Posted by Amazon on October 3, 2008 at 12:06am
We now have the first iteration of the Information Architecture for the redesign. Let's get a list of potential base themes for the new Drupal.org.
Custom, a Drupal 7 core base theme, something else?
We will follow this up with a poll to gage interest.
Kieran
Comments
I'm a few months out of date
I'm a few months out of date in terms of keeping up on base themes, but Hunchbaque was always my favourite until we did our own. Looks like that hasn't had much momentum lately though.
I've heard good things about Framework and Blueprint too.
As much as I do love Zen, I think it's too big/too much framework for d.o.
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zen FTW
Assuming Mark Boulton Design will also be developing the look and feel of the new drupal.org site, at this point it's impossible to say which theme will be most suitable. It's unlikely that an existing 'styled' theme would be a suitable candidate.
Again, assuming that the site is to be redesigned, the best candidate is zen. The advantages of the zen theme is that it's flexible, configurable, design neutral, standards compliant and possibly the theme that is familiar to most developers/themers.
Aye
Zen++
I don't think you can really say it's "too heavy" or whatever - you just take out what you don't need. Granted the CSS is "plentiful", but I'd expect most of that to be scrapped anyway.
The goodness in Zen really lies in the template.php file, not the css. Node/page templates are really not relevant to the choice, AFAICT.
Web Development in Nottingham, UK by Kineta Systems
Web Development in Nottingham, UK by Kineta Systems / Follow me on Twitter! @NikLP
Look at the css source of
Look at the css source of the prototypes:
<link media="print" type="text/css" href="../blueprint/print.css" rel="stylesheet">Blueprint is the grid based css framework Mark is using. There is a Drupal theme that implements it: http://drupal.org/project/blueprint
I have no experience with it yet, but it should be investigated as the first option if we want to do justice to what Mark is building.
Otherwise, zen++ from me too.
These are just wireframes
Mark's use of Blueprint should not be taken in any way as an edorsement or recommendation on a CSS framework for the final D.o look and feel. The prototype wireframes are being done in CSS for efficiency. And for that purpose, Blueprint makes perfect sense.
The design direction will be delivered as Photoshop. It will be up to the community which framework is most appropriate.
My personal opinion is that Zen would be the best option here. Palantir specializes in translating sophisticated designer created Photoshop designs into Drupal themes and, independent of John's role here, we have found Zen to be the most flexible option available for creating a solid, robust subtheme.
I disagree completely with the assertion that it is in any way too heavy. The latest D6 version has been incredibly optimized and streamlined at just 251 lines in template.php -- see http://drupal.org/node/306856.
Ah cool. Zen is my vote too
Ah cool. Zen is my vote too then. It's very well maintained and probably has the largest user-base.
I may be a little biased here...
... as we work with Zen every day, and JohnAlbin is on our team, but I think that having each of the new *.d.o subsites be its own Zen subtheme makes sense. One approach we've been using that could work in this case is to have a couple of layers of subthemes that inherit off their parent, offering increasing levels of site-specific customization.
For example, you could have something like the following:
Zen > subtheme that includes common theme elements across all *.drupal.org sites > subtheme specific to each site
This puts in place a set of common standards that are applied across all of the *.drupal.org sites and makes future branding or UI changes across multiple sites much easier to accomplish.
Zen++
Having just setup a very deep set of theme inheritance rules for a client using Zen, I can attest to its flexibility as a framework base. Although that sort of inheritance (and what gdemet is describing as well) only really comes into its own in a multi-site configuration, it is still very powerful in separate installs as well. The sort of "layered customization" it is optimized for is right in line with the "extend, don't hack" motto of Drupal itself, and we've had great experience with it once we learned how to leverage it properly.
The trick with Zen is not to "scrap" its "plentiful" CSS (2/3 of which is actually comments and stubs to make life easier for you), but to take a step back and realize that it's fixing 2/3 of the things you would have to waste time fixing anyway. Just like Drupal core, once you accept working "with the grain" you find things become easier than they possibly could have been had you tried to do everything yourself.
The template changes for D6 core were also heavily based on Zen to start with, so it's a direction that Drupal is moving already. Let's continue with that momentum.
Thanks for putting it this
Thanks for putting it this way -- I'm feeling more Zen-inclined after reading the rest of the thread, particularly this comment.
I'm just concerned about putting d.o "officially" into the hands of something large like this. But I suppose Zen has enough popularity and momentum that it will always have strong support and continued development.
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I can't think of a better
I can't think of a better candidate than Zen. It's framework is solid, reliable and flexible and not to mention bare. Zen is filled with every tool you need to make a site's design consistent across browser and platforms. Its starts you off on a bare canvas and a level playing ground. It takes care of the details that we often forget as developers - printing, resets, IE sundries, and the layout method that JohnAlbin has constructed here really makes any design a piece of cake to build. I've learned how to be a smarter developer, and become more knowledgeable about what CSS can actually do by using Zen.
-cc
!Zen
I personally feel that Zen is not the right choice. Zen is good for what it was built for - CSS-only themes, and simpler themes.
Personally, I feel that we should go the route that I go on most of my projects - custom.
Dmitri
I'd imagine custom would be the end result?
I guess I'm a little surprised that we would be basing it on an existing theme at all. It seems to me that this is our one chance for the next couple of years to really rethink it from the ground up, and with all the IA and UI work being done, I reckon that a sleek, custom new solution will be needed, but once we get a little further along with wireframes we'll have a little better idea.
-=- christopher
my two cent on this: I'm in
my two cent on this: I'm in favor of a really great THEME: Sky Theme from Gravitek Labs.
It's really the most update THEME for Drupal and contains all what a modern WEB2 site needs.
Cheers
Wolfflow
I always use
I always use http://drupal.org/project/basic for my sites, which is based on Zen.
I love building custom themes, but...
I love to begin each site with a blank, custom theme, but I always, always, without fail, find myself copy/pasting sections of Zen rather than write the func I wanted from scratch.
Let's just use it and love on it even more. I can pretty much guarantee this team that if we pick Zen, we'll be able to write at least two patches for it by the time the new site is done.
Custom is cool, and makes for a very sleek codebase, but when faced with the question, "If you had an hour to accomplish a custom coding chore that's 80% handled by an existing contrib module, would you use the module or write it yourself?" You see where I'm going with this. There's PHP framework already in place to handle lots of a site's heavy lifting, but every time we go to theme something, we begin with a blank slate? Why? How does that help us to improve our framework for next year?
The only thing that we simply must have is a Theme Settings API tie-in. Any existing theme that utilizes this will suffice as a base theme.
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Are we at all concerned about IE 8?
Since IE 8 is now in beta, and supports CSS Tables, should we be thinking about making a fully custom theme that serves up a CSS Table page layout, with conditional layout sheets for IE < 8?
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Generally I tend to use ZEN
Generally I tend to use ZEN - Since the last iteration is finished now we can think of definite reasons to or not to use ZEN (or another framework).
Example question:
Anyone sees any problems using ZEN to realize the colums like here for example? http://drupal.markboultondesign.com/iteration11/dashboard.html
Blueprint?
On my way back from Drupal Camp Germany, I decided to play with blueprint.
I grabbed a copy of the CSS from Marks last iteration(already on my laptop), and applied it to the existing blueprint theme(also on my laptop). Then I copied the html from the hopeage. In a matter of minutes, @ 39,000 ft over the atlantic, I was able to nearly duplicate the home page.
I think we should take a serious look @ blueprint, If we use zen, we will need to create a custom grid layout for zen. If we stick with blueprint, we have working css.
Try it out for your self, I'd like to know if that 5-10 minute exercise changes your thoughts.
Blueprint looks very
Blueprint looks very interesting because of all the Grid work. But does seem a little bloated.
I investigated the blueprint
I investigated the blueprint Drupal theme a bit already. I think it may be a good place to start, but we should fork it and make our own custom theme. This appears to be how it is intended to be used because there is no heavy layering like Zen and there are some features that can be enabled/controlled by directly editing template.php.
Zen of course is suggested a lot. I'll leave custom vs. Zen up to the people who lead developing the new theme.
In the end, this is the decision of whoever takes the lead on building and maintaining the theme long-term.
Yeah, we also talked about
Yeah, we also talked about using the Blueprint theme in Cologne, but forking it instead of using it as a base theme, and then creating a base *.d.o theme, that sub-themable for g.d.o, etc.
The reason for forking the Blueprint module was that we figured that having three layers of theme was a bit too much abstraction, plus the fact that we would probably have to override almost everything.
Of course, there we're different opinions as well. Morten.dk's going to post a summary of why we should not use a CSS framework one of these days, and I think Konstantin weren't too happy about Blueprint either…
Just in case someone missed
Just in case someone missed it: Dries about the redesign code sprints