Serendipity Forums

Hi all, Andreas Viklund has kindly asked me to develop his latest html template for serendipity. Andreas plans to release the open source template next week and every port of the theme will be directly linked from the zipfile and Andreas' website.

I'm sure the marketing person within us all can see the potential for serendipity. Now, this is where it gets interesting, I need help, not with the coding of the template, but instead with some urgent feedback, and then with beta testers. The page where andreas00 will be downloaded from.

Feedback I need, does anyone have any suggestions for improving our themes that could be used in andreas00?

Beta-testers, I need people who are willing to install a potentially broken andreas00 in their test servers and try to break it, then email me fixes/suggestions. I won't be ready to release a preview version for another 2-4 days but need to know who wants me to email the beta version to them.

Hope you can all help,

Carl

ok, I've uploaded an early preview of andreas00 to my themes tester, a lot of things don't work, some things are really ugly, in short this theme is at the very very early stages, please take a look and offer criticism. I'm happy to make as many changes as I need to if it means serendipity users would be happy to use this theme on their own blogs. Also, it is completely unusable in IE at present, I'm looking into using the csshover.htc behaviour but have never used it before and need to figure out how to make it do what I want it to do.

If anyone wants to install this on their own test server, the download is here. Please, Please, don't install this on a live site, I take no responsibility for supporting this theme until its complete. If you do test andreas00, please emmail any changes you make to webmaster [at] carlgalloway [dot] com

I wasn't happy with the way the left sidebar was working, far too much work, so I've added some extra Smarty to the sidebar.tpl and now I can't believe I hadn't done this before now. Anyway my changes would now allow andreas06, blix and other themes that use unordered lists for categories to display correclty. Now if we can just update the static pages sidebar plugin, ah well, I'll deal with that later.

Oh, still doesn't look great in IE but thats the next step.

made some more changes and we're on track for the first public release of andreas00 on the morning of the 14th April. Its starting to take on a personality of its own, and Andreas seems to be waiting for his Wordpress theme to be complete before officially announcing the release of this new HTML template. Interestingly I've ported his HTML design to Serendipity faster than he's ported it to Wordpress which I believe demonstrates how much better Serendipity is, especially given the complexity of some of our sidebar plugins compared to the WP equivalents. Use the links in the posts above to view/download the preview of andreas00.

You've still got that 'Too wide Google Search plugin' problem in Safari Carl!

argh [gonna friggin strangle someone]

Thanks Ian, I keep forgetting that one. Carl

i like it- it is different without being outlandish, and it can be used as is, or gives you immediate inspiration for the little micro-designer inside you.
definitely the first i'd do would be other images for the (i sit rss feed) abstracts (just before important, images, etc).
i will include this one in my personal site once i can have that little script that calls up themes randomly- but with a time-factor (hell i am soooo untechnical, but fortunately carl is good at mindreading!!), i want the thing to change every 3/4 of an hour (for example)... and then my freinds will get to know aaaaallll serendipity themes (at least the ones approved by the wise men <- is there an official list??)
ttthank you!!!!!!! great theme!!

Reading minds? nay lass you have it wrong, tis a simple a filosfy on life I have, all women desire me, all men want to be like me, I am never wrong, and everyone agrees with me.

As for an official list, unfortunately not, but some exciting things are happening with themes and I expect that over the next couple of months we'll all have to lift our game a little, and when this starts to happen some sort of 'test of compatibility' may be needed before themes are loaded into Spartacus, which will by default be the officially sanctioned list of themes. In fact I would anticipate there could come a day when designers will have to compete for spots in Spartacus, and if newer and better themes come along then less compliant themes might end up being dropped - could be just my imagination, but I'm getting the feeling that many of the non-developer users are quite sick of broken themes.

carl_galloway wrote:all women desire me, all men want to be like me, I am never wrong, and everyone agrees with me.

Crikey!
Go have a little lie down Carl!

carl_galloway wrote: I'm getting the feeling that many of the non-developer users are quite sick of broken themes.

Seems a little harsh to single out themes Carl or are the non-developer users equally sick of broken plug-ins, installation problems, upgrade problems etc. etc.

Most of us here do what we do because we want too. We're all trying to improve Serendipity. Make it difficult, or raise the bar so high it's out of reach for most users - then what's the point?

Dave

Dave, I wasn't implying any particular theme or designer was at fault, and yes I agree that broken plugins, installation problems etc are all equally frustrating. I do think however that the bar needs to be raised. It is currently too low and isn't really helping the users you talk about.

Put simply, too many themes are causing problems (my own included) and with the latest developments happening in the Serendipity world it is becoming even more important that those of us who are most active are also seen to be producing work that other users can emulate, learn from, or just use effectively and enjoyably.

Renata wouldn't ask for an official list of themes that are approved by the wise men if she hadn't had a negative experience with one of them.