Theme development

This is a special interest group dedicated to improving and expanding the Drupal theme system including theme functions and templates, CSS, markup, and how contrib modules add in their functions, CSS, and markup.

for example, we'll take stock of the location and number of CSS files and discuss if the architecture can be improved through emerging frameworks like Object Oriented CSS.

We will consider the questions "What do themers need from Core in terms of CSS? Module developers? SEO specialists?" and "What's new in CSS? What does Drupal support? What's the roadmap for CSS support?"

Adobe MAX 2009 conference in Los Angeles, California

Posted by Chris Charlton on August 26, 2009 at 4:13pm

Adobe's annual MAX conference is taking place this October 4-7th in Los Angeles, CA. I will be presenting three Drupal related sessions at this conference for Adobe. Most of my sessions show people how to customize Drupal 6 through themes, modules, and its administration. My sessions are 1-1.5hrs, with one session being a lab (BYOL: Bring Your Own Laptop Lab).

Adobe MAX is a paid conference, and has something like over 200 sessions. Early bird discount still available (as of this writing).

http://max.adobe.com

My sessions are:

Customizing Drupal Using Dreamweaver - skill: Beginner - Learn how to install Drupal, a robust, full-featured web content management system, and publish your first pages. You'll be guided through common designer workflows using Drupal and learn how to customize Drupal theme templates. When this lab is complete, you'll be able to take your new skills back to work and be more productive.
Exploring Web Content Management Systems from a Designer's Perspective - skill: Beginner - Watch an expert guide you through a selection of today's popular web content management systems and learn which one is right for you. This session will include detailed demonstrations of WordPress, Drupal, and the Adobe InContext Editing service in action, covering installation and publishing.
Learn to Rock Drupal Using Dreamweaver - skill: Beginner - Explore the functionality of Drupal from a designer's perspective while learning about the most common workflows. Learn how to integrate Drupal with Dreamweaver and how to use Creative Suite 4 Web Premium to customize Drupal theme templates.

I have presented at MAX before, and attended twice. This conference is huge. Last year 5,000 attendees ran around chatting Flash, Flex, AIR, Photoshop, After Effects, everything Adobe. One of the new things Adobe has done at MAX is run un-conferences inside the main conference building. Last year there were four un-conferences going on all week inside MAX, adding to the already hundreds of sessions. This year I am involved with the Web CMS theme of the conference, promoting Drupal & PHP. Some of you know my Drupal Dreamweaver extensions and Theme Starter desktop software, so I am glad to be exclusively covering Drupal in my talks this year. One session covers the different approaches in Web CMS software like Wordpress & Drupal. For that session I will be sharing the stage for that session with a Wordpress counterpart. I hope that session turns into a feature flinging match as it'll help me get caught up with Wordpress limitations.

I'd like to promote the MAX conference to the Drupal community, and at the same time ask who is already planning to attend. We can meet up and rep Drupal together.

Mac OS X Native or Ubuntu virtual Machine

Posted by alanburke on August 8, 2009 at 2:56pm

Hi all,

While my main development machine at work is a Desktop running Ubuntu,
I also have a macbook at home.

Up to now, I've been doing development at home using VirtualBox with a Ubuntu guest OS.
It works pretty well, but at times a little cumbersome - having to boot up twice, the Ubuntu OS isn't as smooth as Mac OSX etc.
But it means my environment is pretty much exactly the same, and almost exactly the same as the VPS I use for a few sites.

I'm just curious what others are up to, and especially how they test in multiple browsers.

Regards
Alan

Design Profiles

Posted by jeff1970 on July 15, 2009 at 12:23am

Over at AdaptiveThemes we've been hammering out how to give our designers better tools for designing for Drupal. At first we thought about a set of briefs, then that grew into packages (brief + stock images, logo etc) and then I struck on the idea of Design Profiles.

A Design Profile is a package including a sample site (say a blog, business site, Ubercart site etc), PSD templates, a detailed brief and stock images (sample logo, photos etc).

Free Website Style Guide Photoshop Template

Posted by jojototh on July 7, 2009 at 9:11pm

If you are a website designer, you probably know that having a clear and well prepared style guide can save an enormous amount of time for developer and save the designer from having to explain the design details over and over. That’s why I have created a blank website style guide template. I hope it will enable designers to speed up their design process and bring more beautiful designs to our community.

Drupalcon Paris education session

Posted by techczech on June 30, 2009 at 1:45pm

I just submitted a session proposal for 'Drupal for Education' session for Drupalcon Paris: http://paris2009.drupalcon.org/session/drupal-education. Any suggestions on what should be included are welcome.

At the moment Robert Castelo and I will be putting it together. Anybody interested in collaborating please get in touch.

AdaptiveThemes reaching out to the designer crowd

Posted by jeff1970 on June 30, 2009 at 1:31pm

This week I re-launched AdaptiveThemes as the first site to crowd source commercial Drupal themes. Sounds like a radical idea and it probably is. I seen crowdsourcing work for a number of other high profile design projects and I believe these crowd sourced themes can be a huge win for Drupal users and the Drupal designer and themer communities.

The concept is strait forward:

Designers upload designs
Themers convert the designs into beautiful Drupal themes
We sell them and split the profits 50/50, designer gets half, themer gets half

Need checklist for Drupal theming. What makes a complete theme?

Posted by katy5289 on June 27, 2009 at 7:39pm

I attended Open Web Vancouver session on Thursday, June 11, 2009 with Angie Byron. We were talking about the lack of good looking themes for Drupal. So Angie encouraged designers to create and submit themes to Drupal.org.

I asked about a checklist or guidelines to developing custom themes for Drupal. 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?

Be Awesome. Be a Black Tonic Beta Tester.

Posted by wolv3rin3 on June 24, 2009 at 12:19am

We've been working on a new app and just opened up the process to beta testers. It's a real-time web presentation tool - allows a presenter to control display of images via URL. Really simple. Really effective.

And it's built with drupal.

New Adobe.com article: Building Drupal Zen sub-themes with Dreamweaver CS4

Posted by Chris Charlton on June 23, 2009 at 2:11pm

The third article in my Drupal series for Adobe.com is out now. This article covers Drupal Zen Sub-Themes, including Dreamweaver tip(s) when working with Drupal themes.

"When asked why I would recommend the Zen theme versus a core theme such as Garland, I answer, Zen was built to be a seed for your tree—you plant the seed, water it, and watch it grow! Garland looks nice, but is not documented well and has custom page template code that should not appear elsewhere. In short, Garland is just not right as the basis for a theme; the Zen theme is."

Read the article now at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/drupal_zen_subthemes.html

Adobe.com Drupal article: Using Drupal themes with Dreamweaver CS4

Posted by Chris Charlton on June 10, 2009 at 9:13pm

The second article in my Drupal series for Adobe.com is out now. This article covers Drupal Themes, Dreamweaver tip(s) when working with Drupal, and shows off the Drupal Theme Starter desktop software.

"Understand the fundamentals of a Drupal theme and how Dreamweaver CS4 helps designers produce these themes."

Read the article now at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/drupal_themes_with_dwcs...

<a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/drupal_themes_with_dwcs4.html

When theming, do you use the "slices" feature of Photoshop/Fireworks?

Posted by stephthegeek on June 8, 2009 at 7:10pm

I use Photoshop, and use the slice tool

28% (13 votes)

I use Photoshop, and do NOT use the slice tool

30% (14 votes)

I use Fireworks, and use the slice tool

19% (9 votes)

I use Fireworks, and do NOT use the slice tool

6% (3 votes)

I use another graphics program and use a similar slice tool

2% (1 vote)

I use another graphics program and do NOT use a slice tool

15% (7 votes)

Total votes: 47

Themes + Panels 3

Posted by stephthegeek on June 4, 2009 at 9:08pm

As you might have noticed, there's a new 2.x-dev branch out of Acquia Marina that includes layouts and styles for Panels 3 among other things: http://drupal.org/node/472094

We'd particularly love to hear from anyone who has tried out this new feature.

For those in the Bay Area who are interested in this topic, we'll be discussing Panels 3 theming at BADCamp this Saturday afternoon: http://badcamp.net/session/theming-panels-3

Stress-testing my module's CSS layout

Posted by cburschka on June 4, 2009 at 6:19pm

This isn't strictly speaking about a theme, but it is about CSS code in my module that may be broken by conflicting layout in custom themes.

In DHTML Menu, I am developing a new feature that will make bullet icons clickable by positioning an invisible anchor element over the list icon. It's important to get the position exactly right no matter how the list is styled by the theme, so I'll need some help testing the CSS with different themes (or some advice from a CSS expert on potential problems).

LA Drupal videos galore (DrupalCampLA + Meetings)

Posted by Chris Charlton on May 27, 2009 at 8:54pm

For over a year LA Drupal has been recording our meetings and many of our events. View the videos online... http://ladrupal.blip.tv

Subscribe to our video podcast... http://ladrupal.blip.tv/rss (available directly on iTunes too)

We provide these videos for free for people to learn Drupal of course. Over the next handful of weeks you will see us release videos from our meetings and DrupalCampLA '08. Learn the basics of Drupal, theme design, module development, advanced views, Services module (Flash + Drupal), and many, many more topics all relating to Drupal.

Theme Image Optimization and Module Image Optimization

Posted by mgparisi on May 22, 2009 at 8:51pm

I have a current upgrade to Advanced Forums that has optimized images in it, the ticket is http://drupal.org/node/436084 However I post this here because there seems to be very little resources for people who need and/or optimize images for Drupal Themes and Modules. Last I knew Panels 3 needed some icons for various functions, and the developer (like me) is not a person to develop images.

Maybe Im missing a resource, or maybe this group should deal with such topics!

UX issue queue sprint June 27/28 in Utrecht

Posted by eigentor on May 17, 2009 at 12:43pm

Start:

2009-06-27 (All day) - 2009-06-28 (All day) UTC

Organizers:

eigentor

Sutharsan

skilip

yoroy

Bojhan

Event type:

Drupalcamp or Regional Summit

The sprint will be held at One Shoe http://www.oneshoe.nl/ in downtown utrecht which is one of the largest Drupal developing companies in holland. We have space for 20+ people in their nice and spacious office. Utrecht has lots of opportunities to go out in the evening, and with the Drupal Jam on Friday, this is bound to rock for all attendants.

Starting time will be at 10:00 in the morning on both days.

All people that care for UX are welcome. We can use: Graphic Designers, Coders, Copy Writers, Themers and CSS Ninjas

Confirmed Participants so far:

Drupal Theme Analyzes

Posted by muasif80 on May 13, 2009 at 9:30am

I take pride to post my first discussion. I am new to drupal.

My concern as mentioned by the title of this discussion is such that if there exists any forum where you can get feedback for your theme work, regarding its quality and best practices followed etc.

If there is none then can we group together to make such a forum etc.

Please give feedback about this idea. I am very anxious to hear from others. Thanks.

Regards,
Asif

Do you think it would be helpful to invite the g.d.o community to provide input during the development phase of public themes?

Posted by derekwebb1 on April 29, 2009 at 12:13pm

Yes: More POV is good for development

44% (4 votes)

No: Let em wait to see the results

11% (1 vote)

You must be crazy

44% (4 votes)

Not sure

0% (0 votes)

Total votes: 9

Make Acquia Marina recolorable

Posted by Bevan on April 24, 2009 at 10:32pm

I'm interested in making Acquia Marina theme recolorable. Please follow the link and discuss there. I'd like to collect resources to collaborate on this.

Design and Usability: A Drupal Learning Track

Posted by Anonymous on April 15, 2009 at 5:38pm
Last updated by gusaus on Sat, 2010-10-09 18:48

[This is a wiki - please don't hesitate to update, revise, and contribute your ideas!]

Overview: focus on the site builders, themers and those interested in delivering a killer user experience both for Drupal itself and for their own sites.

Goals

Attract more designers to Drupal
Improve Drupal’s visual design

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