[themes] first theme - serene - feedback?

Tue Apr 11 01:34:05 UTC 2006

"Will Wyatt" wrote:

> This is my first Drupal theme, so I'm looking for feedback /criticism
> before I make a post about it on drupal.org.

Firstly, thanks for sharing your work and time.

General critique:

IMO...

1. The type is too small. (I'm on a Mac, it's displaying as 9pt Helvetica.)
2. The type is Helvetica.
3. I don't see any difference between this and Greybox or any number of
other of the same-structured 3-column layouts (yes, it's grey-green, of
course, but that's a CSS color palette, not a theme).

About "themes":

IMO...

I can not stand the word "themes" and I don't think (m)any of these things
(Drupal 'themes') are "thematic" in any way.

These Drupal (and other CMS) "themes", per se, are really "frames" or
"skeletons" or "layouts" or "blueprints" or something else.

A "theme" is [check out def (6) and it's included link to 'stem']:

theme n

1.    a subject of a discourse, discussion, piece of writing, or artistic
composition
2.    a distinct, recurring, and unifying quality or idea
3.    a melody that is repeated, often with variations, throughout a piece
of music
4.    a song or tune that is played at the beginning or end of, or during, a
film or television program, and is identified with it
5.    a short essay or written exercise for a student
6.    See stem 1 n. 6

adj
with one distinct and recurring subject, organizational principle, or idea

vt
to give something a single distinct character or subject

stem (1) n
...
6.    the base of a word, to which affixes are added.
      (Also called theme)

Perhaps these CMS "themes" (which are, again, not very often "thematic") are
really either one of:

    stems [?] -- site structural/mechanical templates

    CSS style sheets -- a color change of all or some CSS elements

    themes -- actual "thematic" replacements
              [For example, see 'Blue Leaves' and others at OSWD

    [?] == While this may be a closely related term, I don't think it would
have much traction with real usage. It's still not a very popularly clear
term.

Suggestions as alternative to 'theme', so we can invite the world to stop
calling re-colored layouts "themes".

Mechanical/Structural...

    layout
    framework
    grid
    box model
    skeleton
    ?

Color Palette...
    [no need for new terms, they are called "style sheet(s)"]

    (Drupal should be using relative web standards terminology, and
     further promoting such use.  CSS was designed exactly _because_
     people wanted to quickly change a "style element" visual display,
     and people wanted that divorced from the structural markup. Good.)

Thematic...

    theme
    theme pack/package
    motif

    A "theme" would really exist if, say, you switched in or out
    the Halloween Theme, Baseball Theme, etc.

    Excellent examples of _real_ thematic replacements for Drupal are the
well-crafted and tested things like 'Democratica', where a distinct
"thematic style" is deployed.

    (Shifted CSS changes in the not-really-themes built on it, like
'Republica' or whatever it's called, are _not_ thematic changes, their
"mechanical changes", like full-width, different number of columns, etc.)

Anyway, this is really a whole new topic, but many of the "themes" for
Drupal are not "themes" at all, but just different CSS.

I think yours would have to fit that category: not a theme.

> Some caveats:
> - I keep my css in separate files (font.css, colors.css, etc.). This
> works well for me, but I understand it drives some people crazy. It
> also adds 6k or so to the total size of the css.

Not sure why that's a 'caveat', but I do the same (and prefer this method,
and I think it makes sense).

--
Gary