[development] New Themes for New Drupal

[Jeff Robbins]

On Aug 29, 2006, at 6:25 AM, Neil Drumm wrote:

> Jeff Robbins wrote:
>> As some of you probably know, I've been working on a new theme for  
>> Drupal that aims to become the default core theme for the next  
>> version of Drupal.
>
> I didn't get the memo. I did hear rumors.

There were only rumors... no memos.

>>     We've set up a test site here: http://drupaltheme.lullabot.com
>
> These themes need to be somewhere between "looks like Drupal" and  
> "clean enough to build off of." What I see here looks like a full  
> palate competing with the Drupal branding and the themer trying to  
> find the shortest way to their own color scheme. It does look good,  
> but too far from bluemarine to be a good default.

Please see: http://drupaltheme.lullabot.com/node?theme=zen-beach

That's the most "Drupaly" theme and the one that I would probably  
vote for as default.

Whereas http://drupaltheme.lullabot.com/node?theme=zen might make a  
better admin theme, if users have both right and left sidebars  
activated.

Also, I assume that the bluemarine theme will stay in core for at  
least a release or two. So those that love it can still use it if  
they'd like.

>> There is currently 1 theme with 4 sub-themes. The main theme is  
>> called "Zen" and aims to provide basic, standards-compliant, XHTML  
>> that can be easily manipulated with CSS (think: "CSS Zen  
>> Garden"). ...
>
> Things you will have a hard time getting past me:
> - Implementing any more theme functions than we have in the core  
> themes at the moment. (see http://drupal.org/node/ 
> 81217#comment-129980)

Well we can work on that. On the one hand, it might be good to have a  
theme function or two in the template.php to server as an "example"  
for themers. On the other, if they seem like sane redefinitions,  
perhaps they should be part of core. However, they should probably be  
handled as a separate patch, IMO.

> - Styling form fields. These are notoriously inconsistent across  
> platforms and I think are best left as-is anyway since form fields  
> should always look like form fields.

I'm not sure I totally agree on this point. Some browsers ignore  
styling on form fields, so it is important to test on many browsers  
to see what is truly happening. But I think that a little bit of  
styling, particularly on form buttons can show a sense of style and  
maturity. Certainly they can be styled out of the realm of usability,  
but I think with a bit of testing, we can improve upon the nasty  
default button styling of browsers like Firefox.

-jeff