[development] New Themes for New Drupal

[Larry Garfield]

On Tue, August 29, 2006 2:22 pm, Jeff Eaton said:
> At absolute worst... Does anyone have feelings about replacing some of
> the old-and-crusty additional themes that we include with Drupal? Even
> if folks are absolutely desperately attached to bluemarine, how many
> folks are there out there who say, "You'll take away Grey Box when you
> pry it from my cold, dead, hands?"
>
> There are absolutely some improvements to be made -- the themes are
> being shown to us *while *they're in development. But when I see people
> talking about 'pizzazz' and 'sexiness', I sometimes cringe. A good
> foundation, plus good CSS, plus pizzazz. It doesn't go the other
> direction. I made some of my own complaints about the colors, the
> layouts, the tweaky little details...
>
> Must a new theme be the second coming of Zeldman, rather than a very
> strong foundation plus iterative improvements? :) I like BlueMarine, but
> it shows its age in a big, big, big way. If you dislike the themes
> demonstrated, what do you LIKE about BlueMarine? I'm very curious...
>
> --Jeff

What I like about BlueMarine:

- It's ugly.  Really.  I KNOW when I'm working on a site setup or when
using it to buid a new module that I am not looking at the final look. 
I'm doing a prototype.  Building the theme for it comes later, and I can
very easily tell that I'm working with a placeholder.

- It works with everything.  When developing a new module, all I need is a
place to do the basic layout of the module's UI.  I don't need or want to
deal with fixed width silliness or float problems.  I just want to say
"And now this generates a form, followed by a table, and for the rest,
punt."

- It's simple.  OK, the CSS for Drupal is anything but simple, but that's
getting better. :-)  The stock .tpl.php files, though, make it very easy
to see what's going on and how the basic layout is achieved.  It's a good
learning tool.

- It's simple.  There's no flashiness to get in the way of me looking at
what I'm actually doing rather than the design.  Distracting people from
the content with flashy graphics is a job that comes later, after the
content and code is figurd out.

OK, maybe those aren't the best qualties in a "default" theme, but it's
certainly good qualities in a "developer-friendly" or "learning" theme. 
Right now, those are the same thing.  Whatever we do with the default,
let's keep in mind the latter factors.

--Larry Garfield