looking for feedback, good ideas and heck, even volunteers who
> > want to help throw some code around.
> >
> > I'm keeping a public log of requests and tasks at:
> > http://factoryjoe.tadalist.com/lists/show/32277
> >
> > So thanks to everyone who gave preliminary feedback and helped make
> > this BETA launch better. Over the next couple weeks I'll be doing a
> > second iterative redesign... probably moving away from the pastels so
> > don't complain to heavily if they're not in your bag. ;)
> >
> > Chris
> >
> 
>