By celticess on

I saw one online but I can't remember if it was from here in a post somewhere or something I'd just stubled across. Anyways I'm trying to find a layout generator so I can make a new theme. While I know some basic css and php I don't know much of the fancy stuff. I'm self taught (and yea I know I should RTFM but I learned linux hands on and most other computer stuff I've done on PC's and I did try to find something on it but couldn't in the handbook here). Anyways I'm not sure how to change the layout in drupal. Though I'm guessing it's done in the style sheets somehow. I can't visualize in my mind how to do it.(I can with regular html) Anyways I'd really appreciate it if someone has a link to an online generator so I can get a visual of how to do it. The one I saw had clickable boxes showing 3 colum, 2 colum, etc.

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celticess’s picture

celticess commented

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html

freyquency’s picture

freyquency commented

I've been working on a Drupal specific one in my spare time: http://coacalina.org/theme_style_generator

Basically the idea is this:

  • decide which elements common to drupal themes could be customized
  • create a set 'tags' the form controls
  • replace the specific elements in a style sheet with the 'tags'. body {background-color: rgb(244,122,122)} would become body {background-color: $bgcol}
  • create a frontend to edit and preview the style
  • click submit and have the script search the marked up template for the 'tags' and replace with users choices.
  • generate a .tar.gz file with a folder containing the style.css, a file that can later be loaded back into the script, and a text file with the color palette and files listed.

It's got a way to go, but check it out.

celticess’s picture

celticess commented

I have to do a double take when I see your alias as my ex goes by chromatix. Anyways... I'm trying to get a slightly different nav bar. The 3 column layouts I've seen so far online seem to have the header and footer ontop of their ends. I want to extend the left one up/down but otherwise keep that design. I've seen similar things to what I want to accomplish on themes.drupal.org but the themes aren't for download for me to figure out the layout they've used.

I want to basically have a butterfly as a graphic with the ends of it's wings going down and the navigation falling inside that. The top of the butterfly then would be level with the logo. I don't necisarily care too heavily on a right colum though it has it's uses which is why I was looking at the 3 column ones. But if I can achieve this with a 2 column that would be great. In the CSS examples I see I also notice they are calling things different names than what drupal is using in the themes I've looked in so far. I know I can do what I want if I make an html table inside a theme file. But I'm not sure what to stick in cells.

Basically it would look like this: http://celticess.bellator.net/files/3column.gif

(I also wouldn't mind knowing how to do the above link example in css as the same thing minus the link colum)

Thox’s picture

Thox commented

Here's a quick throw together.

The menu down the left could be improved by using an image repeated down the left of the screen. Since it's obviously a mockup, I didn't take it that far. The "Links" section isn't perfect, but it works. 2 columns is cleaner for this layout.

Hope that helps.

celticess’s picture

celticess commented

That should help me greatly in trying to do what I want to make it do. :)

ica’s picture

ica commented

chromatic , your idea is excellent, what is needed is simplification and increasing the customisation for ordinary site designers.

I am not sure this piece of software linked below can be helpful to you or can be somehow integrated to your project or seperately to Drupal, it looks interesting and work like a bliss

http://www.pixy.cz/apps/webedit/ (>Edit style)

other CSS generators could be integrated to Drupal but i guess styles and div's standardised and an online generator via forms writes css into a .css theme file ( or to a database theme table? (i am not sure abt. con's if css theme served from DB).
I am not a coder and just speculating over possibilities but it seems feasable
Also it can be complimenting feature to new 4.7 PHPTemplate Regions
http://drupal.org/node/29139

- some css style generators
http://www.listulike.com/generator/
http://www.csscreator.com/version1/index.php
http://www.csscreator.com/version2/pagelayout.php
http://htmlbasix.com/stylesheet.shtml
http://www.xmldir.de/quickcss/
http://www.inknoise.com/experimental/layoutomatic.php
http://www.udm4.com/udm-resources/css-generator.html