[development] Patches 4.8 - New Theme

[Laura Scott]

I would like to pipe in here with a dissent. While it's a nice idea  
that design is 100% CSS, the simple fact is that is not the case, and  
never will be, with any dynamic CMS. You need other coding skills in  
order to call up the content, or simply manage the content that is  
pushed at you.

Not only that, until we have 100% CSS-compliant browser usage out  
there, the real world will not cooperate with 100% CSS themes except  
for the kinds of layouts that lend themselves to the CSS logic in  
ways IE doesn't break. (I'll just leave alone the religious arguments  
about CSS-only layouts.)

I agree 100% that Drupal needs some sexy themes.

I also agree that Drupal needs to focus on code base and implementing  
a really smart theming system (phpTemplate2?) as was hinted at in the  
global skypecast echofest.

As I see it, these are two very important goals that are equally  
important, imho, each for its own reasons -- sharp design because,  
right or wrong, design is the #1 way people judge a website's  
credibility, and solid code because we want to have a theming system  
that provides for the most flexibility, modularity and theming power  
for the designer -- but these are goals that do not come from the  
same place, and therefore can only converge in a kind of development  
tango dance.

In other words, it will take some cooperation and communication while  
pushing in both directions. Pushing on one while ignoring the other  
would be nothing but missed opportunity, in my view.

Aside: Getting beyond the One Theme To Unite Them All notion, I would  
even suggest that we consider opening up the theme garden (or some  
variant on it) to enable non-CVS contributions to Drupal, in order to  
make it easy for designers to contribute all sorts of designs. (In  
other words, design the theme development side to afford design  
contributions.)

Laura


On Jul 11, 2006, at 2:34 AM, Fouad Riaz Bajwa wrote:

> Content Management Systems are separation of content from design.  
> Design is
> always managed through CSS. All designers should be aware of this  
> fact in
> case of Drupal. This gap will always exist between designers and  
> developers
> and the only way to overcome this gap may be that the design should  
> be 100%
> controlled by CSS and that is already being done through  
> phptemplate, what
> you can control through phptemplate is that what shows what and  
> where and
> how can you be more specific with certain areas or spice em up.
>
> Your dream will always be a bit of imagination. Drupal is hitting that
> mainstream activity where designers do their design part and  
> programmers or
> configures connect the the UI to Drupal.
>
> CSS us the only way forward otherwise learn PHP and API Callups/ 
> Callbacks!
>
> Regards
> -----------------------
> Fouad Riaz Bajwa
> www.fossfp.org
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: development-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:development- 
> bounces at drupal.org]
> On Behalf Of sime
> Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 7:53 AM
> To: development at drupal.org
> Subject: [development] Patches 4.8 - New Theme
>
> (First rant)
>
> While everyone is discussing whether a "3-column CSS layout  
> template for
> developers" is achievable - I think this development process arse-up.
> Discussing implementation issues in absence of something to  
> implement is
> wasting time.
>
> Our trialling users, Fantastico users, non-techie administrators, they
> want a new "sexy" theme as one of the defaults. For that reason, the
> focus has to be on the design first, and therefore we the tools are
> Photoshop, Fireworks or GIMP - *not* CSS and HTML. I'm sure we'd  
> have 10
> great candidates designs within a week if an announcement went in the
> forums. Or let's just expand on a great looking Wordpress theme. Or
> let's just have a vote on the best looking contrib theme.
>
> After we have the design, we can knock ourselves out with the
> implementation. Until then the clock's ticking, and rehashing ALA
> articles is not going to get us anywhere.
>
> Cheers, Simon
>
>
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