[development] Drupal 5.0 Theme - v2

[Derek Wright]

On Sep 27, 2006, at 7:45 PM, Steven Peck wrote:

> The big blue bar on top does nothing for the theme except push down  
> the title bar and drown the rest of the site.  No matter how I try  
> I can't look away.  As I try and look down the page, my eye is  
> constantly drawn to the big huge empty dominating color bar on top.

<design-by-committee>

i totally agree w/ steven.  on a full-height window on my 15"  
powerbook, nearly the top 1/4 of the screen is taken up by  
navigational cruft that could easily fit into 1/8th of the screen  
instead (if not less).  there's *tons* of wasted screen real estate  
here.  you end up with an amazingly low % of the screen that contains  
any content.  edward tufte[1] would (rightfully) go to town on this  
theme (and many others in drupal-land) about how ineffective it is at  
presenting any useful info to the user of the site.  we're writing a  
content management system, after all, the content should be the most  
important part...

others will probably scream that i should take my minimalist, tufte- 
compliant theme ideas and a) go to hell and b) stay away from the  
default core theme which has to "look slick".  i disagree.  just  
because it looks slick doesn't mean you have to water down the screen  
with pixels that add no information, or lots of empty space...

if i had the first clue about writing a theme[2], and if i wasn't so  
damn busy on other things, i'd write my own theme that a) looks good  
and b) gives you access to your content, not tons of navigational  
cruft and other things eating up the majority of the screen and  
screaming for your undeserved attention.

</design-by-committee>

no offense to trae or farsheed -- much thanks for all the work  
they've already put into this.  and, no offense to anyone else who's  
really into the tons-of-pixels-that-convey-no-information approach to  
themes.  i just wish more of the theme/design folks around here would  
drink from the tufte kool-aid. ;)

-derek


[1] http://edwardtufte.com  (no, i don't think his site is The Best 
(tm) possible site, and that's not what i mean by a "tufte-compliant  
theme", though he sure packs a ton of useful info, graphics and links  
onto each square cm of the page.  it's more about taking his ideas  
about visuallly displaying data and applying those to a drupal theme,  
not writing a theme to duplicate the look/feel of his site).

[2] i'm hoping to attend the lullabot theme workshop in SF next week  
to work on this deficiency of mine.