theming: control of colors and fonts, drop-down menus
I am trying to get control of the colors, fonts and layout in themes and finding it hard.
Would be grateful for pointers.
My users want drop-menus, so I found a theme called garland_dropmenu and am now trying to customize the colors and fonts.
Changing style.css does not seem to affect the layout, should I be editing something different?
(I tried e-mailing the creator of this Theme but no answer)
On a more general level, are there more options than garland_dropmenu for achieving drop menus?
Could I accomplish it with a module rather than sticking with a particular theme?
I just installed the Nice Menus module, but it's not clear how to get fine control of where the menus will appear. For instance, with garland_dropmenu, you get a nice row of menus just below the masthead. With NiceMenus, you only have a choice of certain blocks.
I tried a different theme without its own dropmenu feature, and relying only on the NiceMenus module. (Pleroma) The result was that the navigational links appear twice, horizontally across the top, and vertically in the left sidebar.
I'm having trouble separating out these concepts: stylesheet control, menus, dropmenus, blocks.
Pointers gratefully accepted.
Thanks for your time.
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if you've used the color.module to change the color of the theme from its default colors. you have to edit the css in files/color/somerandom#
you will also find your way around styling with css much faster by using the firefox browser and the firebug addon. Many seem to use the webdeveloper addon as well. Which is a nice tool. These tool will allow you to see what css is being called and where along with live editing of the css to insure you are editing the correct css
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My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )
Thank you, yes, I use that
Thank you, yes, I use that addon, it is great.
So many divs it makes my head spin.
> files/color/somerandom#
Yea, that helped!
I note that in some cases the {color/somerandom#/} is in files, and in some cases is in themes if themes is within sites. (I have multiple sites, and have created copies of some themes thusly:
/sites/somesite/themes/...
so that people don't clobber each others themes.
I also note that the somerandom# directories multiply, that is, they supercede but do not erase previous ones.
Webdev is great - Firebug is confusing (so far). Not sure which .css is being shown, and a number of elements repeat each other, with lines xx-ed out. Anyway I appreciate the help, I'm making some headway.
Use nice_menus.module
Simple goto adminiter-blocks and disable the original Primary and/or Navigation!
You must read the readme.txt of nice menus, this module very simple to use, and at the end of the readme.txt there are some css examples too.
To change the look of nice_menus then edit: nice_menus_default.css
To change the look of your theme then edit: style.css
nice_menus module versus Themes with cascading menus
Thank you very much, so would you say then that I could (with study) use nice_menus to add the cascading menu feature to any Theme? rather than try to find Themes which have cascading menus built in?
nice menus, connecting to menus, how?
I read the readme, and followed the directions.
I don't see how it works.
I installed, activated & configured the Nice Menus module, made a Nice Menus block, gave it Primary Links as a parent and put it in a region (content top).
Then I went to the Menus administration to make the actual menu items.
The Nice Menus block appeared in the menu list.
I added a few menu & sub-menu items to the Nice Menus menu (with upper menu items as their parent).
Doesn't work. I hover over a menu item and sub menu items do not appear.
How does it all connect?
Setup: Firefox, Drupal 5. Drop menus do work in general; they are somehow built into the garland_dropmenu theme & work fine with that.
Also, isn't it conflicting to have to pick both a parent (say, Primary Links, which I think has a fixed location) and a region (which might be somewhere else on the page) ?
Thank you for any advice you can provide.
Nice Menus
1. administer-blocks: set nice-menus-1 on certain REGION
2. nice-menus-1 usually a NAVIGATION-MENU
3. administer-menus: add new menu item to NAVIGATION-MENU
Nice Menus
Does this mean you can't have drop-down menus in Primary Links?
It's offered in the Blocks configuration section, as one of the menus the Block can source from.
OK I tried again, settling for the Navigation menu.
I set the Nice Menus block 1 to source the Navigation menu.
Result: the nav menu items do appear as a dropdown menu, but within the page content, as if it were a posting, not in the 'content top' area.
I see that the block is supposed to pull in content from a pre-existing Menu.
I want that menu to be Primary Links, running across the top.
??
1. administer-blocks: set nice-menus-1 on certain REGION --> okay, I picked content-top
2. nice-menus-1 usually a NAVIGATION-MENU --> I tried Primary Links
3. administer-menus: add new menu item to NAVIGATION-MENU --> I added some items to Primary Links
No luck.
Please could you spell it out for me? I'm not proud.
Primary Links as Nice Menus
it's ok, you can define any menus (primary links, navigation, or customize menu) as nice-menus. i show you the "navigation" only as example. since you can make the navigation as nice-menus, then just change the nice-menus-1 or nice-menu-2 source to primary-links.
above issue only about region on your themes. if you want to show the nice-menus on "content-top" then you may select "header" region or create your NEW REGION (called as "content-top"), look at my example on www.drupal-id.com, on this site I create 2 new regions: PRIMARY-MENU (nice-menus-1 = primary links) and SECONDARY-MENU (nice-menus-2 = navigation menu) region.
Please read tutorial about themes to understand how to create your own Region.
Maybe your problem was caused by your selected theme, try to use BLUEMARINE theme.
NOTE:
- Remember to DISABLE Primary Links-block, otherwise you will have double primary-links menu.
Nice Menus
In page.tpl.php, you need to have the line:
<?phpprint theme('nice_menu_primary_links');
?>
region placement ?
Thank you for this advice.
I tried that (I wasn't sure where in page.tpl.php to write it, or if it mattered, & I ended up putting it just before
<?phpif ($header):
?>
As before I get a dropdown menu with primary links, at the very *top* of the page. I need a dropdown menu in the *existing* primary links area just under the masthead (which doesn't seem to be part of a separate region that I can 'tell' Nice Menus about in the Admin/Blocks section). I can define a new region in a kludgy way (see below) but don't know how to specify where that region should appear on the page.
I see lots of Themes with primary links just under the masthead (Aurora, Active Signs, Andreas09, etc.).
The webdeveloper plugin to Firefox says the primary links in, e.g., Aurora, are in div #primary .clear-block 7.
It doesn't tell me what *region* they are in. I've tried every option in the plugin.
So I guess I have to make a new region.
The primary links are styled in style.css, but how does the (to-be-created) region get mapped to that?
I see that a block can go in a custom region, and can inherit from a menu. But how to position the region?
I tried creating a region 'masthead' in my theme's template.php : 'masthead' => t('masthead')
But it did not appear the Admin/Blocks popups.
So I tried creating it in phptemplate.engine : 'masthead' => t('masthead')
And then it appeared in Admin/Blocks.
I was going to then try passing this $var to block.tpl.php in the _phptemplate_variables section, but
(a) wasn't sure if this would be an add-on to the existing function or a replacement and
(b) where do you actually specify the physical location of the new region?
Surely it can't be this hard?
Thanks for your time.