[themes] Dreamweaver CS3 Extension for Drupal Themeing

[Peter Apokotos]

On Aug 16, 2007, at 12:35 PM, Kieran Lal wrote:


>>>
>>
>> Something similar.   I see mostly frameworks for different types  
>> of designs.
>>
>> Could you make a list?
>
> Such as?
>
> I started with Garland and Minetti.  That's three column fluid, and  
> three column fixed.  What other base theme outputs would you like?


That would be up to the end user of the extension.



>>> And it would use an Assistant Interface for the building each theme.
>> For the record, CivicSpace uses Smarty Template and believe that  
>> it's easier to edit and comprehend than PHPTemplate.  But with the  
>> automated tools for PHPTemplate themes like contemplate and view  
>> and cck wizards it is hard to keep up.
>
> That is why I want to have the extension created.
>
> Are you suggesting that the output from Dreamweaver should rely or  
> be integrated with Contemplate, Views, and CCK wizards?  If so,  
> what do we gain from integration from integration of Dreamweaver  
> and Contemplate, Views wizard, CCK wizard.


Not at all.  I would prefer the Extension perform the basic template  
which is PHPTemplate.  The Dreamweaver Extension I have in mind would  
base it's designs on theme engines.  You mentioned that you preferred  
the Smarty theme engine so we could have a PHPTemplate and Smarty  
Template options in the extension.


>
>>> And have all of the theme template code built in so it would be  
>>> drag and drop.
>>>
>>> So we need a library of template files or template functions that  
>>> can be stubbed in.
>>
>> Correct.  Too bad the theme documentation for Drupal is so poor.   
>> Or it would allow the developer of the extension to finish it  
>> faster but with all the options of Drupal for each person to  
>> create their own unique theme.
>>
>> Since good documentation is a part of the design, could you be  
>> specific about why Drupal's theme documentation is poor?  It will  
>> help us set a design goal.
>
> As for other types of template systems I suppose they could be  
> included in the extension but that means more time and money to  
> have it created.
> For example I don't know all of the abilities of PHPTemplate, other  
> than from what I see from the code in other templates and this is  
> the purpose of the extension for Dreamweaver.  To have all of the  
> information for novice to advance designers to make their templates  
> in minutes and then hand tweak if they like.  There will be nothing  
> supporting one browser over another or work around for a browser.   
> Such as I.E. as this extension will be compliant.
>
> Unless I have missed something I have never found any straight  
> forward documentation for any of the theme back-ends.  More like a  
> snippet here and there.  If I am wrong and there is a place that  
> will provide me a list of all of the custom PHPTemplate code and  
> all of the CSS already in use please let me know where to find them.
>
> http://drupal.org/node/509
>
>
>> Are we ready to start doing wireframes?
>
> Such as in designs?  That would be the work of the extension.
>
> 1) What does the interface of this extension look like in Dreamweaver?

What I envision is an assistant look to the extension asking the user  
what settings and options they want for each template page.


> 2) What do the output files look like in this extension?

Just like regular themes with individual templates for the theme  
being created and comments added to explain what a certain function  
does.  But for advanced users that don't need the comments they can  
just select an option to turn those off.


> 3) What does the text inside the CSS and template files look like?   
> What are the comments, formatting structure, etc look like?

Same answer as number 2.  CSS 2.0 output would be the same as the  
style.css but with shorthand and compressed.  And for your second  
question.  The same as a regular theme but maximized to be small and  
efficient outputting pure XHTML 1.0 strict code.

> 4) Let's pick a base design from Dreamweaver and show what it is  
> going to look like as a Drupal theme.  We need a starting point,  
> with hand coded changes to show the input and the output.

Well you can look at the source of my page http://www.apokotos.com  
and this was done in Dreamweaver.  But I am sure it could be  
optimized more and that would be the work of the extension.  Most of  
these questions I cannot  fully answer since  the developer of the  
extension would take our requests and develop the extension around  
those suggestions or I should say theme engine standards along with  
Web Compliant Standards.

>
> Cheers,
> Kieran
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