[development] New Themes for New Drupal

[Larry Garfield]

On Tuesday 29 August 2006 13:12, Neil Drumm wrote:
> Jeff Robbins wrote:
> > Drupal that aims to become the default core theme for the next version
> > of Drupal. There's still a fair amount of bug fixing, tweaking, and
>
> Lets try setting some goals here:
>
> * It must be a good theme technically.
>    - Work in the browsers we say Drupal works in (it is somewhere in the
> handbook).
>    - Be tableless, because tables are for storing tabular data, not
> visual layout.
>    - Not override more themeable functions than we already do.
>    - Have good code style.
> * It must look good.
> * It must be customizable.
>    - By people who are never going to touch the CSS. The theme
> configuration options need to work and produce good results.
>    - And by people who will touch the CSS.
> * It must improve the Drupal brand. This is the first thing people see.
>
> This is just a quick list, so feel free to tell us what needs to be
> changed.

I am reminded of the Slashdot effort to modernize their design.  

First, they cleaned up the underlying HTML to not be 1995-style tag soup.  

Then, they made a call for CSS efforts, with the description of "it should be 
Slashdot, but not.  It should have all the elements that visually make 
Slashdot what it is, but be new and cool.  It should change everything and 
change nothing at the same time."  Somehow that contradictory description 
came up with several halfway-decent designs. :-)

Should we be thinking along the same lines?  Don't throw out and replace 
BlueMarine with something new and fancy and OMG-so-sexy, but spruce up and 
modernize BlueMarine to not look/feel 1995-ish.  The path to get there could 
go through Zen, but the end result should keep that "simple first" feel.  
Hell, just switching to the 3D Druplicon would be a market improvement, 
branding-wise. :-)

Question: I know we want to avoid CSS browser hacks.  What about extensions?  
BlueBeach uses the Gecko-specific -moz-border-radius attribute.  Would that 
be kosher for a default theme?

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

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