Help with Creating New Theme

Hi everyone,

Just proposing that we do something "productive" if it's of interest to anyone during our next Drupal social (May 26).

We have been using a combination of Layout Gala & Tripoli at northStudio. This has worked out very well for us and I have been very tempted to release the theme on Drupal.org. However, I have decided to hold off because I think that if we put our heads together we could create something that could dramatically change what most people think is possible with a theme.

Current northStudio Theme Features

• Easy to create as many as 40 layouts with the same HTML structure.
• Fairly easy to change layouts on a per node/section basis, eliminating the need for Panels in most instances.
• Tripoli is used as a really good baseline type stylesheets, that is very consistent with all browsers.
• Good series of classes.
• Function that automatically updates the copyright date.

New Feature Wishlist

• More classes: as many as we have, we would like more. I can outline them at the social.
• Ability to create the basic site "wireframe" in the theme configuration page. What I picture here is the ability for the user to specify the kind of layout they want and to then be able to enter the basic measurements of their site.
• Ability to create new wireframe variations (like above) and to specify on which pages they apply, by path (like blocks). This would be great for pages, like the home page, were you often need a different layout.
• Ability to add conditional ie stylesheets in $styles variable from the template.php (kinda like the drupal_add_css function)
• Anything else that people have been desperately wanting in a theme.

Hopefully this is something that is something that is of interest to everyone. As a themer who only know enough php for tpl purposes, any help would be appreciated.

In case you are wondering, we have permission to use Layout Gala from the author. As for Tripoli, I need to contact the creator but if it falls through it would be easy enough to create my own.

See you at the social!