Drupal.org gets a make-over
For Drupal 4.5 one of our action points was improving the Drupal.org site itself. As well as making information easier to find for users, we wanted to make the site friendlier for people who are new to Drupal. As part of this, a new look was designed for Drupal.org. The style, called Bluebeach, was inspired by the Bluemarine Xtemplate and was designed by me, Steven Wittens.
In order to keep Bluebeach as a unique style for Drupal.org, the theme will not be made available for download.
The theme itself is implemented as a template for the PHPTemplate theme engine. It is completely tableless, validates as XHTML 1.0 strict and has a fluid, variable-columns layout. It works mostly the same on IE6, Firefox, Opera and Konqueror/Safari. I first designed a graphical mock-up and then implemented it into XHTML as a Drupal theme, starting off with a basic front page and adding more stuff later on. Overall the theme is much more roomy and cheery than Bluemarine was.
Aside from the obvious change of looks, the most noticable content change is the 'mission statement' on the front page: it is no longer a short paragraph with some links, but a dedicated full-width space which attracts attention. It links to the Drupal brochure (designed by Kristjan Jansen for Drupal at LinuxTag), which is the easiest way for people to get an idea about what Drupal is. It also gives immediate access to the latest Drupal release and the associated downloads (modules, themes and translations).
Another important change was flattening the Drupal handbook so that less clicks are needed to find the information you need. Project.module was also updated, for example to take advantage of the tabs feature in Drupal 4.5.
We will still be tweaking the site in the near future, but in the meantime your comments and suggestions are welcome!
Wow
Nice work!
Attention to detail is fantastic. I'm really enjoying looking around drupal.org and finding all the styling elements you've created, like what you've done with blockquotes for example.
any plans to update the theme?
Is there any plans to implement a new theme for Drupal.org.
Not because the current one is ugly or anything but it seems like people are getting excited when there is a change on the theme.
KC
My Sites:
www.educational-toys-mart.com | www.thelittlebig.com
http://pheromoneguide.com
Freaking good
I only caught rumours a few hours ago that some new stuff is in order for Drupal.org, and I must say I am completely amazed! This is a very big step forward, much needed for Drupal. I also think that it is a key that this theme will not be released for the public, so it is kept for the Drupal homepage. The tabs are looking cool, but the blocks might need some more spice, colour, shape, or something more genuine. You might also think about styling form buttons.
Styling form elements
I did play around with styling form buttons, but I ended up deleting it: it was too much of a hassle to get them to look right across browsers and platforms. On top of that, many platforms ignore form styles altogether and just use native widgets.
Styling form elements info
I doubt you have not seen it yet, but Roger Johansson already collected quite bit of information on styling form elements.
must say
wowsers, brand new look, much much better. please make sure to update the screenshots for 4.5
btw: is the new 3d logo official now?
--
groets
bertb
Drupal.org vs Drupal
The theme is for Drupal.org, not Drupal is general. I don't think we should update the screenshots.
Congrats!
Great work, Steven -- looks very nice. And PHPTemplate was a good choice, too.
I understand the desire not to distribute the Drupal look-and-feel, but perhaps a (designer centric) overview of how it was accomplished would be useful. As well, maybe the theme minus the graphical CSS (so just a layout.css)?
What I would like is for the
What I would like is for the PHPTeample file that produces the standard complient XHTML 1.0 code. Maybe that should be intergrated in the the default PHPTemplate engine (if it has not been done already).
Once you have the clean XHTML output then the CSS is much easier too work with.
err. hasn't been done.
PHPTemplate doesn't have a default that it ships with.
The proto template (that all documentation is based on) for phptemplate is called box_grey, which uses a hybrid layout, for various reasons.
--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.
Never looked better! Keep up
Never looked better!
Keep up the good work, and I can't wait for more new themes of this quality in the future.
Great!
The new theme is absolutely great! Congratulations! I didn't recognize the site anymore as I fist saw it :-)
Uwe.
--
My Drupal site: http://www.crazy-hacks.org
Soon to be drupalized: http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
Looks great!
Nice work Drupal team. Can't wait to move our clients over to 4.5 and try out this theme.
Eric Gundersen
Development Seed
http://www.developmentseed.org
http://www.developmentseed.org/blog
Say wot?
Well, now that was a shock!
Excellent! Much, much warmer, elegant, better.
Congratulations on new 4.5 release to all the developers involved, and best of luck in further developments.
And to finish with:
ALL HAIL DRUPAL!
looks great, one suggestion
I don't want to belittle how great the new theme looks, but I have one suggestion. Add a little padding to the blockquotes--or what ever is making the fancy background quotes (which are awesome)--so they don't hit right up against the text.
Awesome job!
Very nice
Very nice. It is much cleaner and easier on the eye. As much as I like it, I am glad that it is not in the basic theme's available for end users. To many sites look just like the bluemarine theme already.
-sp
Uh oh, one issue
Great new Look, Steve,
One issue i found is when i did a long search, the background turns Drupal blue at the point on the screen where the bottom-most right box ends, and that makes comments/search results below that point almost unreadable. I'm sure it's simple to fix.
Thanks again,
mark
min-height in CSS not supported by IE...
in mozilla FireFox is displays properly...
obviously IE is frowned upon around here...
Great!
Official Drupal site looks cool now! Very nice round corners in blocks (Mozilla's style feature?)
--
Axel,
Russian Drupal Community
No -moz-border-radius
I avoided -moz-border-radius for two reasons: 1) it's Mozilla-specific, 2) it's not anti-aliased.
Instead I used images in the corners along with repeated relative positioning to get them to cover up the standard rectangular border.
closed
steven
I do think that it is a good thing not to release the theme wide so the drupal look will be associated with the powerfull drupal site/product, not a personal blog.
but please, when (if?) a new theme will be used on drupal.org release this theme because it is too cool.
and if you could, write a howto how you made this theme
--
groets
bertb
Very nice work
Hey Steven,
This is great. Thanks for setting the bar on new Drupal Themes. With what you've done here and what's been happening around the web, I think Drupal is quickly taking shape as a CMS that can also work for designers (though hopefully we can focus more effort on the theme creation process).
I'd love to see a write up of your process and the difficulties you encountered creating this theme. Sometime I'll do the same for the Spread Firefox theme once things die down a bit! :)
Chris
Awesome. Very simply shockin' awesome.
I'm sure it happened like that in all our minds. Bravo.
very nice
looks great... thumbs up...
and about the content overlapping the site background in IE... it doesn't really bother me... since it's valid CSS... though as a solution, you may just want to make the body tag hold the dominant #FFF background and just scrap the blue (since it's only seen on the bottom if you scroll down)
body {background:#FFF url("/images/site_bg.png") top left ;Excellent!
I like the new softer look. It does look as though it will have more mass appeal (not just geared toward us geeks ;).
Awesome!!
Nice work. A very pleasant and totally unexpected surprise!
Brian.
Closed loop
Congratulations on the release. I've been using the RC for a bit now and I am quite happy with it. That said I must gripe. Ive seen two truly awesome themes come forth lately, BlueBeach and the one created for theme garden. Yet neither have been (and purportably wont be) released. Being a strong supporter of open source, and information sharing, I'm saddened by this. I am one who has always learned best by example, falling back on documentation only when I must.
The release of 4.5 is great but I cant help but notice the lack of themes. It seems to me that some of this can be blamed on the theme folk catching up with the changes(I've tinkered a bit myself with every theme I have run but the new xtemplate themes are beyond me as yet), but that part of this must be the sparceness of documentation. That leaves only examples to learn from for those who feel we must do it ourselves. I guess I am just bummed.
CSS and templates
I know how you feel: I also would like to help others make great Drupal themes. However, I don't think giving the entire theme up to the public is a good way to do that. There have been examples of stylesheets, images and templates being ripped from sites and used elsewhere without permission. Yes, even Drupal sites.
If we give away the template with a "only for educational use" label, those terms will be violated within 5 minutes. If people want to learn about the template, they can analyse the CSS and the XHTML. This is dead-easy with modern CSS tools like the Firefox/Mozilla Webdeveloper Extension which allows you to disect a page easily.
Any XHTML/CSS person who's afraid of looking at other people's tags and styles is a moron :P.
I understand what youre sayin
I understand what youre saying. However the extent of my web design experience ended years ago when HTML4 was still in the works, now trying to get back in its not easy. And lets face it, flat out daunting when you try to do something like add taxonomy_image to a recent theme where there is no patch and the file structure is so hard to make sense of (thmes.inc, engines, xtemplate) so many layers so little nap time(2 yr olds arent helpful when learning php).
I understand your reasons for not wanting to release the theme however take a look at it from the other side for a moment, to New Drupal Adopters and those who cant do php(yet) showing off these terrific themes while not having quite the same caliber of theme availible can be discouraging and may cause people to drift to other products that have more readily accessible themes. After all if they have to work hard to make their drupal site different than any other then they may not bother. To a new users this may seem somewhat elitest(sp).
Just trying to share my point.
I agree. It is easier to make
I agree. It is easier to make a theme with a brand in mind. The brand won't be as strong if there are a bunch of other sites out there that look the same. If you look through http://drupal.org/sites those are mostly bluemarine.
A good set of default themes for distribution is a harder task because they have to be more resistant to different configurations and content that may be placed in them and be brandless. The theme garden is a good step at encouraging this.
Background problem in IE6
.. background does not render correctly in IE6 for the comments blocks. It's ok in FireFox though.
"If you build it, they will come." -- Field of Dreams
Fixed
I hope I fixed the problem...for some reason IE6 was not clearing the outermost column. Explicitly setting width: 100% on the clearing footer fixed it.
This theme has been a very annoying game of "avoid the IE bugs" ;).
two annoying IE bugs
Steven,
I've been enjoying the great new theme with Firefox at home over the past few days, but today I loaded it up with IE in a lab and found a couple bugs:
As much as I despise IE, it might be worth looking into fixing these things to ensure a good "first impression" to those considering using Drupal.
IE highlighting
The highlighting problem stems from the repeated usage of position: relative; to get the round corners working. It's unlikely that I'll be able to fix this.
I'll fix the FOUC.
Excellent work
Well, I have been dreaming of a good Drupal theme, like I mentioned here when SpreadFireFox was discussed http://drupal.org/node/10836
This current theme is exactly what was needed.
Great work Steven! Now we are in the big leagues in the looks department. Drupal was always better in functionality but lagged in the aesthetics.
My only comment is that the font is a bit fuzzy or jaggety. Can you change it to something less jaggety?
Font fuzzyness
Under Linux with XFT everything looks absolutely flawless;) Under Windows you should somehow enable "subpixel rendering" (there should be such a function, I think) to smoothen the fonts. Any other font would be less readable on a computer screen, since Tahoma (or Verdana?) was specially designed for such a digital deployment.
Overall great, but fonts are pixelated
Running Mozilla Firebird 1.0 on Windows XP and getting pixelated "fuzzy" font. Overall look is great but font makes next too impossible to read.
Brad Nickel
Web Marketing Services
http://www.clickbrain.com
brad@bradnickel.com
877-243-0405
Hinted anti-aliasing
This is because I use the Bitstream Vera Sans font. This font is designed to anti-alias at small sizes using special hints. On LCD screens and good monitors, this should look much better than non-anti-aliased fonts. If your resolution is set too high (or you have a bad monitor/videocard), then blurring will make the text harder to read.
Try turning off font smoothing in Windows, or if you have a laptop/LCD, turn on 'ClearType' or use text resizing to make the font larger. Alternatively, you could just remove the Bitstream Vera font: in that case, Verdana will be used instead. Verdana is a close cousin of Vera, but does not have the low-size anti-aliasing. It sounds like Vera doesn't look good on your system anyway.
In the meantime, the rest of us will enjoy the anti-aliased, hinted glyphs.
Hmmm.... Not a very user friendly position for visitors
I can understand your reason why, but frankly do not believe that is the proper choice for a system that wants to encourage new users. Why should I have to change my Windows config to be able to read about Drupal and choose whether I want to use it?
I am on a Sony Vaio laptop and this is the only site where I have this problem. Because I am an avid user of Drupal, I guess I will reluctantly adapt, but I am trying to diplomatically say, that I think this is a bad user interface choice and do nto believe that this should be the attitude of this community.
Font choice
It sounds like it could be a problem with your display gamma: LCD displays are notorious for having their gamma set too high, which would wash out anti-aliasing.
Bitstream Vera Sans is used as the first choice font because it is a higher quality font, it is free and Free, and it is available on every Gnome environment. The second choice font is Verdana, which works for all Windows PC's.
I appreciate the help, but does not address my concerns
those are that if others have this problem(and it seems likely others have and will), then this is not a smart user interface choice. Sorry to pound this point, but I have real concerns about these kinds of things.
LCD laptops using MS Windows
LCD laptops using MS Windows XP will want to make sure that they have Clear Type enabled.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm
Yes, it is a laptop
Yes, I am using a laptop with an active TFT LCD display set to 1024x768.
The fuzziness goes away a bit when I change the size in FireFox to a larger one.
The point others made about requiring the user to tweek the system is a valid one. One should not have to do so. Perhaps dropping down to Verdana would make it reasonable for all, and a little less eye candy (antialiasing).
Just by 2 cents.
Thank you
Thanks. I thought I was going crazy for a minute there and the point I was making just was not getting through. Glad someone else can see it.
Anti-aliasing
If you're having problems with 'fuzzy text' on a laptop tft then your configuration is definitely wrong. LCD's enable the use of subpixel rendering for letters (called 'ClearType' on Windows) which triples the horizontal resolution.
Find the option, and enable it. Your eyes will thank you for it.
OK, I give up this is my last try
You said this is a common laptop problem and sounds like common on other PCs. This is a bad usability choice for this community. No other site I have ever visited has this problem. No one should have to change their config to view this site or any site. That is the idea behind usability.
By the way, I implemented the change and did not improve. I am not going to change my entire browsing experience by increasing the font size in my browser for this one site.
If Drupal does not want to be inclusive and think about these types of issues, then let me know, but I thought the goal was to increase the size of the user community. Your design is great, but you need to get over the idea that somehow everyone needs to adjust to your choice of fonts in order to use the site.
I am sure you will be relieved to hear that I will not bring this up again, but it is not a good sign for the future of this product, if this attitude carries across to development.
Screenshot?
No, really, I don't understand. Linux with Freetype, Mac OS X, Windows XP with ClearType, they all have anti-aliased glyphs. If this was a bad thing, then why did years of development and font design go into hinting and anti-aliasing technology?
No-one else seems to have a problem with it. In fact, the main criticism that Apple users have about non-cleartype Windows is that the fonts look like ants crawling across the screen. Ever since I've discovered that Bitstream Vera anti-aliases at low point sizes and manages to look damn sexy while doing so, I've started using it for programming, reading and generic UI text.
Please, send me a screenshot to steven -at- acko -dot- net. Preferably 24-bit PNG (not JPEG, that's lossless). I'm dying to know what these unreadable, fuzzy letters look like.
Better yet post them to a web
Better yet post them to a website and give us a link. I would like to see too.
Because the site looks fine on the multiple systems I have viewed it on.
I as well, I had a friend usi
I as well, I had a friend using OSX check from his system. I used my linux system at home. Several different XP systems from laptop LCD, desktop LCD screens and different CRT screens from work and home and they all looked fine.
-sp
You are missing the point
If a user has to do anything to their PC in order to view a web site, then it is a bad interface choice - period. No one should have to install anything to view a web site.
You have 7 seconds to get and keep a visitors attention. Unless you have a way to make changes to their system in 7 seconds without them doing anything, then they are gone and your chance to tell them Drupal is the best CMS on the planet is lost forever.
I have posted screen prints here:
http://www.clickbrain.com/images/drupalscreen.png
http://www.clickbrain.com/images/drupalscreen2.png
Thanks,
Brad
Well it would seem you are ha
Well it would seem you are having trouble with your system fonts, and your webserver. The images are not there.
Try again
You hit it in the middle of a server upgrade reboot adn backup.
Brad
Rare cases
I'm not missing your point. I just don't agree with you.
a) (looking at screenshot) I know this bug. It's Windows-only. It occurs in some cases when drawing text to a Memory Device Context, without Cleartype, where the gamma for the anti-aliasing is calculated too highly. I've seen it pop up when doing some Windows/OpenGL programming. I'm not sure if it's driver/hardware specific or not, but it's not happening on my (Windows) box:
http://acko.net/dumpx/vera.png
b) It only occurs on Windows platforms /with/ the Bitstream Vera font installed. Given that Vera was donated to the Gnome community by Bitstream, the only Windows machines that have Vera are those that it was explicitly installed on by the user. This is a tiny, tiny fraction of the users. If the font looks like crap on your computer, remove it. Verdana will be used instead, which looks nearly identical (same font designer, also designed for screen display, similar letter shapes, just Vera takes the technical aspects even further) but does not have the anti-aliasing.
I'm not going to switch the font preference around from Vera -> Verdana to Verdana -> Vera: Vera is a higher quality font, and many Linux / Mac machines have both installed. In that case, I want them to see Vera.
Browser bugs I will handle. Misconfigured and/or buggy display drivers not, especially when only a tiny fraction of the visitors will suffer from it. Text display is the most important function of the graphics layer: if it's broken, fix it or work around it. I'm not telling every visitor who comes here, I'm telling the 3 people so far who have reported this problem.
PS: "No one should have to install anything to view a web site." Ask Macromedia about the number of Flash installations.
Last post in this thread from me.
not all necessarily true, Steven
1) When in doubt, go to the oracle :) I queried fonts@gnome.org. It seems that this is not a display driver bug, but rather actually normal behavior since Bitstream Vera is designed to work with anti-aliasing more so than standard Windows fonts, and really is optimized for FreeType. So unless ClearType is configured (it's not the default, is it?), we can expect that other Windows users may have the same experience.
2) Windows users may not explicitly being installing Bitstream Vera, but instead unknowingly. Vera has been included with OpenOffice since version 1.1. We should consider that many people using Drupal, or interested in Drupal, are likely to be using or have tried OpenOffice more so than the average visitor to other websites (there will be a higher concentration of open source advocates here).
Clear Type is designed to imp
Clear Type is designed to improve the display of LCD monitors (laptops). It will make minpr changes to a CRT display that are subtle but really do help. A standard default Windows XP install do not haev Clear Type enabled. Laptops that use a HW vender supplied distribution generally have it on to improve the products usability.
What a close minded attitude.
You may get my point, but you are not addressing it.
I am an Open Office user (see post below). How many installs of Open Office are there? Whether it is .2%, 1% or 10% of your visitors, making them do anything but immediately learn about your products is a bad choice.
What is the goal of this web site? To promote Drupal? To get developers involved? To get donations?
"I'm not telling every visitor who comes here, I'm telling the 3 people so far who have reported this problem."
Really? How many folks have left the site because they could not read it or didn't want to end up with a headache? Do you think new users are going to bother to post here to tell you or are they going to move on to another CMS? No, they are going to say "I could never use that with my client" or whatever their needs and try something else. What if one of those visitors was a potential corporate sponsor? Can you get in touch with them and tell them to make changes to their system and please come back and try Drupal? What if I sent the rather large new potential client I have that needs 3 sites redone to read more about Drupal and they had this problem? Should I run over to their office and see if I can change their system for them and hope they still want to do business with me?
"Ask Macromedia about the number of Flash installations."
Any web site that requires Flash or any kind of installation or system change is a poor user interface choice. On the whole, Flash is a poor choice anyway. Even Macromedia is smart enough to not require me to have Flash in order to read about their products. Notice all that html on their product pages?
Your attitude about this says to me you care more about protecting the sanctity of your design and font choice than promoting Drupal and addressing the site's goals.
You have never countered the basics of interface and browsing habits. Why not do what is best for the community? Sorry to be so beligerent about this, but I am amazed that in a community that has always been so helpful to me and open to ideas, that you would take this closed-minded point of view.
We have heard from a couple of folks on this. Would anyone else like to chime in? Am I off base? Did I miss the goals? Am I wrong about interface and usability and making system changes in order to view a site? Is this the attitude of the Drupal team as a whole and I should stop doing installs of Drupal now and move on to another product and learn all over again. This may not seem to be a big deal to many of you, but this is a philosophical issue for me and Drupal has a number of usability needs as it is that have been discussed here a great deal. I am basing my business on this product and can't take the chance.
Brad
Sure, I'll chime in.
Sure, I'll chime in.
The fonts look terrible on four of the PC's/laptops I use - different video hardware on each, two are Win2K, two are XP. All have LCD displays. The only other common denominator - OpenOffice 2.0 on each, which from a brief reading above, seems to install the Bitstream font in question.
The site looks fine, in all browsers, in a relatively recent SuSE install. Since the SuSE install is a dual-boot config on one of the above Windows PC's, the fuzziness is not a hardware issue.
I temporarily forced Firefox to use my specified fonts - the Verdana font shipped with Windows looks fine here.
Brad - you are not off base. It's simply retarded for somebody to suggest I adjust Windows/font settings to properly view any web site - it's not necessary anywhere else I go.
I'm not even going to attempt the changes suggested...the site designer now knows the text looks terrible to a large number of their users. If they don't want to change things, so be it.
As should be obvious, for every person who searches here to find out why things look bad, there are probably 1000 more who don't bother, but just say "man...that looks like crap."
Excuse double post.
Connection running slow today. This was a double post.
not just laptops
I'm experiencing the fuzzy text problem intermittantly with a Viewsonic 17" LCD and an ASUS Geforce FX 5700 on an XP machine. Not a substandard monitor or video card. Sometimes, the text blurs and fades.
And as suggested elsewhere, I have tried configuring ClearType instead of the standard font smoothing. Makes the text awful in some other applications (such as Thunderbird), and honestly, starts to give me a headache after a few minutes.
I can live with it the way it is now without ClearType. Nevertheless, I'm for not for having the user tweak their display to read drupal.org, especially since in my case, it doesn't seem to help. A consistent user experience would make more sense, IMHO.
*Outstanding*
Extreme elegance splashes from the new Drupal homepage!!!
Fantastic work!!!
Good luck!
The long wait...
Congratulations for changes!
When i read about this in Photomatt was nearly a shock x)
Keep the good working!
BTW, the move to spotlight the "download" and the "feature" section , like moz site, was great.
Regardings
Make-over
The theme has been ready for several weeks: as you can imagine, it was difficult to keep it a secret, yet we really wanted it to be a surprise. Looks like it worked.
What can I say? Steven effectively turned drupal.org into one of the best designed Drupal sites to date. He is a talented young man. If there was such a thing as Steven Wittens stocks, I'd buy some. He might go IPO one day.
Indeed
Not only did he do a great job on designing a CSS based theme, he also managed teo have it look great! Beleive me, that is a very complex, issue. A designer needs to have feeling for colours, distribution and what else. While CSS requires a great technical knowledge. A combination of both is a rarety. Most of the time you either find CSS savvies aimed at "what all you can achieve with CSS" or designers who do not care how a look is achieved, as long as it is (flash!).
Steven obviously has a good feeling about both, resulting in not only this great Drupal theme , but in many more goodlooking designs.
I think we should set up a shareholders union for Steven Shares :)
Bèr
Right menu block in IE
In IE, when there's a long line in one of the blocks on the right (eg a forum pst about a very_long_function_or_module_name), the whole right column drops to below the content column text.
The same doesn't look too spiffy on firefox either, with content rendering outside the block, but at least it doesn't drop to below the content.
Otherwise, this looks GOOD!
800x600 problem?
Really good job on the new design - looks great
Improvement tweaks...
I noted similar problems, which I suspect may be due to smaller window sizes. At 800x600 I find some rendering glitches in both Firefox 0.10 and IE6.
For Firefox, the top tabs squash in so that the 'support' tab drops below the 'contact' tab. Also text padding in the blocks gets a bit too squashed.
IE6 copes better with the tabs across the top, but sends all the blocks to the bottom (after the main content) - as noted above.
Congratulations to Steven and anyone else involved! Job well done.
i have to agree that this is
i have to agree that this is a stunning improvement on the old design, it now looks very slick, and i'm sure will attract a lot more people to download drupal themselves
also agree with not making this theme freely available. It loosk really bad when so many sites are using the default theme
david
www.justride.co.uk < recently drupalised:)
Tableless designs
Unfortunately tableless designs have to be much more careful about their content. When deciding between tabled or tableless, I bit the bullet and chose the latter. Tableless does have advantages rather than just being a novelty: the main content loads first, the source HTML is smaller, it is more accessible, etc.
I'm still not giving up though... I'm going to look into using soft-hyphens and such for the sidebar. Inserting them automatically through a regexp should be possible. Of course I'm not sure if the browsers respect those.
great theme
and i big surprise - congrats!
you'll definitely have to look into breaking long strings in the sidebar, though. "killes@www.drop.org", who just joined the side, happens to be a string some pixels too long for 1024x768/IE6 and makes all blocks move below the footer. which makes them actually useless. i suffered the same problem on my drupal site and only got rid of it by unconditionally hard breaking all strings longer than than some x chars. to my knowledge, soft-hyphens don't work on any IE :(
with killes not being listed (now), i don't have anything to complain :)
p.s. well, a little one: in IE6, there is no margin between fieldsets in admin forms. should be fixable, shouldn't it?
p.p.s. now "bmann@bmannconsulting.com" joined :(
margin on fieldsets
The margin had to be removed on IE6 because IE doubled them and caused random float drops at certain widths.
What I see on IE5
What I see on IE5 - I'm upgrading to IE6 soon.
http://forum.01community.com/drupal_ie5_screenshots/
flaky text http://forum.01community.com/drupal_ie5_screenshots/boxes_pushed_down.jp...
broken boxes http://forum.01community.com/drupal_ie5_screenshots/broken_boxes.jpg
space between forum and top bar http://forum.01community.com/drupal_ie5_screenshots/forum_space.jpg
IE5 untested
I did not test the theme on IE5. Given the amount of CSS magic that goes on, it's not surprising that it looks this bad. I even ran into some Mozilla bugs.
IE5's support for CSS is horrifying compared to any modern browser. IE6 is bad, but is by far the most used browser out there, so you can't ignore it.
A word of advice: if you're going to upgrade your browser, forget about IE6 and try Mozilla Firefox instead. Faster, smaller, better and safer.
better yet
upgrade to IE6 to fix security vulnerabiliites that IE fixes on your OS,then use Mozilla Firefox as your primary browser except for Windows Update and other Active X only sites.
Hacks
I'm curious, did you use any browser 'hacks' (e.g Box Model)?
If BlueBeach is not going to be released, then I guess you don't need to worry about the "no hacks" restriction that applies to all the core templates, making it easier to fix all these individual browser problems as they come up.
IE stuff
There are tons of IE-only styles in there, using the underscore hack. Also because of frequent appearances of the Peekaboo IE bug in various forms, there are lots of 'useless' styles in there (like position: relative without top/left).
Still, because I ignored IE5/win and mac, the amount of hacks is limited to a couple of style overrides, no big parser-confusion tricks.
Great improvement ... release to everyone!
I like the changes ... definitely a VAST improvement over the ancient dated and horrible looking previous theme (honestly and truly no offense meant towards the previous theme developer).
My hat's off to Steven for such great work. I understand the desire (at some level) to keep it "secret". But, I would ask that the theme be released. I know that ultimately some less than clever webmasters out there will just rip it off and use it as is... But the vast majority of us use themes as a base starting point. I personally have taken several previous themes and mangled and munged them to make my own from it.
The amount of effort and work it takes to build a fully functioned theme from scratch is enormous - particularly for those of us that "just want it to work" without wanting to delve into weeks worth of jumbled documentation on how to make it all go...evaluating existing themes for the arcane magic that makes a nifty feature work ...
I like this new Bluebeach theme, but it ain't a Panacaea for all of us. I would love to use it as a starting point to mangle my own. The closer something is to what we want, the easier it is to mangle. I have yet to find ANY module or theme in Drupal to do exactly as I want it to ... I have over 20 patches that I constantly apply and bring forward to make it work the way I believe it should ... I have given up trying to get patches included, I'm either completely ignored, or my style or ideas fall on deaf ears too often for me to continue trying.
I'd ask that any themes be released to the public for the rest of us to grow and mutate. Afterall, if you look back at the history of the themes in Drupal, I think it's pretty clear that almost every single one of them is a mutation in some form or another of a different theme (be it a Drupal based one, or some other CMS based theme).
The dirth of decent themes for Drupal is a major problem in my opinion. It would be nice if there were a dozen or so GOOD to GREAT themes available for webmasters to choose from.
Thanks for hearing me out.
looks great and one little thing
Looks great. Good job Steve!
One little thing I just noticed. When the number of comments get bigger as in this post, they keep getting indented and move to the right. This makes the navigation column on the right drop down below the content area.
KC
My Sites:
powershotblog.com | adsensed.com | alafranga.com | thelittlebig.com
Yes. I saw the same thing
Indeed I saw the same thing. Using FireFox on Windows 2000, the menus on the left hand side are at the bottom after all the comments.
Even as I post this, the menus have been pushed down.
Your signature is broken
That's because there is an open <div> tag in your signature.
Bluebeach theme: please release in the spirit of Open Source!
First off, - The new drupal.org theme is amazing. Looks great - feels great.
Many other have made this comment, but I thought I would add my own $0.02. The bluebeach theme should be made available to developers / designers to serve as a starting point for their own themes.
The graphics and other finer touches need not be included, but a bare bones version of the theme should be made public in the spirit of open source!
I've been wrestling with a tabless theme for my own drupal site and I know the pain that other designers and developers must feel when they embark on their own tabless designs - especially when working within a theme system. (As a side note I intend to release my theme as well - but I'm busy finishing my site content at the moment and the theme isn't 100% ready for the public - business before pleasure you know - but for those wanting a preview of the code http://www.andremolnar.com/mtarchives/000125.html - which applies to http://www.becircle.com [still in beta])
Yes - those that are dedicated can reverse engineer bluebeach - but for those that need a head start, I think it would be plain nice and neighborly of you to release it in some form.
JMHO
andre
No win-win situation, long term vision
The problem boils down to the following question. What would help the Drupal project most: creating a unique brand for drupal.org (and make drupal.org a Drupal showcase), or making one extra theme available for download (and help theme developers)? What is the number of people that benefit from a better drupal.org, and what is the number of people that benefit from an additional theme?
I believe that - in the long - a unique brand is more important. It can attract designers as well.
+1
Well put Dries, no argument really.
If anyone thinks new themes are needed, get working and contribute one.
Gladly, you come watch my 2yr
Gladly, you come watch my 2yr old and mow the 1.5 acres of grass. :)
I respect your point Dries. B
I respect your point Dries. But keep in mind what a lot of people want in a CMS is flexability (Drupal definately has this) and a way to easily make it look like their own. Bottom line is Drupal is theme deficient when compared to some other products in its class. The reason so many people run the same theme is because they dont have a choice and/or the know how to build one. I intend to eventually try to tackle a theme from the ground up but two things have to happen.
1. The theme engine and code needs to stay stable for a bit. I'm thinking the best way to reach this is I will stay with 4.5 for a while, not that sticking on a version doesnt create its own issues.
2. I need to spend more time with php and the guts of drupal.
Your question about who the theme benfits is a good one and I see it like this.
Do you want to help and encourage new users who dont know a lot about php, css etc to use drupal? or
Would you like to keep drupal to those who know what they are doing and limit those who dont to all looking like a bunch of clones?
Watch your words
I keep reading that Drupal needs to let people easily make it look like their own (as you have written). Releasing a theme is not about helping people make it easier to look their own, but make it easier for people to copy and use the theme. There are existing tableless themes out there, which are at different levels of easing the modification. Look into the chameleon theme in core if you are fluent in CSS to make stlyes, or if you are fluent in PHP to modify the theme. Or do the same with the xtemplate based themes also in core, if you are not familiar with PHP. This theme you see at drupal.org is not any easier to customize and make it look you own.
Changes in 4.5
The theme changes in 4.5 are not as big for a themer... and I don't think anyone will doubt that they make theming a lot easier now.
Style-only themes allow people to quickly tweak a design for their purposes (logo, colors, font, ...). Templates are now fully grown themes, so people with no PHP knowledge can more easily theme Drupal. And the creation of templating engines like PHPTemplate put lots of power in the hands of a designer without losing the convenience of separate files.
Maybe if I have time I'll make a new theme for core or contrib focused on easy branding... but the problem is that as soon as your theme becomes used a lot, it loses its touch. Bluemarine looked great in the beginning, now it's "just another Drupal site".
Theming IS a lot easier
The new phpTemplate and support for theme engine systems is a fabulous improvement. (And I suppose we should all take our hats off to Adrian for making a lot of it happen). In theory, it shouldn't take long for someone to port virtually any theme from any theme engine (smarty etc) to Drupal given the new way themeing works.
Yes - it makes the life of developers and designers a lot easier.
When working on my own BeCircle theme starting with a tabless design I turned to phpTemplate and took some initial cues from "cleanslate" as it seemed like the most bare bones thing to build on. In the end I actually had to actually ditch 95% of the initial CSS content due to bloat/clutter and re-build it from the bottom up. Still - the simplicity of phpTemplate made the actual design of the style sheets (and thus the site) a breeze.
BUT - it was a "breeze" because I am comfortable with CSS - and I read/write PHP. I could go through the code that Drupal and phpTemplate produces to know what CSS .classes and #id's apply to which elements of the site - and tweak it to my liking.
For the novice/intermediate CSS designer with little or no PHP knowledge I imagine that tackling their own custom theme is still not AS easy as we would all like to think.
That is why it is so important to have a variety of contributed themes to provide a starting point for less experienced developers/designers to "play with" and more experienced developers/designers to "learn from."
What's my point?
I just wanted to give some background on where I was coming from. When I requested the release of BlueBeach (or a variation of it) it wasn't because I need to see it or want to use it. It was really a request to share the knowledge and technical details of the theme - I mean this is an open source project.
Anyone, including myself, could easily reverse engineer the theme and make it public (I'm choosing not to - out of respect to the wishes of dries and the rest of the drupal team), but really nobody should have to do that.
I appreciate not wanting to have a bunch of drupal.org clones out there. I also appreciate the idea of wanting to keep something just for drupal.org to set drupal.org appart. But, open source is about keeping things open - and easily accessible.
So - may I suggest perhaps releasing a version of BlueBeach with a request for users not to use it. Maybe even delay its release for a few months. In the end some may still use it AS IS - but afterall, how much 'cred' are those people going to have? We'll all know where they got the theme from - and some people may even remind them that it's not cool - or whatever. But for those with a genuine interest to learn from the theme and grow as developers and designers - drupal would be providing a real service.
andre
wine...
"wine project" would not even exist, if its authors had thought so...
Reverse Engineered
Not respecting the wishes of gates and balmer is a bit different than not respecting the wishes of dries and steven.
At any rate I have gone ahead and reverse engineered it out of curiosity.
http://www.andremolnar.com/mtarchives/000126.html
andre
sure...
you're right... infact something is protected by IP laws and copyright, where something else is protected by wishes :grin:
anyway, respect their position, if i have to reverse engineer a theme, i'll do with that from theme garden ;-)
Starting point
Those who would like to have a starting point tableless theme, you can look into the marvin_2k style for phptemplate. Since Bluebeach is also based on phptemplate, you will get a possibly similar theme (without the graphics of course)
I love it
I know, another me too, post.
FABULOUS!!!
I don't think you should release the theme.
Make another one perhaps, but don't release this one. (As was said, get the Web Developer Extension for Firefox if you want to see how it works.)
my review
Last, but not least: the theme is big improvement from the old, and nice piece of CSS engineering but there are numerous details that still needs to be smoothen out. Attention to details (and skills to systematically deal with them) are still separating us from the Real Professionals(tm).
Personal note: Steven, I am not yet buying your shares, but watching your design skills grow in last year it's hard to resist it in next year.
Thanks ;)
Thanks for the detailed analysis (although next time please link to the images instead ;). There's always room for improvement and I agree about most of your comments.
1.x: The image looks quite like a brochure so I figured that was pretty clear what it lead to. Your larger mockup brochure spot is nice, but it would mean that the orange area gets less high, especially with your other suggestions (1.6). Effectively the brochure image would not be much larger. Also, the box fills most of the entire width and getting it to look right on all proportions is tricky. For example, on 1024x768 the brochure image is pretty much centered in the orange area.
3.x/5.x: The whitespace is there to make the mission box stand out more (and also reduce its width a bit). Making it the same width as the main body/columns makes it feel much less like a 'spotlight'.
The biggest issue with the spotlight/mission is giving it enough content without losing focus and without scaring the user away. The little paragraph of flat text seems excessive somehow already. This why I added the brochure line in bold: people who skip over the text see a quick invitation about a brochure. Text with pictures is more interesting than text alone ;).
2.x: The font used is FF Max. I think I understand what you mean about it being 'nervous': the logo stands on top of the divider rather than being part of any of the sections it divides. However, I don't feel it's particularly bad.
I think shifting the "Drupal" text up one pixel (so the bowls don't extend into the white), and changing the 'embossing' from down-right to down will make quite a difference.
4.x: The green hue is used for the sticky alone. I colored it to make the transition from top to bottom a bit smoother: the orange area is very colorful while the bottom is much simpler. Maybe a soft yellow hue would be better for the sticky? Although the yellow would contrast a lot with the blue below it. Silvery gray might work too, although silvery is more a property of shading rather than saturation/hue. It could just look muddy rather than bright. Maybe a subtle gradient could help.
6.x: I never really liked Mozilla's search placement. It just feels odd. The blue area at the top provides a space for the page to 'get started': putting a form there would make it feel too busy, I think. Maybe if I make search box background continue until the right screen edge, it would feel more in place.
7.x: I was aware of the problems with the download box, but it was a real tricky one to get acceptable in the first place. The brightness of the background is just so that neither white nor black provides enough contrast. But then, making the box lighter/darker made it stand out not enough or too much.
I also preferred to pimp the Drupal version, that's why it says "Latest release: Drupal 4.5.0" (the version is read from the project tables in the theme).
The download box is also very much tied to the rest of the mission statement (though I originally considered moving it outside the mission box). With your suggestion of moving the brochure image/link to a box of its own, this might not be a bad idea: Maybe I could then color the download box differently so it doesn't suffer from the link/not link problem. Perhaps the whitespace on the sides of the orange area could then be moved between the center box and the brochure/download box.
8.x: I'm not too unhappy about the sidebar. I think the blocks definitely need a background to separate them from the main content: when reading the handbook, the page can get quite crowded, and the backgrounds help to form a 'gutter' for the main content to be in. Your review focused mostly on the frontpage, but I'm curious what you think about the rest of the site.
I don't think the resemblance to the top tabs is a problem, but I do agree that the titles attract a lot of attention. Maybe if the block backgrounds were connected, forming a single blue area, it would be better? Then you'd lose the hard edge of contrast between dark blue and white.
By the way, if you want to see the theme as it was really intended, get the font Bitstream Vera Sans (it's free & Free). It's like Verdana, but just a tiny bit nicer...
yea
> The whitespace is there to
> make the mission box stand out more
to my eye, it just looked a margin bug. but maybe I am biased.
> I also preferred to pimp the Drupal version,
> that's why it says "Latest release: Drupal 4.5.0"
yes, but version number should not have to be that strong, perhaps put it to separate line and make it more subtle. Does majority of dowloaders really care that much of the three-digit version number? They just want to get the latest stable, no? Isn't the version more important on upgrading -- "do they have them same version what I have or newer"?
> Maybe if I make search box background
> continue until the right screen edge, it would feel more in place.
yes, and make it's left side align with sidebar's left side
> Maybe if the block backgrounds were connected,
> forming a single blue area, it would be better?
good idea, it also reduces the "boxyness" I was concerned
Updated
I updated the theme with some of your remarks. I tried playing with the sidebar, but neither lighter titles or a continuous blue area looked better...
Nice work I like the new head
Nice work I like the new header section, the old way looked good too but this is just better. ;)
Where can I download bluebeach theme?
It looks really sweet, slick, stylish.....but where can I download it and is it compatible with 4.5 release or can it just be used with cvs version?
Please read the article
Bluebeach is not available for download.
That sucks but OK, it's for d
That sucks but OK, it's for drupal, so one great theme guys!
phptemplate.engine
You refer in your post to the CVS phptemplate.engine (http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/contributions/theme-engines/phptemplate/), which does not contain any instructions.
I also tried the PHP Template from http://drupal.org/node/6709 but this one dates back to 14/04/2004 and is not really ready for 4.5.
I do not want to copy the new theme either but learn from it. Mostly learn how you used the phptemplate.engine. At least the Drupal 4.5 release should include one theme, which also uses the phptemplate.engine, since this is being uses as the showcase of the Drupal site itself.
PHPtemplate not in release
PHPtemplate is not in the 4.5 package. The code is there, where you pointed to. Look into http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/contributions/theme-styles/phptemplate for examples of phptemplate usage.
Theme documentation
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any documentation on PHPTemplate: I cursed this myself when I made the theme. I've been updating the Theme developer's guide today, and I'm going to start a PHPTemplate theming guide.
Edit: There was indeed PHPTemplate documentation on Bryght's wiki. D'oh! I moved it to the Theme Dev Guide in the handbook.
Great!
That would be a real service!
I have been using PHPTemplate, and would really apreciate better docs, especially for 4.5 changes.
Cheers,
Ross.
I wrote a fair amount of docs
I wrote a fair amount of docs on our public wiki , but the docs have mostly migrated to the drupal.org theme guide.
--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.
Thanx
Thanx a lot Steven. That's all I was hoping for.
Update: You did a fine job. This helps a lot. I am looking forward to working on my first templates next weekend.
Drupal Theme Community
Why not launch a drupal theme development community using drupal as the site engine? It could be added to the tabs at the top.
I don't know if anything like that already exists, but it seems like an obvious idea and it would work best if it was integrated directly into the main drupal site.
Its under development
Yes, it is a good idea and it's being worked on, give it some time.
adrinux
adrinux@ntlworld.com
Stupendous
Great job, everyone!! This make over is a HUGE improvement!! Congratulations on all your hard work!!
Annie
wow
luigi.fridini AT gmail DOT com
I can only say: wow
A proposal and question
It seems to me there is a real demand for a bunch of new themes that look as hot as this one, but that aren't the drupal.org theme. So...I guess I will get working on that and if anyone else wants to go for it, please dig in. But I agree that this theme shouldn't be public.
Hey Steven, how long from start to finish would you say it took you to come up with this theme. Just to give folks an idea of what they are up against.
Hard to say
Making the first design mockup took me about an evening... converting it to a PHPTemplate about 4-5 evenings. But then there were still lots of details to sort out (table row coloring, blockquotes, ...).
Those rounded corners
Bryan - yes I agree the the drupal.org theme should not be kept for this site only, but I'd love to some how have the rounded corners on my blocks and comment boxes. I'm stuck with the "out-of-the-box" themes, as my coding skills are limited to changing the odd css colour here and there. So I'd definitely be interested in a public theme that's even half as hot as this one.
tony
--
http://azium.com
Rounded corners
The rounded corners require images... if you want to change their color, you need an image editing program. And to look nice, they need to be anti-aliased too.
I used the following technique for most of them:
- Make the base div be a regular rectangular border of the right color.
- Create 4 images containing the rounded corner in each of the 4 positions.
- Make 4 wrapper divs inside the base div. Give each one of the images as background-image and position them in the right corner, with no repeating (elementary CSS).
- Now the images will look like crap because they are positioned inside the rectangular border.
- To fix this, I set
position: relative;on each of the wrapper divs, and settopandleftto +/- 1 pixel increments so they cover the rectangular border.Using this technique also triggers various incarnations of the IE Peekaboo Bug. Each was fixed by setting
position: relative;on both the affected block and the block which contained it.teach a man to fish...
I know that alot of people have expressed alot of interest in getting the new drupal.org theme for themselfs. The primary representation is to learn, but we all know that the temptation to just use this theme will be too great, and all of a sudden we will have lots of drupal.org's around.
Steven has done a wonderful job with the new and much improved drupal.org look, and frankley I agree 100% with Dries in that we do not want alot of other sites looking like drupal.org. It just brings drupal down, and make it look like every other site. We know what the old xtemplate theme did, Just about every second drupal site used it.
As there is so much interest in this theme, what I would propose is that we turn this into a phptemplate/css tutorial that will help people develop their own themes as good as or even better than the drupal.org theme.
This would mean not giving away the theme but helping people by breaking down the theme and explaining what all of the css does, and how it this relates to the creating a theme using the phptemplate engine.
I am not just blowing smoke here, and would actually like to help create such a tutorial. My ulterior motive here would be that I will hopefully improve my css skills and also help to raise the standard of drupal sites that are around.
Great idea! but the timing is off :(
Since there has not been a final, downloadble, fully working, non CVS version of phptemplate available for 4.5 and PHP5 compatible this will have to wait. Unless you want to also explain to raw PHP newbies how to fix the present phptemeplate to suit :)
---------------------------
info for Drupal installation
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.heroforhire.net
CVS = 4.5 at the moment
The CVS version of PHPTemplate works on 4.5. We use it on Drupal.org.
Heehee does not fit all the criteria for non programmers
Dealing with CVS and PHP5 will be enough to discourage most. CVS requires that you be willing to spend more than 15 minutes trying to get it to work. In most case there is no one to turn to because very few try CVS. This goes back to what was said by Veen in another thread. It's very hard to offer something that's better if one of the requirements is work. Not to mention propeller head type work.
Now you'll have to excuse me while I wind up my propeller and try to get phptemplate to work on PHP5 again ;)
---------------------------
info for Drupal installation
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.heroforhire.net
PHP5?
Who said anything about PHP5? Drupal is not PHP5 compatible anyhow.
The reason PHPTemplate is not available as a downloadable package is because we're still sorting out themes, theme engines and theme styles in a way that doesn't confuse the heck out of everyone.
Some patience might help.
You need to prepare for PHP 4.x.x
The point releases for PHP 4 are going to be all bug fixes from now on. Those bug fixes are things that will make the transistion from PHP4 to PHP5 seamless. This is the reason for using strict in PHP5 as a default so that those bad habits get caught before you build a large irreversible monster in PHP4. So while you are doing PHPtemplate you need to test it in PHP5 and make it compatible otherwise you may find that using the next version of PHP4 or PHP5 does not work because they are exactly alike.
Like this little bug http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=28879 which is used throughout Drupal code but is not in PHP5 and has been fixed in 4.3.9 and will likely start a lot of forum threads on warnings and errors.
Of course the popularity of Drupal is also in the mix. If you limit it to just PHP4 then popularity will start dropping as more start moving to PHP5. If this is not important the ok. This is the thing about open source if there is a gap left then someone will come along and fill it. Drupal has a very individual niche standing now and can continue to have this place. But it is going to require that over the top thinking and implementation that made windows so popular.
---------------------------
info for Drupal installation
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.heroforhire.net
Just not now
There are more important priorities now than making Drupal PHP5 compatible. Given the amount of legacy installations of PHP out there, restricting ourselves to PHP4 for now is not a major concern.
However, if you look at the commits for Drupal 4.5, you'll notice several PHP5-compatibility patches were applied already.
Well like I said you soon won't have a choice.
This was my point. You should be making it a priority before you have no choice. It's just a simple matter of following the rule on new releases so that there are less bugs with the release of PHP 4.3.9 and 4.4. While you could wait for those release and fix the bugs as they occur, a better discipline would be to code for PHP5 and you don't get those PHP 4 errors. PHP5 is just a picky PHP4 really. You don't have to use PHP5 but just hold to the coding discipline. I don't know how many empty value errors I get from use of automagic variable creation and other "shortcut coding" efforts.
---------------------------
info for Drupal installation
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.heroforhire.net
PHP5 is not just picky PHP4
- PHP5 always passes objects by reference, PHP4 does not. The syntax for cloning an object in PHP5 does not parse in PHP4.
- PHP5 has a different syntax for object members than PHP4, which is /not/ backwards compatible.
These 2 problems prevent Drupal 4.5 from being PHP5-compatible.
I don't get the rest of your post. What, you think we're going to add in more bugs on purpose?? Sorry to say this, but your posts lately seem to have low content and high bitch factors.
You're not forced to use PHP5, just let it work
- PHP5 always passes objects by reference, PHP4 does not.
The syntax for cloning an object in PHP5 does not parse in PHP4.
- PHP5 has a different syntax for object members than PHP4, which is /not/ backwards compatible.
Right but it does not matter since you are making it compatible and not using PHP5 syntax and writting it in PHP which are different things.
These 2 problems prevent Drupal 4.5 from being PHP5-compatible.Compatiblity means error less and working not rebuild to a new spec.
I don't get the rest of your post. What, you think we're going to add in more bugs on purpose?? Sorry to say this, but your posts lately seem to have low content and high bitch factors.Say, you don't understand but keep the vernacular to yourself please. Regardless of how aggressive my posting may seem you will never see me go on the attack personally. I would appreciate the same.
$block->node = $variable;is an automagic that produces a error of trying to create an object of an empty value. There are a couple of others like this that cause errors. Like not explicitly setting an array container which causes a missing array in some functions of PHP5 because it is not lenient.
There was a couple of coders here that set me straight on this because they said that I was trying to lift Drupal up to PHP5 level rather than making it work. So after taking a couple tips i was able to get Drupal to work fine on PHP5. But there are still some coding conventions that need to be watched for because they will cause problems with future php4 versions.
---------------------------
info for Drupal installation
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.heroforhire.net
Last post
Okay, last post in this thread. I have better things to do and all you seem to do is discuss and talk without any clear point.
Example of PHP5 problem:
When previewing a node, the module modifies the body/teaser values in the $node object and puts the HTML output there. Then nodeapi modules can modify it further before displaying.
Below the preview, the node form is displayed. In PHP4, no problems occur. In PHP5, because the $node object is always passed by reference, the changes that were made in previewing apply to this $node object as well, and they appear in the form as well.
We cannot simply call
clonein there somewhere, because then it would break on PHP4. Hence, a PHP5-only bug which cannot be fixed without breaking PHP4, or without doing some very ugly tricks with eval().Definitely a good idea
A tutorial on the css used to implement this new theme would be a goer, someone is sure to rip this theme off sooner or later anyway and everyone will have access to it. Why not do a tutorial so people can design their own colors and box boarders etc without having all this discussion (now 125 threads).
It is right to say, if you teach a man to fish he will never be hungry, and he will stay out of your garbage bin at night and stop keeping you wondering what he is going to steal next?
Sly
Newcomer about Drupal
Hi,
Well, I'm pretty lucky, just decided to switch to drupal and 4.5 is out.
While I'm still playing with modules and settings, I just have 2 wishes (for the moment) :
- what about a forum with just a little more functions like email warning for replies on topics, it's quite hard to follow up your posts...
- node_perm_byrole is fine, but a nodeperm_taxonomy shoud be better to allow roles to see or not categories (the only allow ACL to ONE vocabulary so you can't deploy ACL on your whole site (or I'm missing something :-? ) )
Thanks for your great CMS, I enjoy the very