Drupal 5.0 Theme - v2

On Sep 27, 2006, at 7:45 PM, Steven Peck wrote:

> The big blue bar on top does nothing for the theme
except push down  
> the title bar and drown the rest of the site.  No
matter how I try  
> I can't look away.  As I try and look down the page, my
eye is  
> constantly drawn to the big huge empty dominating color
bar on top.

<design-by-committee>

i totally agree w/ steven.  on a full-height window on my
15"  
powerbook, nearly the top 1/4 of the screen is taken up by  
navigational cruft that could easily fit into 1/8th of the
screen  
instead (if not less).  there's *tons* of wasted screen real estate  
here.  you end up with an amazingly low % of the screen that
contains  
any content.  edward tufte[1] would (rightfully) go to town
on this  
theme (and many others in drupal-land) about how ineffective
it is at  
presenting any useful info to the user of the site.  we're
writing a  
content management system, after all, the content should be
the most  
important part...

others will probably scream that i should take my
minimalist, tufte- 
compliant theme ideas and a) go to hell and b) stay away
from the  
default core theme which has to "look slick".  i
disagree.  just  
because it looks slick doesn't mean you have to water down
the screen  
with pixels that add no information, or lots of empty
space...

if i had the first clue about writing a theme[2], and if i
wasn't so  
damn busy on other things, i'd write my own theme that a)
looks good  
and b) gives you access to your content, not tons of
navigational  
cruft and other things eating up the majority of the screen
and  
screaming for your undeserved attention.

</design-by-committee>

no offense to trae or farsheed -- much thanks for all the
work  
they've already put into this.  and, no offense to anyone
else who's  
really into the tons-of-pixels-that-convey-no-information
approach to  
themes.  i just wish more of the theme/design folks around
here would  
drink from the tufte kool-aid. ;)

-derek


[1] http://edwardtufte.com 
(no, i don't think his site is The Best 
(tm) possible site, and that's not what i mean by a
"tufte-compliant  
theme", though he sure packs a ton of useful info,
graphics and links  
onto each square cm of the page.  it's more about taking his
ideas  
about visuallly displaying data and applying those to a
drupal theme,  
not writing a theme to duplicate the look/feel of his site).

[2] i'm hoping to attend the lullabot theme workshop in SF
next week  
to work on this deficiency of mine.

Steven Peck wrote:
> The big blue bar on top does nothing for the theme
except push down the
> title bar and drown the rest of the site.  No matter
how I try I can't
> look away.  As I try and look down the page, my eye is
constantly drawn
> to the big huge empty dominating color bar on top

I agree.
Themes.net is definitely better, but i still don't like the
contrast.
The whole theme is too pale.
See these:
http://be
nofskypark.com/news/files/pic1.png
http://cvs.d
rupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/arc
materia/screenshot_large.png

I know, these are black, you cannot compare, but they are
soooooo
contrast. I like the contrast, it's modern, it's usable,
it's so
pleasant, "alive". Maybe add more contrast to the
<h1> logo and submit
buttons would be enough?

Jakub

I also think the arcmateria theme you're pointing looks
really neat (not 
too keen on the bubbles, though).

It would provide a great start for another zenified 5.0 core
theme.
After all, we do need more than one new theme, don't we ?

Merely suggesting - I won't be able to do it myself...

yched


Jakub Suchy a ecrit le 28/09/2006 09:58:
> Steven Peck wrote:
>   
>> The big blue bar on top does nothing for the theme
except push down the
>> title bar and drown the rest of the site.  No
matter how I try I can't
>> look away.  As I try and look down the page, my eye
is constantly drawn
>> to the big huge empty dominating color bar on top
>>     
>
> I agree.
> Themes.net is definitely better, but i still don't like
the contrast.
> The whole theme is too pale.
> See these:
> http://be
nofskypark.com/news/files/pic1.png
> http://cvs.d
rupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/themes/arc
materia/screenshot_large.png
>
> I know, these are black, you cannot compare, but they
are soooooo
> contrast. I like the contrast, it's modern, it's
usable, it's so
> pleasant, "alive". Maybe add more contrast to
the <h1> logo and submit
> buttons would be enough?
>
> Jakub
>
>
>   

"Jakub Suchy" wrote:

> See these:
> http://be
nofskypark.com/news/files/pic1.png
> http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*che
ckout*/drupal/contributions/themes/arcmateri
> a/screenshot_large.png

Blech!  These are just awful, IMO.


I do agree with the observation that the current theme under
discussion [the
blue zen thingy...can't we stop calling things 'Zen',
already?] wastes too
much space.  The big blue bar, as pointed out by others, is
just too big and
serves no purpose that I can determine -- it's not
graphically interesting,
nothing appears there except the search bar, and it looks
like some kind of
cheesy graphic downloaded from a viral 'web banners' site.

It's better, I think, to just leave a CSS-colored bar at
top, if that is an
insistence of the template's designers.

--
inkfree

On Thursday 28 September 2006 03:54, Derek Wright wrote:
> i totally agree w/ steven.  on a full-height window on
my 15"  
> powerbook, nearly the top 1/4 of the screen is taken up
by  
> navigational cruft that could easily fit into 1/8th of
the screen  
> instead (if not less).  there's *tons* of wasted
screen real estate  
> here.

First, thanks *very* much to those who are putting so much
work into theme
design. I'm a decent coder, but I stink at graphic arts, so
your efforts are
deeply appreciated here!

Constructively speaking, I agree with Derek that there needs
to be less white
space and other non-essentials at the top of the page. This
is especially true
since laptops and monitors seem to be headed toward a
wide-screen format to
support multimedia. Even traditional screens are wider than
they are tall, so
vertical space is at a premium.

I like both Farsheed's and Trae's work but do think that
leaner-is-better for
most design decisions in a *default* theme. For non-default
themes, other
considerations may override this.

Syscrusher

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------
Syscrusher (Scott Courtney)          Drupal page:   http://drupal.org/user/91
84
syscrusher at 4th dot com            Home page:     http://4th.com/   

On Thursday 28 September 2006 11:15, Syscrusher wrote:
> Constructively speaking, I agree with Derek that there
needs to be less white
> space and other non-essentials at the top of the page.

With regard to Trae's later comment that "we live in a
1024 pixel world", I
totally agree with that statement. However, my screen is
1400x1050, and I viewed
the demo site with a browser at essentially full screen
height, and my comment
still stands. Too much white space at the top. 

Syscrusher

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------
Syscrusher (Scott Courtney)          Drupal page:   http://drupal.org/user/91
84
syscrusher at 4th dot com            Home page:     http://4th.com/   

"Syscrusher" wrote:

> With regard to Trae's later comment that "we live
in a 1024 pixel world", I
> totally agree with that statement.

We do not live in such a world.  We live in a world where
information is
conveyed through a number of human senses.  Vision -- and
the viewing portal
through which that vision is transacted -- is only one of
these senses.
There are no dimensional constraints even on that portion of
"our world"
where information is conveyed visually.

Perhaps a more supportable statement would be:

    "We live in a world where, when information is
conveyed visually through
a desktop web browser, the majority of those viewing are
doing so through a
portal of approximately X by Y pixels."


Remember that the "world" we "live" in
(information-wise) is a very diverse
world -- much like the real one.  I view many web sites
through a very tiny
viewing portal, held in the palm of my hand.

All the fuss over "dimensions" using the
non-standard "pixel" is wasted.
Templates should provide -- in every case -- a minimum of
dimensional
concern.  The template should allow information to flow into
the space --
whatever that space's dimensions -- provided by the view
port.

And, this does not even begin to address the significant
portion of our
world that is not visual at all -- like text readers, RSS
language readers,
web-to-braille conversion, text-to-sound file tools,
languages and writing
direction and so on.

Just a bit of perspective (a visual term?) and a suggestion
that _any_
default template system be visually collapsible and wholly
able to be
utilized across a variety of sense media.

--
inkfree

> With regard to Trae's later comment that "we live
in a 1024 pixel world", I

Personally, it amazes me that he considers himself a "I
must step in to 
fix all this and not listen to design-by-commitee"
designer, but then 
focuses on a fixed-width theme, cares only about 1024
resolutions and 
higher, and commits the egregious sin of the search box at
the header 
(of which I echo all the sentiment we've already heard).

Granted, I'm not a mastah of /design/, but I certainly know
what I'm 
looking for IN a design, in regards to both look and
accessibility. And 
"we live in a 1024 pixel world" is certainly not a
phrase I'd want to 
hear from someone building something intended as a default.

Likewise, his argument of:

> Name a single high-profile website:  slashdot.org,
digg.com,
 > newsvine.com, others any of these that doesn't waste
the top 300px+
 > of their site with ads or other stuff.  You simply
won't find it.

is quite inane. It incorrectly assumes that /sites which
intend to make 
money by capturing eyeballs/ will /use the default theme of
Drupal/. 
This is almost never the case, not for any site that plans
to actually 
succeed (I challenge you to find a bluemarine site that has
ads and has 
been heard of by, oh, I dunno, more than two people).

The placement of ads at the top has /nothing/ to do with
resolution, and 
EVERYTHING to do with eye movement and tracking, as
indicated by the 
typical "Z" formating that an eye makes (which is
why nearly all site 
logos are in the left hand corner, then followed
horizontally by ads). 
Ads are in the top space not because of resolution but
because they are 
the /first thing that people see/. This search header has
/an awful lot 
of nothing to see/ and it is, indeed, wasted space.

[1] And I've already added my concerns about rounded corners
causing the
     DOM to become hideous with div's that do nothing. Isn't
one of
     berkes oft-echoed concerns that we have div's for div's
sake?
     Here's some more on the flippin' bar-b.

-- 
Morbus Iff ( and think about the bad things that I didn't do
)
Technical: http://www.oreil
lynet.com/pub/au/779
Culture: http://www.disobey.com/
and http://www.gamegrene.com/
icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff /
jabber.org: morbus

On 9/28/06, Morbus Iff <morbusdisobey.com> wrote:
> > With regard to Trae's later comment that "we
live in a 1024 pixel world", I
>
> Personally, it amazes me that he considers himself a
"I must step in to
> fix all this and not listen to design-by-commitee"
designer, but then
> focuses on a fixed-width theme, cares only about 1024
resolutions and
> higher, and commits the egregious sin of the search box
at the header
> (of which I echo all the sentiment we've already
heard).

Congratulations Trae ... you just got Morbused ...