New template: (to be determined) (beta)

Post by **yellowled** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 11:58 pm

Hey guys,

I have yet to decide on how to name this baby, and it's still in development, but I'm getting to the point where I need feedback, either disguised as compliments or critisism

This one picks up some ideas I came up with while developing the (now cancelled) default template with Carl - basically, it's more or less my variation of it with a new, also tableless layout. It also has some nice features for s9y > v1.1, but since my blog is still powered by 1.0.4, those will remain hidden until release

See my blog for a demo, see roberts blog for one of the colorsets. Want to have a peak at the code or try it out (remember, it's beta!)? Get the zipped template.

It has 2 more colorsets, one called "The Matrix", which is of course patterned after the movie, and one called "Pirates!" with a jolly roger header and a tropical color scheme. Feedback on those by people already using v1.1 would be awesome, I'm not really sure about the colors ...

This should work in any popular newer browser, robert has done some testing for me. However, feedback on that is always welcome

I'll see if I can manage to upload some screenshots tomorrow.

YL

robert · Post by **robert** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 12:36 am

Yes, don´t hesitate to give feedback please

Many thanks to Matthias for his patience with a Theming-Newbie like me

Post by **yellowled** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:30 am

Some extra info before I go to sleep:

The theme configurator options are:

* 4 colorsets
* entry footer can either be a box below the entry (like in my blog) or splitted into two lines (like in roberts)
* coComment support (on/off)
* two boxes for counter code or additional footer text (both are inserted into the page footer)
* the patented new configurable navbar configuration (link, link text, number of links), code by Garvin

Screenshots of the other colorsets:

* The Matrix
* Pirates!

As I already said, this is a CSS-only layout. It can either have 3 columns (both sidebars can have different widths) or 2 columns (both sides possible), the width of each column is set in %, and the total width of the 2 or 3 columns can be limited easily. It has rounded corners and very cool blockquotes (thanks to the great Carl Galloway!), the forms (comment and contact) have some sort of hover-effect which I really like.

In terms of plugin support ... well, it should cover the most popular plugin, but of course those robert and I use in our blogs were sort of 'preferred'

YL

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:47 am

nicely done. I think you should both be proud of this effort. Great to see such a slick looking design. Also those photographic headers are clean and suit the overall design. Good work, I can't wait to see this in Spartacus when you're finished

Col. Kurtz · Post by **Col. Kurtz** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:24 am

Gotta say: I like it a lot! I might use one of the styles for a website, I just need to modify the header I guess.

Can you make a screenshot with a 3 column style?

Post by **yellowled** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:23 am

Col. Kurtz wrote:Gotta say: I like it a lot! I might use one of the styles for a website, I just need to modify the header I guess.

I should probably add that changing the header and the background-color for the body requires to edit the images which create the rounded corners. It might look like the rounded corners are done via the header image, but that's not the case. See the image folder, there's 4 sets of images called *-rounded_*.gif - those are 'layered' over the actual header image. That way, the rounded corners can be switched off via css pretty easily (someone told me yesterday rounded corners are 'out' - what a shock!

).

Col. Kurtz wrote:Can you make a screenshot with a 3 column style?

Sure, here you go: http://www.yellowled.de/tmp/3-column.jpg

YL

Post by **yellowled** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:31 am

carl_galloway wrote:Good work, I can't wait to see this in Spartacus when you're finished

I'm still mulling over some things, got some stuff to cover for robert's blog, and want to/have to write some documentation for this (plus, there's this name thing

). The basic stuff has been in my drawer for quite some time, the new layout concept seems to be amazingly free of browser issues (keep your fingers crossed!), so the big part is already done. However, I don't want to rush this, so maybe it will take another week or so until it's ready for release

YL

Col. Kurtz · Post by **Col. Kurtz** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:37 pm

YellowLed wrote: I should probably add that changing the header and the background-color for the body requires to edit the images which create the rounded corners. It might look like the rounded corners are done via the header image, but that's not the case. See the image folder, there's 4 sets of images called *-rounded_*.gif - those are 'layered' over the actual header image. That way, the rounded corners can be switched off via css pretty easily (someone told me yesterday rounded corners are 'out' - what a shock! ).

Yeah thanks for the info. But I wouldn't mind loosing the round corners, as I don't mind keeping them....

Why don't you just call it Robert?

Post by **yellowled** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 2:14 pm

Col. Kurtz wrote:Why don't you just call it Robert?

Erm ... because it started as a new template for my blog and I'm not Robert

It started as 'YL 2.0', which was primarily because the original template was based on various colorsets taken from 'Web 2.0' sites (for example it had a flickr colorset), but that original template was planned as some sort of illustration of what would have been possible with the cancelled new default template (which is now on spartacus as 'one true layout', but unfortunately it has some browser compatitbility issues).

Anyway, that name thing isn't that important. I'll probably just call it 'YL 1.5' or something like that

YL

Col. Kurtz · Post by **Col. Kurtz** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:07 pm

YellowLed wrote: Erm ... because it started as a new template for my blog and I'm not Robert

OK I read the part on Roberts blog wrong. You can still call it Mathias then....YL 1.5 is also fine!

Post by **yellowled** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 5:42 pm

Folks, I just now uploaded a new beta (Zipfile). This is a cleaned-up version with minor fixes, but it's a smaller zipfile, so if you don't have it already, use this one to save some bandwidth if you want to

(Gee, I'm rambling.)

Also, this now supports the bookmarks plugin by Falk Döhring. I have little use for this plugin at the moment, but Robert uses it, so the template supports it

I'd also like to point out that I really appreciate Falk's effort with his templates (I've seen bookmarks and faq so far) from a template author's point of view because both templates have .tpl files which - in my humble opinion - makes it so much easier to integrate those plugins well. Very nice, I'd love to see more templates like those

YL

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:12 pm

YellowLed wrote:Very nice, I'd love to see more templates like those

I think you will find that a lot of the "external page" templates support this already. At least, Static page should (at least for search), as should Contact form, and User Gallery.

If you come across any external page templates that you want converted, feel free to post them in the plugins forum.

robert · Post by **robert** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:35 pm

Col. Kurtz wrote:
YellowLed wrote: Erm ... because it started as a new template for my blog and I'm not Robert
OK I read the part on Roberts blog wrong. You can still call it Mathias then....YL 1.5 is also fine!

Thanks for reading my blog

For clarification. The Theme ist from yellowled. Only one of the colorsets is especially done for me (but it is also free). So the colorset is called "Robert" - I´m proud of having a colorset which is called by me

Post by **yellowled** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:56 pm

YellowLed wrote:Very nice, I'd love to see more templates like those

What I meant was of course 'more plugins like that'

mgroeninger wrote:I think you will find that a lot of the "external page" templates support this already. At least, Static page should (at least for search), as should Contact form, and User Gallery.

My point is that I - personally - don't use most of those plugins. I use contact form (and I know it's .tpl file quite well), and I have static page installed but barely use it. I just wanted to point out how nice and easy it was to insert Falk's plugins into the stylesheet because of the .tpl files

YL

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 1:27 am

I'm glad it makes it easier! I'd love to see you fiddle with the User Gallery plugin, because I think there are a bunch of fun things you could do with it (especially now that it can be the front page)...

And have you seen the new dynamic Contact Form settings and the tpl it uses? I think it is pretty fun...

Sorry to hijack the thread... I just don't follow the themes section very often, so I'm not sure how much template designers know about the plugins I work on...