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?
I guess what I'm looking for is a checklist or guidelines for what are the minimum requirements for a Drupal theme. I see that most Wordpress themes include styling for blog comments, forms, H1, H2, bullet points. I'm wondering what types of styling elements do other theme designers include in their themes?
So some sort of checklist or guidelines are needed for Drupal themes. What do you think?
Comments
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Well, thats really up to the themer, but I support all core Drupal modules and usually make sure modules like Views, Panels and Vertical tabs display well.
Of course the extent to which you theme html elements is really up to you, but for most themes styling heading elements, lists, tables and so on is simply part of the overall design. I like to take my time with tables and get them looking nice, lots of modules use tables such as Forum, so its worth the effort.
Forms can be a lot of work but are worth it also, and make sure you don't do anthing that borks form elements in one browser or another, thats an easy thing to do...
I like to spend a bit of time with search form elements, and building extra regions and additional block styles.
One thing I don't always support is the Admin area, simply because thats an unnesseary restraint on design, so I may include a page-admin with some additional CSS but more often I'll say "use Root Candy".
As for versioning and knowing if something is stable or not, I think thats a lost cause, I hold stuff in dev for a while the truth is for most themes you won't get real world testing with -dev and the big red warning... with beta you get uptake and the testing you need for the harsh reality of the real world.
My advice would be not to release too early, especially for highly stylised themes that might become popular, you will get swamped with support requests.
user feedback messages
One of the things I would include in a list like this... to be a "finished" design is the feedback to the user (i.e. messages). It is often one of the last things completed, but IMHO it can really make a theme feel... complete.
portland grp discussion
just noticed a similar thread on the portland group in case there is more useful info there, thought i'd add the link http://groups.drupal.org/node/23423
Starting point
Good starting point at http://drupal.org/theme-guide
or
http://drupal.org/node/341707
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