I would like to collaborate with other Drupal theme designers. I am writing a specifications document for a Drupal 5.x theme. What types of design items do you include in your theme design projects? I am starting with this:
A. Custom Graphical User Interface Design
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Website layout - Custom Drupal theme including graphical header and footer and navigation menus that appear on every page. Blocks for Staying Connected, Sign up for Updates, and Register and Sponsors will also be themed. Global styling for H1, H2 tags, main content text is also included.
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Navigation menus – horizontal menu near the top of the page will be the Primary Links and will include graphical rollover buttons.
Footer menu – for Privacy Policy, Terms of Use and Sitemap will also be included.
- theming for any new design elements will be available at an additional charge. For example, many blogs have different styling for the comments. Or a View will need theming for a certain section of the website.
What would you add?
Comments
I think you may add some
I think you may add some requirements about cross-browser compatibilities. For example, the layout should be rendered the same from different browsers, such as IE (6 & 7), FireFox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, ... They also should be looked the same from PCs and Macs.
Cheers,
Steve
A Drupal Developer
Thank you Steve, that's a
Thank you Steve, that's a great idea. Do you build Drupal themes yourself?
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
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How about a mobile theme?
How about a mobile theme?
Hi Francis, do you mean for
Hi Francis, do you mean for mobile phones and other mobile apps? That's a good question. Are there any out there?
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
SeascapeWebDesign.com
Seascape Web Interactive
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Yes, that's what I meant.
Yes, that's what I meant. I assume that this is something you would want to discuss with your client and would potentially be a part of your "specifications" document.
I am sure that there are some decent pre-existing solutions (themes and services). I leave it to you to investigate.
Drupal Version
Hey, just wondering... is this a retheme or a from scratch build? If so, wondering why D5...
My client requested a theme
My client requested a theme for a Drupal 5.x site. But the requirements/specs would apply to Drupal 5 and 6 and hopefully Drupal 7. I guess what I'm looking for is a checklist of styling items. I see that most Wordpress themes include styling for comments, forms, H1, H2, bullet points. I'm wondering what types of styling elements do other theme designers include in their themes?
To answer your question, it's custom design from scratch.
When I was at the Open Web session on Thursday evening with Angie Byron, we were talking about the lack of good looking themes for Drupal. So Angie was encouraging designers to create and submit themes to Drupal.org.
So I was asking for a checklist or guidelines. How do you know when your theme is complete? Some themes on Drupal.org say RC1, alpha,beta, dev. What do these versions mean if anything?
So some sort of checklist or guidelines are needed for Drupal themes. What do you think?
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
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I have also posted a similar
I have also posted a similar discussion in the Drupal 4 Design group here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/23695
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
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Seascape Web Interactive
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Themes from scratch and D5 vs D6
Ah, I see - I was just curious because I think as developers/themers/etc we have to sometimes act as consultants for clients who don't know better, and if for example your client is about to take on a contract for a new site build in D5, it's important to explain to them why it's not a great idea, and the build should happen in D6 instead (ie. because within 6-8 months give or take a few, D5 will no longer be a supported release, and they will just have to upgrade to D6, and theme system has changed so this will mean a lot of wasted resources (read $$$ for them). So since D6 is totally usable at this point there is no reason not to start a fresh build using it.
That said - as for finding the elements for a base theme, maybe it'd be worthwhile going through a pared down theme like http://drupal.org/project/basic and looking at the CSS - it'll give you a good idea of all most basic elements and overrides you might want. That said, personally I'd rather start with a base theme such as basic or zen anyway, because they have a bunch of stuff in them that Drupal needs that you would likely not want to recreate from scratch (maybe someone more themer-y can explain this better). Then you could add design elements on top of that...
As far as versions - alpha/beta/dev are all in various states of development, ie. usually not "production ready" so will have bugs in them. RC1 is release candidate 1 is sort of similar, I think it's used when projects in development have (supposedly) stable versions, but aren't feature complete. (Someone will I'm sure correct me if I've got these mixed up.) Moral of the story, you usually want to stick with full release versions (ie. highlighted in green with a checkmark on the theme/project page on d.o) for production sites unless you are a pretty experienced dev who can handle more bugs and patching, etc.
Thanks, Ariane. Yes, I
Thanks, Ariane. Yes, I explained about Drupal 5 not being supported after Drupal 7 comes out. But he has a Drupal 5 site and is going to make a copy and build the site himself. So he's more familiar with Drupal 5. Drupal 5 sites will still work after the support ends and if they're simple brochures sites, security updates are not a big concern to some.
Thanks for the tip on the basic theme. I will look into it.
Katy Laan, Senior Web Developer
SeascapeWebDesign.com
Seascape Web Interactive
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sp0xx
I have a minimal theme that I use for my drupal development and themeing. It's called sp0xx and you can grab it here,
http://code.google.com/p/sp0xx
Please be advised that this is not a 'Zen' style dev theme. 'Zen' would be more appropriately be named 'Kitchen Sink' imho.
The stylesheet is pretty well developed with a lot of basic styles for UI elements. There are two sections of style.css that you'll be interested in the first is the 'Common' section that establishes a basic set of styles for the whole site. The second is the 'User Interface' section toward the bottom of the file. I assume that people are using either FCKeditor or TinyMCE.
The big thing to watch in your themes is that a) your lists are all reset to start with because the drupal system.css can really mangle them and b) you create some nice form styles for the back-end. I find that almost every drupal theme zero's out form elements so there's no padding on input boxes and things feel quite cramped. Give users room to breathe!
I won't be updating my drupal 5 sp0xx theme because I've started using drupal 6 exclusively. I will hopefully be releasing the new version, sp0xx6 on drupal.org in the next few months.
Cheers,
Jim
I guess it's totally up to
I guess it's totally up to ones opinion as to when a theme can be considered "done". I think having a look at some of Top Notch Themes' work would be a good start. Marina and Slate are two free themes worth picking apart. They give attention to admin screens. They make good use of theme settings. There are plenty of block regions, not just the typical header, sidebar, footer. The regions collapse nicely if not populated. Not only is the layout styled but also the typographic elements (headings, lists, etc.). Some people (ahem, template monster) do the bare minimum to get their themes working in Drupal and don't give attention to details. It's good that you are putting thought towards these things.
BTW, IMHO, get that guy to upgrade to Drupal 6. I don't see any good reason not to.