[development] New Themes for New Drupal

[blogdiva at culturekitchen.com]

On  29.Aug.2006, at 05:49 PM, Bèr Kessels wrote:

> Trea hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that we needed  
> designers to
> talk about design. But Morbus is right too when he complains about  
> usability
> technical issues around themes too.

I've been following this conversation with great interest because, as  
someone who develps and designs all her blogs, Drupal became a  
challenge more for the complexity of little details in design issues  
than the bigger picture of "does it work". It's a great discussion  
and would like to jump in a bit with some questions and comments:

(1) STYLING OF FORMS
I love the Drupal Theme Garden and I think  Lullabot is going in the  
right direction with Sand ... BUT... There is no way for us to see  
how forms and the admin section work.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time changing the size of  
textareas in modules. The way forms are coded in Drupal, I honestly  
do not know if there is a way for the coders out there to work with  
this; but for this blog developer/designer it is an issue.  20 rows   
are fine as a default,  but I find 40 rows better for my taste. As a  
designer, I feel I ought not be messing around with the module code  
itself for issues of styling forms. Unfortunately, I find myself  
doing this with every fresh install.


(2) DOES IT HAVE TO BE EITHER/OR
Why can't Drupal have fixed and liquid default themes? Just asking.


(3) WHAT IS 'TABLELESS'?
I have not tested all the themes, so may I ask : When speaking of  
'tableless' are you talking about no tables at all (even across  
module elements) or no tables used in the design?

Because if it is a tableless design we are talking about, I have to  
ask : Is there something wrong with MARVIN 2k [ http://drupal.org/ 
project/marvin_2k_phptemplate ]? It is a tableless design (but for  
the calendar).

I use this theme for 4 versions of culturekitchen  
[ www.culturekitchen.com ], another 3 for The Daily Gotham  
[ www.dailygotham.,com ], www.lizasabater.com and 4 blogs I am  
developing in 4.6 and 4.7. I never see this theme mentioned anymore  
in the Themes section even though it works fine with 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7  
(if you don't care about the block regions).

I do have to say that something 'broke' the form tabs over at  
culturekitchen and have not fixed it because I am working on a slight  
redesign that will accomodate 4 columns. I anyway have found it easy  
to change, because it works across browsers (at least last I saw  
through Browsercam). Oh ... I don't support Mac/IE.

I am curious to know why it has been dropped?


Best,
Liza Sabater, Publisher
www.culturekitchen.com
www.dailygotham.com


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