Zikula Community

• TakeIT2
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: May 31, 2010
  • Posts: 303

  Posted: May 08, 2010 - 05:21 AM

  Granting that themes and theme templates should all be XHTML, CSS, and Accessibility complaint, and that it is true you can do anything your heart desires with your theme and templates, none the less...
  
  What are the best features in in current themes?
  
  What should or could be standard in all themes ?
  
  As it occurs to you what is missing in current Zikula themes?
  
  Paul

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• TakeIT2
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: May 31, 2010
  • Posts: 303

  Posted: Jun 17, 2010 - 06:16 AM

  and one last question...
  
  What are the annoyances you find from current themes, what does not work.

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• Wendell
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: May 10, 2010
  • Last visit: May 18, 2010
  • Posts: 165

  Posted: Jun 17, 2010 - 06:48 AM

  I honestly haven't looked at theme releases for a long time. I just build/convert my own. But one thing that I've always noticed about Zikula-specific themes is that nobody ever seems to set them up to use menu blocks for navigation. To me, the whole point is to make it so the end user can use the Zikula admin interface to make changes to the site -- but if the nav menu is hardcoded into the theme, that's not very user-friendly for clients and/or non-geeks.
  
  Another issue seems to be with undocumented "tricks". For example, how many people are aware of pnmodurl? This is a very cool tag that allows you to construct a link that will change dynamically according to a module's settings. For example, if you change the URL name of the News module to "blog", you can use the pnmodurl tag to link to News, but it will be rendered in the page to use "blog" instead. There are other tricks that are really cool, too. This is just an example.
  
  Themes in Zikula are far more powerful than I think most people realize.
  
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• jaenosjelantru
  
  

  • Rank: Moderator
  • Registered: Mar 15, 2005
  • Last visit: May 30, 2010
  • Posts: 1077

  Posted: Jun 17, 2010 - 07:08 AM

  Our current themes are pretty lousy. I have suggested time and time again that we need to release different core themes. Ones that look better, feel better and are faster. Eventually, we will.
  
  We should ALWAYS include some sort of lite theme that has no images and very simple layout and text.
  
  We should have about 2-3 other good themes that are really nice. We have so many to choose from and yet we still have SeaBreeze, voodoodolly and Andreas08.

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• jaenosjelantru
  
  

  • Rank: Moderator
  • Registered: Mar 15, 2005
  • Last visit: May 30, 2010
  • Posts: 1077

  Posted: Jun 17, 2010 - 07:17 AM

  Don't listen to that wendell dude. He's a noob with only 15 posts!

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• Wendell
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: May 10, 2010
  • Last visit: May 18, 2010
  • Posts: 165

  Posted: Jun 17, 2010 - 07:36 AM

  VooDooDolly is already gone.
  
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• HalbrookTech
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: Jun 01, 2010
  • Posts: 6859

  Posted: Jun 17, 2010 - 09:00 AM

  Wendell

  I honestly haven't looked at theme releases for a long time. I just build/convert my own. But one thing that I've always noticed about Zikula-specific themes is that nobody ever seems to set them up to use menu blocks for navigation. To me, the whole point is to make it so the end user can use the Zikula admin interface to make changes to the site -- but if the nav menu is hardcoded into the theme, that's not very user-friendly for clients and/or non-geeks.

  
  Most of my themes, including the 960theme I actually released, have a navbar block area. I'm thinking about making a default menu in those areas if the block area is not defined, and if it is, show the block. The biggest problem is that there are issues with custom block areas in the system. Frustrating, and we need to figure out a better way to handle it.
  
  That's why I never release any themes, there's only so much originality you can do with the default block areas, tho I may start working on some to release, I'm thinking template logic should be able to handle the missing areas by "if block area exists display block, else if admin, show link to create block area, else don't show it"
  
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• TakeIT2
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: May 31, 2010
  • Posts: 303

  Posted: Jul 03, 2010 - 12:30 AM

  Hard coded features in a theme is not very good, in fact it is a drawback forcing the edit of the template - block positions and custom blocks would be features. Currently many themes still have hard coded menus.
  
  I am trying to get to the point of adding menutree styles based on the theme menus as designed in the original templates. add a variable to turn it on or off, kinda like in the blank themes. But I have to make basic styles function in this first pass, so many of the themes needed a little something for that. I am hoping to have about 110 of 114 of the MWZanthiaThemes functioning and functionally improved + some new ones. (the count is about 95 in the Cozi)
  ...for the record some of these themes are not my style at all, and I wold never like to see a few again.
  
  But feature wise I would start with menutree menus, but I also need the next version of menutree (for 1.3) so they are current.( I heard tales of new menu types coming) :)
  
  My first template converted to a theme has a menutree drop style built in, it is in the extdb - overall the theme still needs work. The template uses a sidebar style menu that adapted well to the extended menu. I had to just adapt the template slightly to add the drop menu location..
  
  I am porting a WP theme, here is a preview of the menutree menu for it.
  
  
  these are from 1.2.3 - but the theme is already converted to 1.3 - there is still a lot to do
  
  and for yucks the forum page...
  
  
  the full sized screenshots can be seen here:
  http://takeit2.com/d…ts/blocks-admin.png
  http://takeit2.com/d…shots/news-home.png
  http://takeit2.com/d…preview_contact.png
  http://takeit2.com/d…ots/wikula-edit.png
  http://takeit2.com/d…enutree-adapted.png
  http://takeit2.com/d…eenshots/forums.png
  
  Aside from menu styles & custom blocks, layouts are a dandy feature. As well, adapting module styles to the theme really is a primary task. I am still wondering though ....
  
  
  
  Edited by TakeIT2 on Jul 03, 2010 - 06:39 AM.

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• TakeIT2
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Dec 31, 1969
  • Last visit: May 31, 2010
  • Posts: 303

  Posted: Jul 03, 2010 - 01:04 AM

  just a quick note about the forum screenshot - you might note I am having some trouble with the corners in IE - the standard forums style is just mildly adapted and it is using the same corners as here. The standard round corner technique shows fine in IE regularly, but my forum for IE needs work.
  
  All the other rounded corners in the other shots are only visible in mozilla, chrome, webkit and I think opera. They use a different method.
  
  I can easily say I have barely scraped the surface on technique.

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